Motivating Students to Learn

Kathryn Wentzel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429648137
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Written specifically for teachers in training, Motivating Students to Learn offers a wealth of research-based principles on student motivation for use in the classroom. Positioning the teacher as the decisive motivator, the book is grounded in the realities of contemporary schools, curriculum goals, and peer dynamics. Twelve rich chapters offer extrinsic and intrinsic approaches to guide daily practice, guidelines for adapting to group and individual differences, and ways to reach discouraged or disaffected students. This revised fifth edition features new instructional strategies, summaries of effective interventions, chapters on family/cultural diversity and teacher motivation, and more.

1
Introduction to Motivation to Learn

Learning is fun and exciting, at least when the curriculum is well matched to students’ interests and abilities and the teacher emphasizes hands-on activities. When you teach the right things the right way, motivation takes care of itself. If students aren’t enjoying learning, something is wrong with your curriculum and instruction—you have somehow turned an inherently enjoyable activity into drudgery.

School is inherently boring and frustrating. We require students to come, then try to teach them stuff that they don’t see a need for and don’t find meaningful. There is little support for academic achievement in the peer culture, and frequently in the home as well. A few students may be enthusiastic about learning, but most of them require the grading system and the carrots and sticks that we connect to it to pressure them to at least do enough to get by.

These italicized paragraphs express the core ideas behind much of the advice traditionally offered to teachers about motivating students. The two views are contradictory, even though both are frequently expressed. Neither is valid, but each contains elements of truth.

The first view incorporates overly romantic views of human nature and unrealistic expectations about school learning. We can expect students to find learning activities to be meaningful and worthwhile, but not to experience them as “fun” in the same sense that they experience recreational games and pastimes. Even when they find the content interesting and the activity enjoyable, learning requires sustained concentration and effort.

The second view incorporates overly cynical views of human nature and negative expectations about teachers’ potential for inducing motivation to learn. Besides seeking to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, children can learn to experience satisfaction in acquiring knowledge, developing skills, satisfying curiosity—in a word, learning. Teachers can shape students’ behavior by manipulating rewards and contingencies for positive reinforcement, but they also can help students to appreciate their learning opportunities—to find them meaningful and worthwhile for reasons that include intrinsic motivation and self-actualization.

If the two extreme views are not valid, what might be a more balanced and fruitful way to think about student motivation? The answer to this question is developed throughout this book, based on the notion of socializing students’ motivation to learn.

Before you read further, however, take stock of your own motivation. Motivation reflects the reasons behind our choices and actions. Our beliefs about these reasons anchor how we understand our own motivation, which we tend to project onto other people when we try to understand their motivation. So, to sharpen your awareness of your own current motivational thinking, take time to reflect on the following questions and write down your answers.

1. What activities do you engage in frequently because you enjoy them? Why? (What makes these activities so enjoyable? What do you get out of them?)
2. What activities do you engage in frequently even though you don’t enjoy them (because they are responsibilities that you can’t evade, or necessary steps toward some important goal)? How do you motivate yourself to perform these unenjoyed activities well (or at least, well enough)?
3. Most people prefer certain kinds of books, movies, television programs, and hobbies over others. For example, they may prefer realistic fiction over fantasy, comedy over drama, golf over tennis, or collecting historical memorabilia over collecting stamps. What might account for these contrasting preferences? Why do you prefer certain types of books, movies, sports, or hobbies over others, especially others that appear similar but don’t quite “do it” for you?
4. As a student, which subjects or learning activities have you found most enjoyable or rewarding? Which are boring or merely “OK” rather than stimulating or worthwhile? Are some anxiety-provoking, irritating, or in some other way aversive for you, so that you try to avoid them? What explains your contrasting motivational responses?
5. What self-motivational and coping strategies do you call on to help you do what you need to do when you find a school activity boring or aversive? When you find the activity frustrating or overly difficult?
6. In what ways have your teachers and professors affected your motivation positively or negatively (not just your liking for their subject matter and learning activities, but also your motivation to learn with understanding and to do your best work on assignments)?
7. Have your answers to these questions evolved as you progressed from childhood through adolescence into adulthood? If so, how and why?
8. Do you think that people who differ from you in gender, race, or cultural background would generate similar or different answers to these questions? Why?
9. What do your answers suggest about strategies to emphasize or avoid in your attempts to motivate students to learn (given the ages of your students)?

Save your responses to these questions. As you read through the book, revisit them to compare your own experience-based ideas about motivation with ideas from the scholarly literature. If you note any contradictions, try to identify the reasons for them and any implications for your practice as a teacher.

The remainder of Chapter 1 provides a general introduction to motivation. First, definitions are offered of some basic concepts and a summary of ways in which theorizing about motivation has evolved. Six key questions central to understanding motivation to learn are presented. Next, it is argued that it is unrealistic to expect to routinely produce intrinsic motivation in the classroom. In contrast, it is proposed that producing motivation to learn is a more feasible alternative. A preview of what is involved in stimulating and socializing students’ motivation to learn follows. Finally, the chapter concludes with an overview of the rest of the book.

Definition and Overview of Motivation

There are several basic concepts, or constructs, that are used throughout this book. At the most general level, motivation is a theoretical construct used to explain the initiation, direction, intensity, persistence, and quality of behavior, especially goal-directed behavior (Murphy & Alexander, 2000). Motives are hypothetical constructs used to provide general reasons for why people do what they do. Motives typically refer to relatively general needs or desires that energize people to initiate purposeful action sequences. Examples of motives are hunger, a need for social acceptance, or a need to satisfy curiosity. Motives are distinguished from goals (the immediate objectives of actions) and strategies (the methods used to achieve goals and thus to satisfy motives). Goals and related strategies are more specific and are used to explain the direction and quality of action sequences in particular situations (Ford, 1992; Thrash & Elliot, 2001). To illustrate these distinctions, a person responds to hunger (motive) by going to a restaurant (strategy) to get food (goal); a student satisfies curiosity (motive) by watching her teacher (strategy) demonstrate how to solve an algebra problem (goal).

In the classroom, the concept of student motivation is used to explain the degree to which students invest attention and effort in various pursuits, which may or may not be the ones desired by their teachers. Student motivation is reflected in the motives and goals they strive to achieve, and is rooted in their subjective experiences, especially those connected to their willingness to engage in learning activities and their reasons for doing so. This book develops the argument that teachers should focus on encouraging students to engage in activities with motivation to learn: the intention of acquiring the knowledge or skills that learning activities are designed to develop.

Evolving Theoretical Perspectives on Motivation

Theoretical perspectives on motivation that serve as the foundation for this book address six key questions:

1. What do I want to do?
2. What am I supposed to do?
3. Is this important and enjoyable to do?
4. Can I do it?
5. What causes success and failure?
6. Does anybody care if I do it?

The answers to these questions reflect, respectively, goal-related beliefs (Questions 1 through 3), beliefs about ability, causality, and control (Questions 4 and 5), and a sense of social belongingness (Question 6); they combine to explain why students may or may not be motivated to learn. These questions are derived from theories of motivation that provide descriptions and explanations of goal setting; intrinsic and extrinsic motivation; efficacy, expectations, implicit beliefs, and attributions; and a sense of social attachment and belongingness. They reflect two general dimensions of motivation: goals and values that help us decide what we will try to do (Questions 1 through 3), and beliefs about ourselves and our environment that determine if we will actually try to do it (Questions 4 through 6).

What follows is a brief overview of these theoretical perspectives and how they are addressed in this book.

Perspectives on Motives and Goals: What Do I Want to Do?

In this book, insights into students’ motives and goals are found in need theories, goal theory, and perspectives on goal setting. Need theories and their modern counterparts focus on the goals that we set for ourselves and what we would like to accomplish in particular situations. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs is an example of an early need theory that has remained popular and influential (Maslow, 1962). In general, need theories explain behavior as responses or reactions to felt needs. Maslow suggested that needs function within a hierarchy arranged in terms of specific priorities, ranging from physiological needs (such as sleep) which are top priorities to self-actualization (e.g., creative expression) which is the lowest priority. The hierarchy implies that needs must be satisfied in the order given.

Gradually, motivation theories began to acknowledge that in addition to being pushed and pulled by basic needs, we are sometimes more proactive in deciding what we want to do and why. Reflecting this evolution in theorizing, most motivational researchers have shifted from talking about needs to talking about goals: the objectives or intended outcomes of planned sequences of behavior. Examples of more recent theorizing about goals are reflected in work on goal theory (e.g., Maehr & Zusho, 2009), goal content (Ford, 1992; Wentzel, 2002), and goal setting (Bandura, 1986).

Goal theory focuses on specific goal orientations toward achievement that can facilitate or detract from efforts to succeed. Martin Ford and others have examined the content of students’ goals, acknowledging the fact that students often try to achieve multiple academic and social goals while they are at school. Work based on this goal perspective suggests that the specific goals that students pursue often have important ...