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What We Believe about Motivation
This document explains why motivation is important, what we know about motivation and what we can do to motivate students. The content in this document provide a common starting point and shared language for our journey in motivating students to learn.
Why is Motivation Important in Learning
We believe that all students want to and can learn. When students are motivated, they learn better, put more effort into learning, and are more willing to take on new challenges. Motivated students are self-directed learners. They are more able and willing to continuously learn new knowledge and skills, thus building their capacity to lead a meaningful and productive life in an ever evolving world.
What do We Know about Motivation
Motivation theories seek to explain how individuals' beliefs, values and goals, and their environment shape what they want to achieve and how they go about doing so. Motivation impacts students' educational outcomes because it determines what and why students learn, and their drive and persistence in learning.
Motivation is influenced by context. It can vary, depending on many factors including students' interests and wants, their environment and their interactions with peers and teachers.
Motivation can be viewed as a continuum from extrinsic to intrinsic with different degree of self-determination. Extrinsic motivation takes place when a student engages in an activity as a means towards an end such as for rewards, to avoid guilt or to help them achieve their goal, while intrinsic motivation occurs when a student finds engaging in a task satisfying, enjoyable, and pleasurable. More autonomous motivation is seen as more conducive for longer term mastery, greater joy of learning, and higher quality work. More controlling motivation, such as tangible rewards, however, can negatively interfere with intrinsic motivation for learning, and research has shown that motivation could decrease when the reward for learning is subsequently discontinued.
A lack of motivation impedes learning and manifests itself in the form of disruptive behaviours in class, procrastination or indifference. These are counter- productive to learning. Unmotivated students will find the schooling experience disenchanting, learning a struggle and as a result will not realise their full potential.
We believe that all students want to and can learn. When students are motivated, they learn better, put more effort into learning, and are more willing to take on new challenges.
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What can We do to Enhance Motivation
Given the complexities of our environment and uniqueness of our students, there is no single best way to motivate all students. We need broad approaches, as well as specific strategies, to guide us in designing effective lessons, programmes and systems to enhance motivation.
We play a key role in motivating our students. Motivating students is an iterative and dynamic process which requires astute understanding of our students and their environment. At the broad level, we can:
1. Create a conducive environment for learning. Having a conducive environment is a basic need of any student, and essential for their learning. It begins with a safe learning space, and positive teacher-student and student-student relationships which empower students to learn and support one another. Once students feel connected, valued and respected by their teachers and peers, they will want to attend school. Equally essential are tasks which are pitched appropriately and purposefully designed, to provide opportunities and support for students to learn with confidence and experience satisfaction in learning. Creating a safe and supportive learning environment facilitates the motivation to learn.
2. Help our students strive for mastery goals and not just performance goals. Purpose and goals direct behaviours and are sources of motivation. Mastery-oriented students focus on developing their skills and knowledge. They place value on improving their own performance and this facilitates the growth of interest, persistence and deeper learning. Performance-oriented students focus on demonstrating that they are better than others. This may lead to excessive comparison with peers which could lead to adverse consequences such as pressure and anxiety. Students who are constantly outperformed by others may opt out of learning altogether to avoid failure while those who consistently perform better than their peers may avoid challenging but meaningful learning tasks in order to maintain their good relative performance. Getting all students to focus on mastery goals, instead of on performance goals alone, is more likely to promote intrinsic motivation.
3. Embrace a growth mindset in our students. Students with a growth mindset believe that abilities, competencies and intelligence are not fixed, while students with a fixed mindset believe that their performance is determined by innate qualities that they are born with. A growth mindset leads to increased motivation and learning. This is because students with a growth mindset trust that they can become better through effort, and are more willing to take on new challenges and persevere when they encounter difficulties. Since all students will experience setbacks in one form or another in the course of their learning, it is therefore important for teachers to help them develop a growth mindset to be more resilient to setbacks. Recognising students' effort and linking that effort to improvement can help to promote a growth mindset.
4. Strive to promote students' intrinsic motivation by meeting the three psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness. When students are given the opportunity to exercise autonomy, they feel that they have greater control over their actions and are more willing to try something new. When students feel
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competent, they find the task more achievable and are more willing to put in effort. When students feel connected to people and find the task meaningful (relatedness), they feel safer and are more engaged. Where possible, students could be given choices in what and how they learn, and how their learning can be demonstrated. We can, where necessary, scaffold the learning process to make it manageable for our students and allow them to experience success. We can create a positive classroom culture to allow students to learn and work on challenging tasks that they care about together. Meeting the three psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness can help enhance students' intrinsic motivation.
5. Adopt a variety of approaches to enhance motivation in students. There are different approaches to enhance motivation in students. Simple, specific and timely feedback that focuses on effort that lead to positive learning outcomes can enhance students' intrinsic motivation. Other examples include linking learning tasks to students' interests and wants; appropriate use of rewards and praise; and appealing to students' goals, aspirations and values. As learning is influenced by the complex interactions of students and the environment, we need to select approaches according to the learning needs and contexts of our students to achieve maximal impact. Having knowledge and access to a repertoire of approaches, and using them appropriately will enhance students' motivation.
Conclusion
Motivating students to learn goes beyond the practices within schools. The overall education system and structure must also promote intrinsic motivation and mastery goals, and engender a growth mindset. Society at large, especially parents, plays a key role in motivating our students. It takes a village to raise a child and everyone must make the concerted effort to create a culture where our students are motivated because they will experience joy and meaning in learning, and will be self- directed as lifelong learners.
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