What is Motivation? What should be a teacher’s approach to it?

November 5, 2017 Shreya 0 Comments

Often heard about motivation, Isn’t it? But what actually is motivation and how it works?

We, at Kailasha foundation, care about the students’ mental state as well, boards are approaching and many of the students need motivation. For motivation, it is not necessary to give long lectures or stories. If we know what it is and how it work any of us can help students around.

What is Motivation?

Motivation refers to a state of a person that directs the behaviour of the individual towards certain goals.

Some students seem naturally enthusiastic about learning, but many need or expect their instructors to inspire, challenge and stimulate them.

According to Erickson, 1978:

“Effective learning in the classroom depends on the teacher’s ability to maintain the interest that brought the students to the course in the first place”. For example, A teacher using different methods of teaching a concept will make the student more curious and motivated towards it in comparison to a teacher who simply uses board and chalk method.

Whereas, Sass, 1989 said that “Not all the students are motivated by same values, needs, desires or wants. Some of your students will be motivated by approval of others, some by overcoming challenges”. Here I would like to like you about two of our students. We were teaching them about chemical bonds and they seemed less interested. Being one of their important subjects, we had to motivate them. The problem was Same but we couldn’t handle them with the same method. We gave them a quiz, one of them was excited and thus got motivated to study while the other one was still uninterested.

General strategies for Motivation:

1. Make students participate actively in learning –

The best way is to involve them in the process of learning. Students learn better by doing, making, writing, designing, creating and solving. Passivity surely dampens students motivation and curiosity.

Here are some points which the teacher should know –

Teacher’s enthusiasm
Relevance of the material
Organisation of the course
Appropriate difficulty level of the material
Active involvement of students
Variety
Rapport between students and teacher
Use of appropriate, concrete and understandable examples

2. Feedback –

This is really important as this helps the students to analyse their abilities. This should be done as soon as test/challenges are because it keeps the interest intact.

3. Reward Success –

Both negative and positive comments influence motivation, but research clearly says students are more affected by positive feedback and rewards.

The rewards don’t always need to be a medal or trophy. Appraising or small inexpensive gifts can also do it. For example, a nursery student feels happiest when the teacher rewards them with a star or smiley whereas a class 10 student will be happy when praised during the class or assembly time even by claps.

3. Negative/demeaning comments –

Frequently seen the teacher drains their frustration on students by giving negative feedbacks. In this case what we can do is avoiding too sensitive comments and instead encourage the students by giving them a new task and hence motivating them to do better.

One can also try daily motivation quotes, such as:

4. Providing the plate full –

Not all students are average, some are lazy to solve/find solutions or write/frame answers. We rob their chance to think about the question and its solution. We can ask the students what is their thought about the questions, what are facts they know about it and what facts are not cleared. Clear their doubts and then ask them to build the answer. This will surely enhance their thought and work process. Then praise them for their efforts to keep them motivated.

5. Pressure and Success stories –

Due to the highly competitive world, almost 99% of the students face peer pressure to do excellent. Here we should explain to them why are the parents concerned? What are their pressuring methods and correct the parents as well if needed?

We should also share the success stories because that definitely increases their inner efforts to reach their goals. Success is not easy, by sharing such stories we may make them feel you are not only the one on the path of hard work and your hard work will surely pay off.