Here are 8 principles you must keep in mind as you gear up to put student motivation at the front and centre of your classroom practice.
In the pursuit of bringing out the best in students and nurturing independent learning skills, understanding the principles of student motivation is of utmost importance. It is widely acknowledged that good teaching can ignite motivation, while poor teaching can stifle it. To empower your students and cultivate a motivated learning environment, it is essential to grasp the eight principles that underpin student motivation. These principles, described by Monique Boekaerts, hold relevance for children and adolescents from diverse cultural backgrounds and countries. Boekaerts' insights into the factors that influence student motivation within the classroom setting provide a valuable foundation for educators. However, as a teacher, it is essential to adapt these principles to the specific context of your classroom. Observe your students in the coming weeks to witness firsthand how these eight motivational principles, outlined in this booklet, manifest in your unique educational environment.
Monique Boekaerts, a former teacher turned psychologist, delves into the complexities of student minds to better comprehend the dynamics of motivation. As a full professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands, she has made significant contributions to the field of motivation and self-regulation, authoring over 120 papers and book chapters. In this write-up, we will explore the eight fundamental principles that Boekaerts has uncovered, which shed light on the reasons behind students' motivation or lack thereof in the classroom. Through this journey, you will gain valuable insights and practical strategies to enhance motivation and foster a thriving learning atmosphere for your students.
Principle One
Motivational beliefs provide a beneficial backdrop for learning.
Motivational beliefs are students' opinions and values about the learning process and subject domains. As a teacher, you need to understand that motivational beliefs play a crucial role in the learning process. Students often encounter unfamiliar learning situations in the classroom, leading to ambiguity and challenges. To make sense of these situations, they refer to their beliefs about the subject matter and learning methods. These beliefs encompass their values, judgments, and opinions. Some beliefs are about the value they attach to a subject domain, while others are related to their confidence in their abilities (self-efficacy beliefs) and expectations of success or failure (outcome expectations). These beliefs are developed through various learning experiences, observations, verbal statements, and social comparisons.
Recognizing your students' motivational beliefs is essential, as these beliefs significantly impact their learning experiences. Beliefs can be either favourable or unfavourable, providing a positive or negative context for learning. Once formed, these beliefs are resistant to change. Therefore, it is important to be aware that your students might already hold certain beliefs about a topic before they enter the classroom. By gaining knowledge of their motivational beliefs, you can plan learning activities that capitalise on their favourable beliefs and challenge the unfavourable ones.
Students often conceal their thoughts and feelings, making it challenging for teachers to grasp their true values, self-efficacy beliefs, and outcome expectations. However, understanding these principles can serve as valuable guidelines for helping your students establish positive motivational beliefs and addressing any negative beliefs that might hinder their learning progress. Creating a supportive and encouraging learning environment based on motivational beliefs will ultimately lead to improved learning outcomes and students' overall success.
Principle Two
Unfavourable motivational beliefs can hinder learning.
As a teacher, you should be aware that unfavourable motivational beliefs can negatively impact your students' learning experiences. When students associate failure with low ability, they may become passive or avoidant in their approach to learning. These negative beliefs can be deeply ingrained and influence how students perceive and categorise different subject areas, leading them to view certain domains as "too difficult" or "threatening." As a result, doubt and anxiety can arise, hindering the learning process. Students may focus more on their perceived low ability rather than engaging fully with the learning activities. Moreover, these beliefs tend to be resistant to change, making it crucial for you to find effective strategies to help students overcome them.
To help students overcome unfavourable motivational beliefs, you can create learning situations that enable them to experience success. Merely providing correct solutions is not enough; students need to understand why their approach was effective and what actions they can take to further improve their skills. You can guide their attention explicitly towards the link between their actions and the outcomes by asking process-oriented questions. Encourage them to reflect on their performance through self-assessment. However, it's important to note that students who have established unfavourable beliefs may initially resist process-oriented feedback and only seek outcome-related feedback. In such cases, focus on highlighting their strengths and progress rather than dwelling on shortcomings. Gradually, help them build a positive identity as successful learners, reinforcing the belief that progress is possible.
Overcoming unfavourable motivational beliefs requires patience and persistence. As a teacher, you play a pivotal role in shaping your students' mindset and beliefs about their abilities. By creating a supportive learning environment and providing constructive feedback, you can help students develop a growth-oriented perspective, where they see effort and learning as valuable and attainable. By encouraging them to focus on the learning process and recognizing their progress, you can foster a positive sense of identity as capable learners. Remember that students' beliefs about their abilities are not fixed, and with the right guidance and support, they can transform their negative beliefs into ones that drive their motivation and enhance their learning journey.
Principle Three
Favourable motivational beliefs in students enhance learning.
As a teacher, you play a critical role in cultivating favourable motivational beliefs in your students to enhance their learning experience. Students who value the learning activity itself are intrinsically motivated and less reliant on external rewards. To encourage such motivation, make tasks and activities meaningful by relating them to students' interests and potential applications in real life and other subjects. Understanding your students' current interests and future career goals can help you tailor the curriculum to align with their preferences, making the learning content relevant and interesting for them.
To help your students develop favourable motivational beliefs, you can use various strategies in the classroom. Show them videos, news articles, or stories that highlight the importance and functional relevance of new content and skills. Engage motivated students to explain why they value these new skills, or have students interview their parents, teachers, or older students to learn how these skills are used in practical situations. Catching your students' attention and curiosity is half the battle won in motivating them. The other half lies in sustaining their interest by ensuring an optimal match between perceived demands and their current capacity. Allow students to adapt exercises according to their abilities, giving them a sense of autonomy and self-determination. When students find a task challenging, encourage them to modify it to reduce perceived threats and increase confidence.
Creating a positive classroom climate and fostering favourable motivational beliefs are essential for motivating all students, especially those who are less motivated to learn. Avoid relying solely on external rewards and incentives, as they may lead to extrinsic motivation, where students complete tasks merely to attain rewards or avoid penalties. Instead, focus on intrinsic motivation by making learning activities inherently gratifying and relevant. By adopting these approaches, you can empower your students to take charge of their learning, develop a sense of ownership, and cultivate positive motivational beliefs that will fuel their academic growth and success.
Principle Four
Mastery-oriented learning environment motivates students.
As a teacher, you must recognize that the way students approach learning tasks within a domain reflects their level of engagement and performance. Students who have a mastery orientation are motivated by the desire to master new skills and use more effective learning strategies. On the other hand, ego-oriented students engage in learning tasks either to demonstrate success or to avoid failure. Research suggests that by second grade, students already display a dominant goal orientation (ego or mastery), and ego-oriented goals tend to become more prevalent as they progress through primary school. By fostering a mastery-oriented learning environment, you can encourage students to focus on the learning process and value their attempts to come up with solution strategies.
Teachers play a significant role in shaping the learning environment and students' orientations towards learning. The classroom atmosphere can be dominantly competitive or cooperative, depending on the teaching approach. Competitive settings, where evaluation procedures, public feedback, and social comparisons are frequent, can elicit ego-oriented thoughts and feelings in students. To create a mastery-oriented learning setting, you should prioritise providing constructive feedback on solution plans, encouraging students to share information about their strategies, and allowing them to learn from their mistakes. This can be challenging, especially with ego-oriented students who may resist reflecting on their mistakes. However, by using supportive comments that highlight their effort, progress, and involvement, you can convince them of the value of learning from errors.
To cultivate mastery orientation in your students, focus on fostering an environment where trying and learning from mistakes are celebrated. Emphasise that you are more interested in the learning process and solution strategies than just correct outcomes. Encourage peer collaboration and learning from each other's approaches. When students take pride in finding parts of a solution and identifying errors, they begin to embrace a mastery orientation. Remember that your actions should align with your words; provide feedback that supports their learning efforts and progress. Valuing students' attempts and reflecting on problem-solving strategies will create a positive and motivating atmosphere, leading to improved engagement and performance in your classroom.
Principle Five
Students' beliefs about effort influence their learning intentions.
As a teacher, you play a crucial role in shaping your students' beliefs about effort and its impact on their learning. Young children often overestimate or underestimate their performance, believing that effort alone can lead to success and recognition. However, as they grow older, messages from parents and teachers shift the focus more towards ability as a major determinant of success. To help students develop realistic effort beliefs, you can provide assignments that require them to predict the effort needed for a task and then reflect on their actual investment of effort after completion. Research shows that teachers who coach effort and value it receive the reward of enhanced intrinsic motivation in their students.
Students' domain-specific self-efficacy beliefs are influenced by their effort beliefs, rather than the other way around. By the age of 9, many students start losing confidence in effort as the sole source of success, and they learn to consider their actual experiences, feedback from others, and social comparisons. To support students in developing accurate and realistic effort beliefs, you need to create assignments that build domain-specific effort beliefs and encourage them to update these beliefs as their skills develop. When you actively encourage and value their effort, students begin to take responsibility for their learning, leading to enhanced motivation and self-regulated learning.
Fostering a habit of reflecting on effort is essential for students' self-regulation in learning. By providing adequate feedback and opportunities for self-reflection, you empower students to self-regulate their learning process. Encourage them to set specific stop rules for determining whether they have invested sufficient effort to reach their learning goals. Through this approach, your students will gradually develop a more sophisticated understanding of effort and its role in their academic success. As you coach effort beliefs and promote self-regulated learning, your students will become more motivated and engaged in their learning journey.
Principle Six
Students need encouragement to develop motivational strategies.
As a teacher, you play a vital role in helping your students develop motivation strategies through effective goal-setting. Students who define teacher-set goals based on their reasons for learning are more committed to achieving desired end-states than those who merely comply with expectations. Recent findings show that jointly agreed learning goals between students and teachers are more likely to be accomplished, as both parties are invested in the process. Setting learning goals involves selecting motivation strategies that fit the learning situation, such as activating favourable beliefs and paying attention to relevant cues while ignoring distractions. By encouraging students to appraise learning situations in terms of their goals, they can discover desirable outcomes and develop self-motivation for their tasks.
In the classroom context, teachers often prioritise covering the syllabus, but little effort is devoted to obtaining students' opinions about the relevance and value of learning tasks. This leads to students being unable to motivate themselves effectively for schoolwork. However, goal-setting is a crucial foundation for learning and interest development. To encourage your students to develop motivation strategies, facilitate the goal-setting process by having them think about the importance, relevance, fun, challenges, and difficulties of each learning task. Encourage reflection after task completion to see if their initial appraisals have changed and why. By creating a favourable classroom climate for open discussions about motivation, students can learn from each other's experiences and gain insights into what makes motivation strategies work.
Showing genuine interest in your students' reasons for liking certain topics and finding others boring can provide valuable information about effective motivation strategies. By involving students in goal-setting and reflecting on their learning appraisals, you can foster a positive and motivated learning environment. Encourage your students to take ownership of their learning goals and guide them in developing strategies that align with their individual needs and aspirations. As students become more self-aware and engaged in the learning process, their motivation will flourish, leading to improved academic performance and a more fulfilling classroom experience.
Principle Seven
Students need encouragement to develop willpower.
As a teacher, you must understand that students need encouragement and feedback to develop willpower, which is crucial for accomplishing learning goals. Good intentions set during the goal-setting stage may not automatically lead to goal accomplishment; active striving and effort investment are often required. Effort refers to intentional acts that increase commitment to a task, such as increased attention, concentration, time spent on a task, or specific learning activities. However, effort may decline when tasks become complex, less interesting, or when distractions arise. Students need willpower to sustain attention and effort in such situations.
Effective decisions to persist in the goal-striving stage are based on students' understanding of the learning goal and their access to various strategies for generating a solution plan. Students who have a clear conception of the learning goal and a repertoire of strategies can use their effort constructively. They can judge which strategies are useful and monitor their effectiveness. If a chosen strategy proves ineffective, they can select a new one or disengage from the task if the effort is no longer fruitful. However, students who lack a proper understanding of the goal or adequate strategies may persist with undirected effort. As a teacher, you can support students' willpower development by helping them set sub-goals, create checklists to monitor and assess their engagement, and reflect on their effort management during the solution process.
To help your students develop willpower, it is essential to be mindful of their effort investment and understand the reasons behind their level of commitment. Coaching them through the goal-striving process involves encouraging them to set sub-goals and reflect on the resources needed to achieve them. Post-activity reflection about effort investment can make students aware of their attempts at effort management and the reasons behind their exercise or lack of willpower. By asking students to compare and contrast the amount and type of effort invested in different tasks, you can help them develop their theory of effort and gain insights into their willpower. Through these strategies, you can foster a sense of purpose and persistence, leading to more effective goal accomplishment and a motivated learning environment.
Principle Eight
Students are motivated when their personal goals align with the objectives.
As a teacher, you must recognize that students have various personal goals alongside academic ones, such as building friendships and exploring their interests. Recent evidence suggests that students are more motivated in their schoolwork when their personal goals are in harmony with the teacher's goals. Acknowledging and considering students' personal goals can lead to greater acceptance of the curriculum, while ignoring or thwarting these goals may result in rebellion and disengagement. Students bring their own goals into the classroom and may seek negotiation with you on how to achieve the learning goals, particularly when there are conflicts of interest. Understanding and accommodating these personal goals can positively impact the learning process and foster a more motivated classroom environment.
For decades, educational goals focused primarily on learning and achievement, often neglecting students' social goals. However, students have their own unique objectives and want to negotiate with you about how, when, and with whom they approach learning goals. As a teacher, you impose various goals on students, including social goals related to group work and interactions with peers. When students perceive a discord between their own goals and your curricular goals, they may attempt to align them to foster a positive learning experience. Acknowledging and accommodating students' individual aspirations can lead to positive cognitive and emotional experiences, thereby enhancing the learning process. On the other hand, denying these requests may create goal conflicts and result in students not taking responsibility for achieving the curricular goals.
In the classroom, misbehaviour can sometimes be a signal of goal conflict. When students engage in misbehaviour, it is essential to view it as an indication that their salient goals are being frustrated. By approaching misbehaviour with flexibility and understanding, you can identify the underlying conflicts and work towards aligning students' personal and academic goals. Fostering an environment where students feel heard and valued for their individual aspirations can lead to enhanced motivation and commitment to learning. As a teacher, recognizing the importance of personal goals and addressing goal conflicts will contribute to a more positive and productive learning atmosphere in your classroom.