Thanks for this question.
I have been a teacher for over 20 years, and this question goes to the heart of this profession. Authenticity is key here. I see so many teachers 'throwing away' praise. Kids are clever, and very quickly work out how 'meaningful' your encouragement is. If a kid is not doing so well, but you feel they need encouragement, do not fall into the trap of commending them for a mediocre performance. Equally, do not chastise them for this. Be accurate, and give them a measure of what they are doing, and how they can do it better.
Most important, and very simple: stress 'work', not 'intelligence'. Use the verb 'work' or synonyms to describe the path to achievement: "If you are able to work more on your reading, this will get better" or "You just didn't work hard enough on this project, that's why this project gets an F'.
Also, stress the objects the child produces, and not the child itself. You are not in the business of critiquing the child and their developing personality, but you are in the business of doing this to their work; the products they produce. Such an externalisation allows the child to develop as a conceptual thinker, without connecting issues of 'blame', and 'incompetence', or innate stupidity with their person - more with their work, and whether they put enough into it or not.
Sounds really simple, but difficult when you are in the thick of it in a classroom. IMHO, many people teach, few are teachers. It is an artform.
It naturally depends upon the age of the students. Different developmental phases may evince specific approaches to motivation.
Ultimately, you want to grow a child's self-confidence and self-efficacy. How capable they think they are and how well they will do. You can work between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, but really, the more you can motivate a child intrinsically, the better.
To be honest, there is a lot of work on motivation in the classroom. I suggest going off for a search of appropriate material, and a good read.
I hope this helps,
Best wishes,
Alex
Motivational messages on diligence,good time management, discipline and perseverance in academic context are suitable to help the students define and achieve success in their studies.
Thanks for this question.
I have been a teacher for over 20 years, and this question goes to the heart of this profession. Authenticity is key here. I see so many teachers 'throwing away' praise. Kids are clever, and very quickly work out how 'meaningful' your encouragement is. If a kid is not doing so well, but you feel they need encouragement, do not fall into the trap of commending them for a mediocre performance. Equally, do not chastise them for this. Be accurate, and give them a measure of what they are doing, and how they can do it better.
Most important, and very simple: stress 'work', not 'intelligence'. Use the verb 'work' or synonyms to describe the path to achievement: "If you are able to work more on your reading, this will get better" or "You just didn't work hard enough on this project, that's why this project gets an F'.
Also, stress the objects the child produces, and not the child itself. You are not in the business of critiquing the child and their developing personality, but you are in the business of doing this to their work; the products they produce. Such an externalisation allows the child to develop as a conceptual thinker, without connecting issues of 'blame', and 'incompetence', or innate stupidity with their person - more with their work, and whether they put enough into it or not.
Sounds really simple, but difficult when you are in the thick of it in a classroom. IMHO, many people teach, few are teachers. It is an artform.
It naturally depends upon the age of the students. Different developmental phases may evince specific approaches to motivation.
Ultimately, you want to grow a child's self-confidence and self-efficacy. How capable they think they are and how well they will do. You can work between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, but really, the more you can motivate a child intrinsically, the better.
To be honest, there is a lot of work on motivation in the classroom. I suggest going off for a search of appropriate material, and a good read.
I hope this helps,
Best wishes,
Alex
I am not sure if there are any messages we can give to students other than to act as a role model and look to encourage by example. True motivation for students comes when they realise something is interesting and something captures their interest so planning contextualised, interesting, thought provoking lessons is probably a better option than more extrinsic messages.
Our team uses 8 criteria:
1. Listen to them What interests them, their doubts, concerns, ... You will know how to use this knowledge to get involved in your learning process.
2. Explain the purpose of the work They need to find meaning to what they are learning; That it is they who really want to get involved and want to know more.
3. Implicate them in learning They must play an active role and, in conjunction with you, discover and learn, in accordance with the specific teaching-learning process.
4. Adopt a positive attitude Use positive expressions, smile You need to connect with your students.
5. Power the inclusion He works values of solidarity, diversity, respect ... in order to involve them because they want to participate and feel part of the group.
6. Use different methods All the methodological resources available must be considered: expositive, active, innovative methods, everything that is necessary and exciting.
7. Power autonomy One of the most motivating options is full involvement and development according to the personal process.
8. That the students explain It is a motivating option, which promotes one of the best ways to learn: inner thinking and ability to argue.
the individual level of knowledge and the readiness of learning or understanding is often very different with the students. So it it is necessary to know them in their situation. There is much said but und willingly accepted by teachers but at every time we have to restart anew the problem how to transfer best the content of a lecture or a textbook in the brains of the learners. So I have learned something from the answers of my forerunners.
We learn together. In this particular problem, perhaps your experience is more than mine. I am very interested to hear your ideas.
Creating interest in creation of what ever is created with their understanding. Understanding in what they understand and showing interest in what they r interested to learn and acquire that learning in their goal.
LLuis and Hein have said almost all of it. I can only add that creating motivation will depend on both the background of the students - such as age, culture, family conditions, at later stages also their job, and their individual preferences of learning, as a PhD consultant I usually know, what to include into motivational statements. I would choose the wording even based on the leading perception channel of the student and I would rather use verbs, not nouns and describe the necessary actions. And even on the level I work, as Olena has correctly stated, we learn together.
I would need to have more information about the specific context that you are intereted in. We all agree that in order to educate anyone, we need to bear in mind countless factors that have been discussed in the previous posts. In general, we need to prime any student with the elements that are the most relevant for them and then follow through.
I believe that it begins inside the teacher. Each of us should be teaching a core subject that we are passionate about. It may not be so much about providing motivation as it is about immersing students in the subject matter. They should see coming to our classroom as an adventure in learning. The walls and the essence of the room should BE the content. It's not that 'you will use mathematics in everything that you do in life and that's why it is so important' or 'learning to read is the key to a good job'. When the students come into the reading class they feel like they have stepped into Medieval Europe.. or they are out on the raft with Tom Sawyer.. in Math class they can EXPERIENCE the Pharaoh's Scribe tallying up the tribute from a far off land... The magnitude of the experience obviously can't be the same intensity every day, but the passion for the core content must be felt.. the experience must be so positive for the student that the intricacies of the learning seem secondary to being enveloped in the content. We must find our passion and let it ooze from us to become the motivation for a whole group of learners.
Whether teaching junior high, high school or graduate students, I have found that engaging students is vital to their learning process. Six Rules for Engaging Students that I have found successful are:
1, Opportunities for input
2. Responsibility for learning
3. Opportunity to become researchers
4. Opportunity for independent learning
5. Choices in how they show mastery, and
6. Opportunities for sharing their learning.
Yesterday I told my students that they must allways see the strong qualities in their colleagues, not the weaknesses. That is the secret of a productive teamwork.
I do these and find they contribute to raising learners' motivational level.
- Praising learners' responses and telling them when they have gone beyond my expectation. I do give bonus points for that.
- Giving them time to think and encouraging them to speak when they are ready.
- Accepting all responses and correcting mistakes indirectly.
- Stating the far fetched goal of the activity at hand. This way, students connect it to their lives.
- Letting them know that fun is part of the teaching/learning game. One way to do it is through group work and peer correction.
I ask my graduate students to write on paper the name of the best teacher they ever had. I don;t want to know the name of the teacher. By asking them to write the name helps them focus. I then ask my students to write the three or dour reasons they were your best teachers. I then ask them to share the qualities their best teacher exhibited. In almost every case, the qualities they named are affective factors; such as how they made each student feel; how they created a positive atmosphere in their classroom; how students looked forward to that teacher's class; and even more important, several stated they would have been embarrassed had they ever gone to that particular class unprepared.
Motivational messages in the form of encouraging words after they have answered a question, like:
well done
that is an excellent idea
you have a bright future
this is very creative
outstanding, keep it up etc.
Others could be in the form of sharing your real life experiences like how you were able to get this far can help motivate majority of them as they look forward to either be like you or know your subject area to pass their exams. They would love to know your secrets as to how you made it.
Many researchers said the correct answers. I would like to focus one of the them.
Motivation requieres implication. This is the key. You can promote implication with high active activities (using cooperative methods), with useful task related to real-life, with topics that are familiar and interesting for learener and so on
Yes, we can try and use a number of strategies to develop motivation in students but whether or not any of these methods really work depends on the willingness of the student. It was my pleasure to be invited to Harvard graduation in 2004 where the top student of my career received a Ph.D. in Pharmacology in the morning and we were transported to the medical school wher4e he received an MD degree in the afternoon. He was born in this country but his parents were from India. Of the more than 130 who received MD degrees more than half were Asian. A question closely related to motivation is why. Of course it goes back to family and early childhood nurturance. So what can teachers do to instill motivation? It is a complicated question and demands more than a short quick answer. At best, the teacher can show a love for the discipline they are teaching and make each student feel they are important in that class.
I will tell you an interesting story after the lesson. Or I will sing for you.
An inspirational message to give to students is a mixture of immediate,short- term,long-term growth goal feedback/goal setting. For example "To get the best out of today's lesson, taking notes on our class discussion will help you prepare for your essay that's due Friday". Short-term=" Rember the power of YET. Your complaints of I don't know this should be followed by the word yet. Keep trying to gain mastery in this topic. Be resourceful. Look over notes, collaborate with peers, use google, aske specific questions to your teacher when your initial attempts have failed ... Long term= "To be a productive citizen you must excell at your school performance and move on to be a respectable worker or prepared college student, let's start employing great learning habits now to be the best us in the future...
In responding to students' work I look for ways to be instructive and constructive. Instructive feedback lets them know that their work reflects productive effort. I let them know that their work was accurate, appropriate, or even creative. I say, for example, "You really did a good job of summarizing the reading...." Students need truthful feedback so that they know that their efforts lead to achievement of the lesson's goal. However, students also need feedback that guides or tells them how to do the learning tasks that we give them. This is constructive feedback. In this instance, I give constructive feedback by saying, "Think about how you feel about the reading. Do you agree with the writer? Why or why not? Use your experience and your reasoning to answer these questions." My experience has been that when I give credit (for academic effort) when credit is due and provide guidance when guidance is needed, students are motivated to put in the effort to learn.
People do things for two reasons; because they "can" and because they "want to." Your question, if I understand correctly, is about how to help students "want to" do their assignments. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
There are three levels at which you can motivate people:
1. Personally (think, will they like it?)
2. Socially (think, peer pressure, affirmation, support, etc.)
3. Structurally (think, incentives, rewards, punishments, etc.)
We typically make the mistake of starting at level 3 with structural incentives such as grades, awards, recognition, etc. but this is a fatal flaw as once the structural rewards are removed, the behavior you seek (doing well on an assignment, project, whatever) stops. Best to leave this area until last.
Begin with the first level. How can you help them "like" or "want" to do the assignment, project, task, research, etc.?
First and foremost, give them a personal experience that connects with their core values. An example is a field trip. If that is not possible, you can share stories that enable the student to connect the outcome with their own core values vicariously. If you connect the task to something with which they identify personally (who they believe they are or what they are about), you will gain the deepest traction.
On the second level, how can their peers encourage the effort? Are there others who have completed the task who can help newbies as they begin? One way I like to encourage social motivation is by grouping students into threes and fives so they have to work together. Of course, there needs to be a way to earn an individual grade as well as a group grade, but this can be easily accomplished and if you want more details about how, just ask me.
Finally, setup the structure to provide regular intervals of motivation such as a leaderboard showing how individuals and/or groups are doing as they complete steps toward the final goal of the assignment. I like to post this info every week so people don't fall behind.
I've used this with adult learners in two groups where we posted a roster of those who complete each phase of work and with the incompletes shown in red. It's amazing how they police themselves and make it a game despite there being no reward other than to say they were first to complete the tasks.
I hope this helps. A good read on this subject is "Influencer: the power to change anything". You can read a synopsis here: http://occr.ucdavis.edu/adman/mid-mgmt-conference/materials-2014/handout_influencer.pdf
I've used the tenets of this material in several countries around the globe and it works a bit different depending on whether you are facing a western or eastern culture. Again, happy to share if you need more details.
Cheers!
While it is not the professor's job to "motivate" students there are times they need reminding of their role in being motivated. Ask them why they are taking the class and connect it to the assignment. Remind them, if necessary, in a kind way the external consequences for not passing the assignment may be to fail the class. Fear of failure is often motivating. Or if you want to really motivate them offer them $5000 out of your pocket to everyone who gets and A on the assignment. This would be an example of personally owning the job of motivation of students by the teacher. :) or https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ864274.pdf
Follow steps in their way & correct wherever needed. Support the best as an encouragement
The number one issue on student's minds, with the occasional self motivated learner, is to graduate. Often these are referred to as "its the least I can do" or what is the least I can do. To motivate them be clear as to the measurable performance standards for a B and for an A. Then let them select the level of work they want to put in to perform at their selected level. That being said often students believe they are entitled to an A just for showing up or at least usually showing up. Make it clear how their performance is tied to their grade and to getting a degree.
I rarely give generalized praise to an entire class. I try to be very specific, sincere, and individualized. I assume that the student's meter for gaging insincerity is as strong as mine. Finding positivity shouldn't be a struggle. If it is, either you or the student might not be in the right place. Kindness can never be underrated, can it?
Try to connect your teaching with pupils' interests. Look for internal motivation in the students, which are their favourite topics, sports, experiences...
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