The following information comes from professional development we received from Dave Stuart’s Student Motivation Course. Click here to check it out.
Student motivation is one of those mysterious realms that we try to increase as educators— and it’s hard! The essential question is: How do we convince students to care about their education enough that they want to work hard?
According to Stuart, there are five keys to student motivation, and these keys present specific, actionable steps we can take as teachers to increase student motivation and desire to succeed.
First Level = Credibility
Essential Question:
How do we build credibility?
We can build credibility with our students through:
Our own competence/ our expertise in our content areas.
Passion for the subject and content.
Caring about students.
When a teacher has credibility, students should respond with comments such as:
“My teacher is well-trained and qualified.”
“My teacher cares about me as a student.”
“My teacher likes his/her job.”
Two Key Strategies:
Track Moments of Genuine Reflection: Track when you make 30-90 seconds of genuine connection with each student. Teachers can keep track on a blank roster or grade grid. The goal is to make students feel valued, known, seen, and respected.
Find GOOD reasons for everything you ask students to do: Be mindful about listing good reasons for doing something. Students buy in to content and skills when teachers do. (even if the teacher doesn’t love the unit—find the GOOD)
Second Level = Belonging
Essential Question:
How can we make students feel like they belong?
For this key point, we need to think like students and see the classroom from their points of view. We can consider student experience questions such as:
Do people here like me?
Are these people that I can connect with?
Is this a place people like me can succeed?
Two Key Strategies:
Help students frame their experiences in your class: Point out the hard work to get there/ focus on what students do right over what they do wrong.
Create ways to promote the belief that your classroom is a place where students like them succeed: What hangs on the walls in your classroom? Do you have a class website? Do you have a class syllabus? Are these things about YOU or about the community you want to build? Make sure that your classroom feels like a place where students want to be.
Third Level = Value
Essential Question:
How can we get students to appreciate what we’re doing in class?
For this key component of student motivation, we need to consider students’ value beliefs about our class.
What is the value belief? Do students see the class as “boring,” “dumb,” “pointless,” “irrelevant,” “stupid”?
Two Strategies:
Talk about brain development: Some activities and lessons are designed to develop neural pathways and to further develop the brain. Developing HOW to think or HOW to solve problems is the objective, not the activity itself sometimes.
Connecting the learning to a broader purpose in life: Why does this matter to a student’s life and future? Why should they care? Be sure to create relevance for lessons so that students see how they apply to life.
“Sometimes the value is simply because it is beautiful.” Sometimes, a lesson is simply an experience of the human condition. Think about Mr. Keating from Dead Poets'Society. "We read literature because “we are food for worms. Carpe diem. “
Fourth Level = Effort
Essential Question:
How do we motivate students to complete work?
Items to consider about effort:
What is the effort belief?
Something may appear effortless to others as a result of that person’s prior small efforts—but we want students to know and believe that they can catch up through their own small efforts.
Two Strategies:
Be precise in what you say to students: Praise the process, not the person. Don’t praise ALL effort; praise strategic effort. Challenge the incorrect opinion that some people are just “good at it” or “born talented.”
Better to say “Good effort” vs. “You’re so smart.”
Always praise the effort.
Help students see the steps to accomplish the final goal:
Break the end goal into smaller steps. When you see students that are stuck—find the step they are on and where they are stuck—and work through that step instead of giving up or getting overwhelmed to the point of paralysis.
Fifth Level = Efficacy
Essential Question:
Do students believe they can succeed?
Here are key beliefs about student efficacy:
I believe I can succeed because I have succeeded before.
Prior success leads to efficacy.
People with efficacy approach difficult tasks as challenges while those who don’t have it perceive it as threats.
Two Strategies:
Help students track their own progress, efforts, and successes: Set Goals, Track Efforts, Teach Coping Skills
Believe in them, partner with them, and model efficacy: Talk allowed (let them hear your thoughts); meet with them; set goals with them; share struggles; show your own goals and effort and progress.
What other key ideas or principles do you think are important to increasing student motivation? Please share in the comments! We’d love to hear from you!
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About the Author
Meredith is the founder and creator of TeachWriting.org and Bespoke ELA. She has taught high school English for 10+ years in Dallas, Chicago, and New York City and holds a M.A. in Literature from Northwestern University. She has always had a connection to the written word-- through songwriting, screenplay writing, and essay writing-- and she enjoys the process of teaching students how to express their ideas. Meredith enjoys life with her sweet daughter, crazy Yorkie, and monkey cat.