importance of motivation in education essay

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The Importance of Students’ Motivation for Their Academic Achievement – Replicating and Extending Previous Findings

Ricarda steinmayr.

1 Department of Psychology, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany

Anne F. Weidinger

Malte schwinger.

2 Department of Psychology, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany

Birgit Spinath

3 Department of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

Associated Data

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Achievement motivation is not a single construct but rather subsumes a variety of different constructs like ability self-concepts, task values, goals, and achievement motives. The few existing studies that investigated diverse motivational constructs as predictors of school students’ academic achievement above and beyond students’ cognitive abilities and prior achievement showed that most motivational constructs predicted academic achievement beyond intelligence and that students’ ability self-concepts and task values are more powerful in predicting their achievement than goals and achievement motives. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the reported previous findings can be replicated when ability self-concepts, task values, goals, and achievement motives are all assessed at the same level of specificity as the achievement criteria (e.g., hope for success in math and math grades). The sample comprised 345 11th and 12th grade students ( M = 17.48 years old, SD = 1.06) from the highest academic track (Gymnasium) in Germany. Students self-reported their ability self-concepts, task values, goal orientations, and achievement motives in math, German, and school in general. Additionally, we assessed their intelligence and their current and prior Grade point average and grades in math and German. Relative weight analyses revealed that domain-specific ability self-concept, motives, task values and learning goals but not performance goals explained a significant amount of variance in grades above all other predictors of which ability self-concept was the strongest predictor. Results are discussed with respect to their implications for investigating motivational constructs with different theoretical foundation.

Introduction

Achievement motivation energizes and directs behavior toward achievement and therefore is known to be an important determinant of academic success (e.g., Robbins et al., 2004 ; Hattie, 2009 ; Plante et al., 2013 ; Wigfield et al., 2016 ). Achievement motivation is not a single construct but rather subsumes a variety of different constructs like motivational beliefs, task values, goals, and achievement motives (see Murphy and Alexander, 2000 ; Wigfield and Cambria, 2010 ; Wigfield et al., 2016 ). Nevertheless, there is still a limited number of studies, that investigated (1) diverse motivational constructs in relation to students’ academic achievement in one sample and (2) additionally considered students’ cognitive abilities and their prior achievement ( Steinmayr and Spinath, 2009 ; Kriegbaum et al., 2015 ). Because students’ cognitive abilities and their prior achievement are among the best single predictors of academic success (e.g., Kuncel et al., 2004 ; Hailikari et al., 2007 ), it is necessary to include them in the analyses when evaluating the importance of motivational factors for students’ achievement. Steinmayr and Spinath (2009) did so and revealed that students’ domain-specific ability self-concepts followed by domain-specific task values were the best predictors of students’ math and German grades compared to students’ goals and achievement motives. However, a flaw of their study is that they did not assess all motivational constructs at the same level of specificity as the achievement criteria. For example, achievement motives were measured on a domain-general level (e.g., “Difficult problems appeal to me”), whereas students’ achievement as well as motivational beliefs and task values were assessed domain-specifically (e.g., math grades, math self-concept, math task values). The importance of students’ achievement motives for math and German grades might have been underestimated because the specificity levels of predictor and criterion variables did not match (e.g., Ajzen and Fishbein, 1977 ; Baranik et al., 2010 ). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the seminal findings by Steinmayr and Spinath (2009) will hold when motivational beliefs, task values, goals, and achievement motives are all assessed at the same level of specificity as the achievement criteria. This is an important question with respect to motivation theory and future research in this field. Moreover, based on the findings it might be possible to better judge which kind of motivation should especially be fostered in school to improve achievement. This is important information for interventions aiming at enhancing students’ motivation in school.

Theoretical Relations Between Achievement Motivation and Academic Achievement

We take a social-cognitive approach to motivation (see also Pintrich et al., 1993 ; Elliot and Church, 1997 ; Wigfield and Cambria, 2010 ). This approach emphasizes the important role of students’ beliefs and their interpretations of actual events, as well as the role of the achievement context for motivational dynamics (see Weiner, 1992 ; Pintrich et al., 1993 ; Wigfield and Cambria, 2010 ). Social cognitive models of achievement motivation (e.g., expectancy-value theory by Eccles and Wigfield, 2002 ; hierarchical model of achievement motivation by Elliot and Church, 1997 ) comprise a variety of motivation constructs that can be organized in two broad categories (see Pintrich et al., 1993 , p. 176): students’ “beliefs about their capability to perform a task,” also called expectancy components (e.g., ability self-concepts, self-efficacy), and their “motivational beliefs about their reasons for choosing to do a task,” also called value components (e.g., task values, goals). The literature on motivation constructs from these categories is extensive (see Wigfield and Cambria, 2010 ). In this article, we focus on selected constructs, namely students’ ability self-concepts (from the category “expectancy components of motivation”), and their task values and goal orientations (from the category “value components of motivation”).

According to the social cognitive perspective, students’ motivation is relatively situation or context specific (see Pintrich et al., 1993 ). To gain a comprehensive picture of the relation between students’ motivation and their academic achievement, we additionally take into account a traditional personality model of motivation, the theory of the achievement motive ( McClelland et al., 1953 ), according to which students’ motivation is conceptualized as a relatively stable trait. Thus, we consider the achievement motives hope for success and fear of failure besides students’ ability self-concepts, their task values, and goal orientations in this article. In the following, we describe the motivation constructs in more detail.

Students’ ability self-concepts are defined as cognitive representations of their ability level ( Marsh, 1990 ; Wigfield et al., 2016 ). Ability self-concepts have been shown to be domain-specific from the early school years on (e.g., Wigfield et al., 1997 ). Consequently, they are frequently assessed with regard to a certain domain (e.g., with regard to school in general vs. with regard to math).

In the present article, task values are defined in the sense of the expectancy-value model by Eccles et al. (1983) and Eccles and Wigfield (2002) . According to the expectancy-value model there are three task values that should be positively associated with achievement, namely intrinsic values, utility value, and personal importance ( Eccles and Wigfield, 1995 ). Because task values are domain-specific from the early school years on (e.g., Eccles et al., 1993 ; Eccles and Wigfield, 1995 ), they are also assessed with reference to specific subjects (e.g., “How much do you like math?”) or on a more general level with regard to school in general (e.g., “How much do you like going to school?”).

Students’ goal orientations are broader cognitive orientations that students have toward their learning and they reflect the reasons for doing a task (see Dweck and Leggett, 1988 ). Therefore, they fall in the broad category of “value components of motivation.” Initially, researchers distinguished between learning and performance goals when describing goal orientations ( Nicholls, 1984 ; Dweck and Leggett, 1988 ). Learning goals (“task involvement” or “mastery goals”) describe people’s willingness to improve their skills, learn new things, and develop their competence, whereas performance goals (“ego involvement”) focus on demonstrating one’s higher competence and hiding one’s incompetence relative to others (e.g., Elliot and McGregor, 2001 ). Performance goals were later further subdivided into performance-approach (striving to demonstrate competence) and performance-avoidance goals (striving to avoid looking incompetent, e.g., Elliot and Church, 1997 ; Middleton and Midgley, 1997 ). Some researchers have included work avoidance as another component of achievement goals (e.g., Nicholls, 1984 ; Harackiewicz et al., 1997 ). Work avoidance refers to the goal of investing as little effort as possible ( Kumar and Jagacinski, 2011 ). Goal orientations can be assessed in reference to specific subjects (e.g., math) or on a more general level (e.g., in reference to school in general).

McClelland et al. (1953) distinguish the achievement motives hope for success (i.e., positive emotions and the belief that one can succeed) and fear of failure (i.e., negative emotions and the fear that the achievement situation is out of one’s depth). According to McClelland’s definition, need for achievement is measured by describing affective experiences or associations such as fear or joy in achievement situations. Achievement motives are conceptualized as being relatively stable over time. Consequently, need for achievement is theorized to be domain-general and, thus, usually assessed without referring to a certain domain or situation (e.g., Steinmayr and Spinath, 2009 ). However, Sparfeldt and Rost (2011) demonstrated that operationalizing achievement motives subject-specifically is psychometrically useful and results in better criterion validities compared with a domain-general operationalization.

Empirical Evidence on the Relative Importance of Achievement Motivation Constructs for Academic Achievement

A myriad of single studies (e.g., Linnenbrink-Garcia et al., 2018 ; Muenks et al., 2018 ; Steinmayr et al., 2018 ) and several meta-analyses (e.g., Robbins et al., 2004 ; Möller et al., 2009 ; Hulleman et al., 2010 ; Huang, 2011 ) support the hypothesis of social cognitive motivation models that students’ motivational beliefs are significantly related to their academic achievement. However, to judge the relative importance of motivation constructs for academic achievement, studies need (1) to investigate diverse motivational constructs in one sample and (2) to consider students’ cognitive abilities and their prior achievement, too, because the latter are among the best single predictors of academic success (e.g., Kuncel et al., 2004 ; Hailikari et al., 2007 ). For effective educational policy and school reform, it is crucial to obtain robust empirical evidence for whether various motivational constructs can explain variance in school performance over and above intelligence and prior achievement. Without including the latter constructs, we might overestimate the importance of motivation for achievement. Providing evidence that students’ achievement motivation is incrementally valid in predicting their academic achievement beyond their intelligence or prior achievement would emphasize the necessity of designing appropriate interventions for improving students’ school-related motivation.

There are several studies that included expectancy and value components of motivation as predictors of students’ academic achievement (grades or test scores) and additionally considered students’ prior achievement ( Marsh et al., 2005 ; Steinmayr et al., 2018 , Study 1) or their intelligence ( Spinath et al., 2006 ; Lotz et al., 2018 ; Schneider et al., 2018 ; Steinmayr et al., 2018 , Study 2, Weber et al., 2013 ). However, only few studies considered intelligence and prior achievement together with more than two motivational constructs as predictors of school students’ achievement ( Steinmayr and Spinath, 2009 ; Kriegbaum et al., 2015 ). Kriegbaum et al. (2015) examined two expectancy components (i.e., ability self-concept and self-efficacy) and eight value components (i.e., interest, enjoyment, usefulness, learning goals, performance-approach, performance-avoidance goals, and work avoidance) in the domain of math. Steinmayr and Spinath (2009) investigated the role of an expectancy component (i.e., ability self-concept), five value components (i.e., task values, learning goals, performance-approach, performance-avoidance goals, and work avoidance), and students’ achievement motives (i.e., hope for success, fear of failure, and need for achievement) for students’ grades in math and German and their GPA. Both studies used relative weights analyses to compare the predictive power of all variables simultaneously while taking into account multicollinearity of the predictors ( Johnson and LeBreton, 2004 ; Tonidandel and LeBreton, 2011 ). Findings showed that – after controlling for differences in students‘ intelligence and their prior achievement – expectancy components (ability self-concept, self-efficacy) were the best motivational predictors of achievement followed by task values (i.e., intrinsic/enjoyment, attainment, and utility), need for achievement and learning goals ( Steinmayr and Spinath, 2009 ; Kriegbaum et al., 2015 ). However, Steinmayr and Spinath (2009) who investigated the relations in three different domains did not assess all motivational constructs on the same level of specificity as the achievement criteria. More precisely, students’ achievement as well as motivational beliefs and task values were assessed domain-specifically (e.g., math grades, math self-concept, math task values), whereas students’ goals were only measured for school in general (e.g., “In school it is important for me to learn as much as possible”) and students’ achievement motives were only measured on a domain-general level (e.g., “Difficult problems appeal to me”). Thus, the importance of goals and achievement motives for math and German grades might have been underestimated because the specificity levels of predictor and criterion variables did not match (e.g., Ajzen and Fishbein, 1977 ; Baranik et al., 2010 ). Assessing students’ goals and their achievement motives with reference to a specific subject might result in higher associations with domain-specific achievement criteria (see Sparfeldt and Rost, 2011 ).

Taken together, although previous work underlines the important roles of expectancy and value components of motivation for school students’ academic achievement, hitherto, we know little about the relative importance of expectancy components, task values, goals, and achievement motives in different domains when all of them are assessed at the same level of specificity as the achievement criteria (e.g., achievement motives in math → math grades; ability self-concept for school → GPA).

The Present Research

The goal of the present study was to examine the relative importance of several of the most important achievement motivation constructs in predicting school students’ achievement. We substantially extend previous work in this field by considering (1) diverse motivational constructs, (2) students’ intelligence and their prior achievement as achievement predictors in one sample, and (3) by assessing all predictors on the same level of specificity as the achievement criteria. Moreover, we investigated the relations in three different domains: school in general, math, and German. Because there is no study that assessed students’ goal orientations and achievement motives besides their ability self-concept and task values on the same level of specificity as the achievement criteria, we could not derive any specific hypotheses on the relative importance of these constructs, but instead investigated the following research question (RQ):

RQ. What is the relative importance of students’ domain-specific ability self-concepts, task values, goal orientations, and achievement motives for their grades in the respective domain when including all of them, students’ intelligence and prior achievement simultaneously in the analytic models?

Materials and Methods

Participants and procedure.

A sample of 345 students was recruited from two German schools attending the highest academic track (Gymnasium). Only 11th graders participated at one school, whereas 11th and 12th graders participated at the other. Students of the different grades and schools did not differ significantly on any of the assessed measures. Students represented the typical population of this type of school in Germany; that is, the majority was Caucasian and came from medium to high socioeconomic status homes. At the time of testing, students were on average 17.48 years old ( SD = 1.06). As is typical for this kind of school, the sample comprised more girls ( n = 200) than boys ( n = 145). We verify that the study is in accordance with established ethical guidelines. Approval by an ethics committee was not required as per the institution’s guidelines and applicable regulations in the federal state where the study was conducted. Participation was voluntarily and no deception took place. Before testing, we received written informed consent forms from the students and from the parents of the students who were under the age of 18 on the day of the testing. If students did not want to participate, they could spend the testing time in their teacher’s room with an extra assignment. All students agreed to participate. Testing took place during regular classes in schools in 2013. Tests were administered by trained research assistants and lasted about 2.5 h. Students filled in the achievement motivation questionnaires first, and the intelligence test was administered afterward. Before the intelligence test, there was a short break.

Ability Self-Concept

Students’ ability self-concepts were assessed with four items per domain ( Schöne et al., 2002 ). Students indicated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree) how good they thought they were at different activities in school in general, math, and German (“I am good at school in general/math/German,” “It is easy to for me to learn in school in general/math/German,” “In school in general/math/German, I know a lot,” and “Most assignments in school/math/German are easy for me”). Internal consistency (Cronbach’s α) of the ability self-concept scale was high in school in general, in math, and in German (0.82 ≤ α ≤ 0.95; see Table 1 ).

Means ( M ), Standard Deviations ( SD ), and Reliabilities (α) for all measures.

Task Values

Students’ task values were assessed with an established German scale (SESSW; Subjective scholastic value scale; Steinmayr and Spinath, 2010 ). The measure is an adaptation of items used by Eccles and Wigfield (1995) in different studies. It assesses intrinsic values, utility, and personal importance with three items each. Students indicated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree) how much they valued school in general, math, and German (Intrinsic values: “I like school/math/German,” “I enjoy doing things in school/math/German,” and “I find school in general/math/German interesting”; Utility: “How useful is what you learn in school/math/German in general?,” “School/math/German will be useful in my future,” “The things I learn in school/math/German will be of use in my future life”; Personal importance: “Being good at school/math/German is important to me,” “To be good at school/math/German means a lot to me,” “Attainment in school/math/German is important to me”). Internal consistency of the values scale was high in all domains (0.90 ≤ α ≤ 0.93; see Table 1 ).

Goal Orientations

Students’ goal orientations were assessed with an established German self-report measure (SELLMO; Scales for measuring learning and achievement motivation; Spinath et al., 2002 ). In accordance with Sparfeldt et al. (2007) , we assessed goal orientations with regard to different domains: school in general, math, and German. In each domain, we used the SELLMO to assess students’ learning goals, performance-avoidance goals, and work avoidance with eight items each and their performance-approach goals with seven items. Students’ answered the items on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree). All items except for the work avoidance items are printed in Spinath and Steinmayr (2012) , p. 1148). A sample item to assess work avoidance is: “In school/math/German, it is important to me to do as little work as possible.” Internal consistency of the learning goals scale was high in all domains (0.83 ≤ α ≤ 0.88). The same was true for performance-approach goals (0.85 ≤ α ≤ 0.88), performance-avoidance goals (α = 0.89), and work avoidance (0.91 ≤ α ≤ 0.92; see Table 1 ).

Achievement Motives

Achievement motives were assessed with the Achievement Motives Scale (AMS; Gjesme and Nygard, 1970 ; Göttert and Kuhl, 1980 ). In the present study, we used a short form measuring “hope for success” and “fear of failure” with the seven items per subscale that showed the highest factor loadings. Both subscales were assessed in three domains: school in general, math, and German. Students’ answered all items on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 (does not apply at all) to 4 (fully applies). An example hope for success item is “In school/math/German, difficult problems appeal to me,” and an example fear of failure item is “In school/math/German, matters that are slightly difficult disconcert me.” Internal consistencies of hope for success and fear of failure scales were high in all domains (hope for success: 0.88 ≤ α ≤ 0.92; fear of failure: 0.90 ≤ α ≤ 0.91; see Table 1 ).

Intelligence

Intelligence was measured with the basic module of the Intelligence Structure Test 2000 R, a well-established German multifactor intelligence measure (I-S-T 2000 R; Amthauer et al., 2001 ). The basic module of the test offers assessments of domain-specific intelligence for verbal, numeric, and figural abilities as well as an overall intelligence score (a composite of the three facets). The overall intelligence score is thought to measure reasoning as a higher order factor of intelligence and can be interpreted as a measure of general intelligence, g . Its construct validity has been demonstrated in several studies ( Amthauer et al., 2001 ; Steinmayr and Amelang, 2006 ). In the present study, we used the scores that were closest to the domains we investigated: overall intelligence, numerical intelligence, and verbal intelligence (see also Steinmayr and Spinath, 2009 ). Raw values could range from 0 to 60 for verbal and numerical intelligence, and from 0 to 180 for overall intelligence. Internal consistencies of all intelligence scales were high (0.71 ≤ α ≤ 0.90; see Table 1 ).

Academic Achievement

For all students, the school delivered the report cards that the students received 3 months before testing (t0) and 4 months after testing (t2), at the end of the term in which testing took place. We assessed students’ grades in German and math as well as their overall grade point average (GPA) as criteria for school performance. GPA was computed as the mean of all available grades, not including grades in the nonacademic domains Sports and Music/Art as they did not correlate with the other grades. Grades ranged from 1 to 6, and were recoded so that higher numbers represented better performance.

Statistical Analyses

We conducted relative weight analyses to predict students’ academic achievement separately in math, German, and school in general. The relative weight analysis is a statistical procedure that enables to determine the relative importance of each predictor in a multiple regression analysis (“relative weight”) and to take adequately into account the multicollinearity of the different motivational constructs (for details, see Johnson and LeBreton, 2004 ; Tonidandel and LeBreton, 2011 ). Basically, it uses a variable transformation approach to create a new set of predictors that are orthogonal to one another (i.e., uncorrelated). Then, the criterion is regressed on these new orthogonal predictors, and the resulting standardized regression coefficients can be used because they no longer suffer from the deleterious effects of multicollinearity. These standardized regression weights are then transformed back into the metric of the original predictors. The rescaled relative weight of a predictor can easily be transformed into the percentage of variance that is uniquely explained by this predictor when dividing the relative weight of the specific predictor by the total variance explained by all predictors in the regression model ( R 2 ). We performed the relative weight analyses in three steps. In Model 1, we included the different achievement motivation variables assessed in the respective domain in the analyses. In Model 2, we entered intelligence into the analyses in addition to the achievement motivation variables. In Model 3, we included prior school performance indicated by grades measured before testing in addition to all of the motivation variables and intelligence. For all three steps, we tested for whether all relative weight factors differed significantly from each other (see Johnson, 2004 ) to determine which motivational construct was most important in predicting academic achievement (RQ).

Descriptive Statistics and Intercorrelations

Table 1 shows means, standard deviations, and reliabilities. Tables 2 –4 show the correlations between all scales in school in general, in math, and in German. Of particular relevance here, are the correlations between the motivational constructs and students’ school grades. In all three domains (i.e., school in general/math/German), out of all motivational predictor variables, students’ ability self-concepts showed the strongest associations with subsequent grades ( r = 0.53/0.61/0.46; see Tables 2 –4 ). Except for students’ performance-avoidance goals (−0.04 ≤ r ≤ 0.07, p > 0.05), the other motivational constructs were also significantly related to school grades. Most of the respective correlations were evenly dispersed around a moderate effect size of | r | = 0.30.

Intercorrelations between all variables in school in general.

Intercorrelations between all variables in German.

Intercorrelations between all variables in math.

Relative Weight Analyses

Table 5 presents the results of the relative weight analyses. In Model 1 (only motivational variables) and Model 2 (motivation and intelligence), respectively, the overall explained variance was highest for math grades ( R 2 = 0.42 and R 2 = 0.42, respectively) followed by GPA ( R 2 = 0.30 and R 2 = 0.34, respectively) and grades in German ( R 2 = 0.26 and R 2 = 0.28, respectively). When prior school grades were additionally considered (Model 3) the largest amount of variance was explained in students’ GPA ( R 2 = 0.73), followed by grades in German ( R 2 = 0.59) and math ( R 2 = 0.57). In the following, we will describe the results of Model 3 for each domain in more detail.

Relative weights and percentages of explained criterion variance (%) for all motivational constructs (Model 1) plus intelligence (Model 2) plus prior school achievement (Model 3).

Beginning with the prediction of students’ GPA: In Model 3, students’ prior GPA explained more variance in subsequent GPA than all other predictor variables (68%). Students’ ability self-concept explained significantly less variance than prior GPA but still more than all other predictors that we considered (14%). The relative weights of students’ intelligence (5%), task values (2%), hope for success (4%), and fear of failure (3%) did not differ significantly from each other but were still significantly different from zero ( p < 0.05). The relative weights of students’ goal orientations were not significant in Model 3.

Turning to math grades: The findings of the relative weight analyses for the prediction of math grades differed slightly from the prediction of GPA. In Model 3, the relative weights of numerical intelligence (2%) and performance-approach goals (2%) in math were no longer different from zero ( p > 0.05); in Model 2 they were. Prior math grades explained the largest share of the unique variance in subsequent math grades (45%), followed by math self-concept (19%). The relative weights of students’ math task values (9%), learning goals (5%), work avoidance (7%), and hope for success (6%) did not differ significantly from each other. Students’ fear of failure in math explained the smallest amount of unique variance in their math grades (4%) but the relative weight of students’ fear of failure did not differ significantly from that of students’ hope for success, work avoidance, and learning goals. The relative weights of students’ performance-avoidance goals were not significant in Model 3.

Turning to German grades: In Model 3, students’ prior grade in German was the strongest predictor (64%), followed by German self-concept (10%). Students’ fear of failure in German (6%), their verbal intelligence (4%), task values (4%), learning goals (4%), and hope for success (4%) explained less variance in German grades and did not differ significantly from each other but were significantly different from zero ( p < 0.05). The relative weights of students’ performance goals and work avoidance were not significant in Model 3.

In the present studies, we aimed to investigate the relative importance of several achievement motivation constructs in predicting students’ academic achievement. We sought to overcome the limitations of previous research in this field by (1) considering several theoretically and empirically distinct motivational constructs, (2) students’ intelligence, and their prior achievement, and (3) by assessing all predictors at the same level of specificity as the achievement criteria. We applied sophisticated statistical procedures to investigate the relations in three different domains, namely school in general, math, and German.

Relative Importance of Achievement Motivation Constructs for Academic Achievement

Out of the motivational predictor variables, students’ ability self-concepts explained the largest amount of variance in their academic achievement across all sets of analyses and across all investigated domains. Even when intelligence and prior grades were controlled for, students’ ability self-concepts accounted for at least 10% of the variance in the criterion. The relative superiority of ability self-perceptions is in line with the available literature on this topic (e.g., Steinmayr and Spinath, 2009 ; Kriegbaum et al., 2015 ; Steinmayr et al., 2018 ) and with numerous studies that have investigated the relations between students’ self-concept and their achievement (e.g., Möller et al., 2009 ; Huang, 2011 ). Ability self-concepts showed even higher relative weights than the corresponding intelligence scores. Whereas some previous studies have suggested that self-concepts and intelligence are at least equally important when predicting students’ grades (e.g., Steinmayr and Spinath, 2009 ; Weber et al., 2013 ; Schneider et al., 2018 ), our findings indicate that it might be even more important to believe in own school-related abilities than to possess outstanding cognitive capacities to achieve good grades (see also Lotz et al., 2018 ). Such a conclusion was supported by the fact that we examined the relative importance of all predictor variables across three domains and at the same levels of specificity, thus maximizing criterion-related validity (see Baranik et al., 2010 ). This procedure represents a particular strength of our study and sets it apart from previous studies in the field (e.g., Steinmayr and Spinath, 2009 ). Alternatively, our findings could be attributed to the sample we investigated at least to some degree. The students examined in the present study were selected for the academic track in Germany, and this makes them rather homogeneous in their cognitive abilities. It is therefore plausible to assume that the restricted variance in intelligence scores decreased the respective criterion validities.

When all variables were assessed at the same level of specificity, the achievement motives hope for success and fear of failure were the second and third best motivational predictors of academic achievement and more important than in the study by Steinmayr and Spinath (2009) . This result underlines the original conceptualization of achievement motives as broad personal tendencies that energize approach or avoidance behavior across different contexts and situations ( Elliot, 2006 ). However, the explanatory power of achievement motives was higher in the more specific domains of math and German, thereby also supporting the suggestion made by Sparfeldt and Rost (2011) to conceptualize achievement motives more domain-specifically. Conceptually, achievement motives and ability self-concepts are closely related. Individuals who believe in their ability to succeed often show greater hope for success than fear of failure and vice versa ( Brunstein and Heckhausen, 2008 ). It is thus not surprising that the two constructs showed similar stability in their relative effects on academic achievement across the three investigated domains. Concerning the specific mechanisms through which students’ achievement motives and ability self-concepts affect their achievement, it seems that they elicit positive or negative valences in students, and these valences in turn serve as simple but meaningful triggers of (un)successful school-related behavior. The large and consistent effects for students’ ability self-concept and their hope for success in our study support recommendations from positive psychology that individuals think positively about the future and regularly provide affirmation to themselves by reminding themselves of their positive attributes ( Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000 ). Future studies could investigate mediation processes. Theoretically, it would make sense that achievement motives defined as broad personal tendencies affect academic achievement via expectancy beliefs like ability self-concepts (e.g., expectancy-value theory by Eccles and Wigfield, 2002 ; see also, Atkinson, 1957 ).

Although task values and learning goals did not contribute much toward explaining the variance in GPA, these two constructs became even more important for explaining variance in math and German grades. As Elliot (2006) pointed out in his hierarchical model of approach-avoidance motivation, achievement motives serve as basic motivational principles that energize behavior. However, they do not guide the precise direction of the energized behavior. Instead, goals and task values are commonly recruited to strategically guide this basic motivation toward concrete aims that address the underlying desire or concern. Our results are consistent with Elliot’s (2006) suggestions. Whereas basic achievement motives are equally important at abstract and specific achievement levels, task values and learning goals release their full explanatory power with increasing context-specificity as they affect students’ concrete actions in a given school subject. At this level of abstraction, task values and learning goals compete with more extrinsic forms of motivation, such as performance goals. Contrary to several studies in achievement-goal research, we did not demonstrate the importance of either performance-approach or performance-avoidance goals for academic achievement.

Whereas students’ ability self-concept showed a high relative importance above and beyond intelligence, with few exceptions, each of the remaining motivation constructs explained less than 5% of the variance in students’ academic achievement in the full model including intelligence measures. One might argue that the high relative importance of students’ ability self-concept is not surprising because students’ ability self-concepts more strongly depend on prior grades than the other motivation constructs. Prior grades represent performance feedback and enable achievement comparisons that are seen as the main determinants of students’ ability self-concepts (see Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2002 ). However, we included students’ prior grades in the analyses and students’ ability self-concepts still were the most powerful predictors of academic achievement out of the achievement motivation constructs that were considered. It is thus reasonable to conclude that the high relative importance of students’ subjective beliefs about their abilities is not only due to the overlap of this believes with prior achievement.

Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research

Our study confirms and extends the extant work on the power of students’ ability self-concept net of other important motivation variables even when important methodological aspects are considered. Strength of the study is the simultaneous investigation of different achievement motivation constructs in different academic domains. Nevertheless, we restricted the range of motivation constructs to ability self-concepts, task values, goal orientations, and achievement motives. It might be interesting to replicate the findings with other motivation constructs such as academic self-efficacy ( Pajares, 2003 ), individual interest ( Renninger and Hidi, 2011 ), or autonomous versus controlled forms of motivation ( Ryan and Deci, 2000 ). However, these constructs are conceptually and/or empirically very closely related to the motivation constructs we considered (e.g., Eccles and Wigfield, 1995 ; Marsh et al., 2018 ). Thus, it might well be the case that we would find very similar results for self-efficacy instead of ability self-concept as one example.

A second limitation is that we only focused on linear relations between motivation and achievement using a variable-centered approach. Studies that considered different motivation constructs and used person-centered approaches revealed that motivation factors interact with each other and that there are different profiles of motivation that are differently related to students’ achievement (e.g., Conley, 2012 ; Schwinger et al., 2016 ). An important avenue for future studies on students’ motivation is to further investigate these interactions in different academic domains.

Another limitation that might suggest a potential avenue for future research is the fact that we used only grades as an indicator of academic achievement. Although, grades are of high practical relevance for the students, they do not necessarily indicate how much students have learned, how much they know and how creative they are in the respective domain (e.g., Walton and Spencer, 2009 ). Moreover, there is empirical evidence that the prediction of academic achievement differs according to the particular criterion that is chosen (e.g., Lotz et al., 2018 ). Using standardized test performance instead of grades might lead to different results.

Our study is also limited to 11th and 12th graders attending the highest academic track in Germany. More balanced samples are needed to generalize the findings. A recent study ( Ben-Eliyahu, 2019 ) that investigated the relations between different motivational constructs (i.e., goal orientations, expectancies, and task values) and self-regulated learning in university students revealed higher relations for gifted students than for typical students. This finding indicates that relations between different aspects of motivation might differ between academically selected samples and unselected samples.

Finally, despite the advantages of relative weight analyses, this procedure also has some shortcomings. Most important, it is based on manifest variables. Thus, differences in criterion validity might be due in part to differences in measurement error. However, we are not aware of a latent procedure that is comparable to relative weight analyses. It might be one goal for methodological research to overcome this shortcoming.

We conducted the present research to identify how different aspects of students’ motivation uniquely contribute to differences in students’ achievement. Our study demonstrated the relative importance of students’ ability self-concepts, their task values, learning goals, and achievement motives for students’ grades in different academic subjects above and beyond intelligence and prior achievement. Findings thus broaden our knowledge on the role of students’ motivation for academic achievement. Students’ ability self-concept turned out to be the most important motivational predictor of students’ grades above and beyond differences in their intelligence and prior grades, even when all predictors were assessed domain-specifically. Out of two students with similar intelligence scores, same prior achievement, and similar task values, goals and achievement motives in a domain, the student with a higher domain-specific ability self-concept will receive better school grades in the respective domain. Therefore, there is strong evidence that believing in own competencies is advantageous with respect to academic achievement. This finding shows once again that it is a promising approach to implement validated interventions aiming at enhancing students’ domain-specific ability-beliefs in school (see also Muenks et al., 2017 ; Steinmayr et al., 2018 ).

Data Availability

Ethics statement.

In Germany, institutional approval was not required by default at the time the study was conducted. That is, why we cannot provide a formal approval by the institutional ethics committee. We verify that the study is in accordance with established ethical guidelines. Participation was voluntarily and no deception took place. Before testing, we received informed consent forms from the parents of the students who were under the age of 18 on the day of the testing. If students did not want to participate, they could spend the testing time in their teacher’s room with an extra assignment. All students agreed to participate. We included this information also in the manuscript.

Author Contributions

RS conceived and supervised the study, curated the data, performed the formal analysis, investigated the results, developed the methodology, administered the project, and wrote, reviewed, and edited the manuscript. AW wrote, reviewed, and edited the manuscript. MS performed the formal analysis, and wrote, reviewed, and edited the manuscript. BS conceived the study, and wrote, reviewed, and edited the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. We acknowledge financial support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Technische Universität Dortmund/TU Dortmund University within the funding programme Open Access Publishing.

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24 Motivation in Education

University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

• Published: 12 August 2019
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This chapter begins with a discussion of the nature of children’s achievement motivation and how it develops over the school years, with a focus on the competence-related belief, value, goal, interest, and intrinsic motivation aspects of motivation that have been emphasized in much recent research on motivation. Following is a discussion of how different aspects of classroom and school practices influence motivation and how teacher–student relationships and peer relationships impact students’ motivation. Next is a consideration of how school transitions influence students’ motivation, describing important differences in the structure and organization of schools at different levels of schooling. The chapter describes some recent intervention work to boost children’s motivation in different ways. The final section concerns how recommendations from motivation researchers align with, or in some cases do not align with, state and national policies for improving student achievement. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research, such as the need for more research on motivation in diverse groups of children and the next steps in motivation intervention research, and provides further thoughts on motivation research–educational policy links.

Motivation theorists are interested in the whys of human behavior: what moves people to act (Weiner, 1992 ). In terms of motivation and education, researchers studying school motivation look at things such as the engagement and interest students have in different academic activities, the choices students make about which academic activities to do, their persistence at continuing the activities, and the degree of effort they expend. But what determines individuals’ choices, effort, and persistence for different academic activities? Many motivation researchers have focused on students’ self-beliefs, values, and goals and how they relate to their achievement behaviors, such as choice, persistence, and performance (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002 ; Ryan & Deci, 2016 ; Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2016 ; Senko, 2016 ; Wigfield, Tonks, & Klauda, 2016 ). Because of this emphasis on self variables, much research on motivation has focused on motivation as a characteristic of the individual.

Motivation researchers also recognize the importance of social influences on learning and motivation (Ladd, Herald-Brown, & Kochel, 2009 ; Wentzel, 2016 ). Indeed, many researchers and theorists now posit that learning is an inherently social activity (Hickey & Granade, 2004 ; Vygotsky, 1978 ). Learning in classrooms is not done in isolation, but instead occurs in the context of relationships with teachers and peers (Juvonen & Knifsend, 2016 ; O’Donnell, 2006 ; Webb & Palincsar, 1996 ; Wentzel, 2016 ). These relationships, and the different roles that emerge for students and teachers in various classrooms, strongly influence how students learn. Further, opportunities for social interactions around learning have been shown to improve children’s achievement in reading and other areas (e.g., Guthrie, McRae, & Klauda, 2007 ; Johnson & Johnson, 2009 ). Along with social relationships, it is increasingly clear that the social contexts and organization of classrooms and schools also have major influences on students’ motivation and achievement (Nolen & Ward, 2008 ; Perry, Turner, & Meyer, 2006 ; Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998 ).

In this chapter, we discuss children’s motivation in school. We begin with a brief discussion of the belief, value, and goal constructs prevalent in current motivation research and how they develop. We then discuss the influence of different aspects of classrooms and schools on the development of students’ motivation: tasks provided and classroom teaching practices, teacher–student relationships, peers and learning in groups, and school transitions. Next, we provide a discussion of some intervention work based in the motivation theories and constructs reviewed in the first section and how these interventions impact children’s motivation. The final section of the chapter focuses on whether current national educational policies are in line with recommendations from motivation theorists regarding educational practices that facilitate students’ motivation. We close with some suggestions for future research.

The Nature of Student Motivation

Researchers have assessed many different constructs they posit to be crucial for students’ academic motivation. To organize our discussion of these constructs, we separate them into two broad groups. One group includes individuals’ sense of their competence and agency to achieve different outcomes. Another group concerns intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, interest, values, and goals. Many of these constructs are discussed in greater detail in other chapters in this handbook.

Individuals’ Sense of Competence and Control

Many researchers interested in motivation focus on students’ beliefs about their ability and efficacy to perform achievement tasks as crucial motivational mediators of achievement behavior (e.g., Bandura, 1997 ; Eccles et al., 1983 ; Wigfield et al., 2016 ). Ability beliefs are children’s evaluations of their competence in different areas. Researchers have documented that children’s and adolescents’ ability beliefs relate to and predict their achievement performance in different achievement domains like math and reading, even when previous performance is controlled (see Wigfield et al., 2016 , for review).

Bandura’s ( 1997 ) construct of self-efficacy also deals with individuals’ sense of competence; however, Bandura defined self-efficacy as a generative capacity where different subskills are organized into courses of action. Bandura ( 1997 ) reviewed research showing that individuals’ efficacy for different achievement tasks are a major determinant of activity choice, willingness to expend effort, and persistence in and out of school (see also Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2016 ).

Dweck and her colleagues (see Dweck, 2017 ; Dweck & Master, 2009 , for reviews) discussed a construct related to competence beliefs, referred to as individuals’ beliefs about intelligence, or mindsets . They proposed that individuals hold one of two mindsets: an entity or “fixed” mindset in which individuals believe that their abilities are fixed at a given level or an incremental or “growth” mindset in which individuals believe that their abilities can increase through effort. These beliefs have important implications for motivation, particularly when academic activities or tasks become increasingly difficult. When individuals hold growth mindsets they continue to strive for success even when they are struggling to master complex tasks. By contrast, individuals holding fixed mindsets are more likely to give up quickly when challenged and believe that showing effort indicates to others that one lacks ability.

Researchers interested in individuals’ control beliefs initially made a major distinction between internal and external locus of control (e.g., Crandall, Katkovsky, & Crandall, 1965 ; Rotter, 1966 . Internal control means the individual believes that he or she controls an outcome; external control means the outcome is determined by other things. Researchers have confirmed the positive association between internal locus of control and academic achievement (see Findley & Cooper, 1983 ). Connell and Wellborn ( 1991 ) integrated control beliefs into a broader theoretical framework based on the psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness derived from self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2016 ). They linked control beliefs to competence needs: Children who believe they control their achievement outcomes should feel more competent. When the family, peer, and school contexts support children’s autonomy, develop their competence, and provide positive relations with others, then children’s motivation (which Connell and Wellborn, 1991 , conceptualized as engagement ) will be positive, and they will become fully engaged in different activities, such as their schoolwork. When one or more of the needs is not fulfilled, children will become disaffected (see Connell, Spencer, & Aber, 1994 ; Skinner, 2016 ).

Individuals’ Intrinsic Motivation, Interests, Values, and Goals

Although theories dealing with competence, expectancy, and control beliefs provide powerful explanations of individuals’ performance on different kinds of achievement activities, these theories do not systematically address another important motivational question: Does the individual want to do the task? Even if people are certain they can do a task and think they can control the outcome, they may not want to engage in it. Once the decision is made to engage in a task or activity, there are different reasons for doing so. The constructs discussed next focus on these aspects of motivation.

A basic distinction in the motivation literature is between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985 ). When individuals are intrinsically motivated, they do activities for their own sake and out of interest in the activity. Deci, Ryan, and their colleagues (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 1985 ; Ryan & Deci, 2016 ) went beyond the extrinsic–intrinsic motivation dichotomy in their discussion of internalization , conceptualized as the process of transferring the regulation of behavior from outside to inside the individual. They defined several levels in the process that range from purely external to more internalized regulation: external regulation coming from outside the individual; introjected regulation based on the individual’s beliefs that he or she should or must do the behavior; identified regulation of behavior that is based on the utility of that behavior (e.g., studying hard to get grades to get into college); and finally, integrated regulation based on what the individual thinks is valuable and important to the self. Even though the integrated level is self-determined, it still does not reflect intrinsically motivated behavior. Intrinsic motivation only occurs when the individual autonomously controls the behavior, which may not be the case even at the integrated level of regulation.

A construct closely related to intrinsic motivation is interest (Hidi & Renninger, 2006 ; Schiefele, 2009 ) and researchers studying interest distinguish between individual and situational interest. As the name implies, individual or personal interest is a characteristic of the individual and is conceptualized either as a relatively stable disposition or as an active state. Hidi and Renninger ( 2006 ) suggested that individual interest includes both knowledge and value about a topic or object and represents an enduring involvement with an activity. By contrast, situational interest stems from conditions in the environment. Hidi and Renninger ( 2006 ) described how situational interest generates curiosity, which can lead individuals to explore an activity further and develop individual interest in it. This point is a crucial one for this chapter, highlighting that features of activities that individuals do in school can increase their personal interest in the activities. Further, there are significant but moderate relations between interest and learning of different kinds (Schiefele, 1996 , 2009 ).

Eccles and her colleagues have defined different ways in which individuals can value activities such as schoolwork (see Eccles (Parsons) et al., 1983 ; Wigfield, Rosenzweig, & Eccles, 2017 ). Eccles (Parsons) et al. ( 1983 ) defined three “positive” motivational components of task value: attainment value, intrinsic value, and utility value. Attainment value refers to the importance of the activity to the individual. Intrinsic value is the enjoyment the individual gets from performing the activity and so is conceptually linked to intrinsic motivation and interest (Wigfield & Cambria, 2010 ). Utility value is determined by how well a task relates to current and future goals, such as career goals. A task can have positive value to a person because it facilitates important future goals, even if he or she is not interested in the task for its own sake. For instance, students often take classes that they do not particularly enjoy but that they need to take to pursue other interests, to please their parents, or to be with their friends. In one sense, then, this component captures the more extrinsic reasons for engaging in a task, but it also relates directly to individuals’ internalized short- and long-term goals. Finally, Eccles and her colleagues (Eccles (Parsons) et al., 1983 ) defined cost as what one must give up to do something else; for example, spending time on homework means less time for socializing with friends. When individuals see the cost of engaging in a task as too high, then they will value it less and so will be less likely to engage in the task.

Eccles and her colleagues have found that individuals’ task values predict course plans and enrollment decisions in mathematics, physics, and English and involvement in sport activities even after controlling for prior performance levels (Durik, Vida, & Eccles, 2006 ; Eccles (Parsons) et al., 1983 ; Meece, Wigfield, & Eccles, 1990 ). They have also shown that both competence beliefs and values predict career choices (see Eccles, 1984 ).

The construct perhaps most directly related to the purposes for doing an activity is achievement goals. Researchers (e.g., Ames, 1992 ; Dweck & Leggett, 1988 ; Nicholls, 1984 ) initially distinguished three broad goal orientations that students can have toward their learning (see Elliot, 2005 ; Senko, 2016 , for reviews). One orientation, called learning, task-involved, or mastery goal orientation, signifies the child focusing on improving his or her skills, mastering material, and learning new things. The second goal orientation, called performance or ego orientation, signifies the child focusing on maximizing favorable evaluations of his or her competence and minimizing negative evaluations of competence. The different terms used to label the first two goal orientations occurred because different researchers were working on them simultaneously, with each having a somewhat distinctive view of each orientation (see Pintrich, 2000 ; Thorkildsen & Nicholls, 1998 ). Nicholls and his colleagues (e.g., Nicholls, Cobb, Wood, Yackel, & Wheatley, 1990 ) and Meece ( 1991 , 1994 ) also described a work-avoidant goal orientation, which signifies that the child does not wish to engage in academic activities. This orientation has received less research attention in comparison to the others.

In the 1990s, researchers differentiated performance and mastery goal orientations into approach and avoidance components. Elliot and Harackiewicz ( 1996 ) and Skaalvik ( 1997 ), among others, defined performance-approach goals as students’ desire to demonstrate competence and outperform others. Performance-avoidance goals involve the desire to avoid looking incompetent. Elliot ( 1999 ; Elliot & McGregor, 2001 ) and Pintrich ( 2000 ) proposed that the mastery goal orientation also may be divided into approach and avoid components, rather than being solely conceived as reflecting an approach tendency.

One issue with the approach–avoidance distinction that continues among goal orientation theorists is debate about their relative merits of the different kinds of goal orientation. Most goal orientation theorists believe in the benefits of mastery goals for both students and teachers (because they focus students on meaningful learning and improvement) and many of these theorists state that such goal orientations should be focused on more strongly in school. Theorists also agree that performance-avoidance goals are debilitating. There is a debate, however, about the relative merits of performance-approach goals. Because these goals relate positively to some important achievement outcomes such as grades, some theorists believe that performance-approach goals can be beneficial to students; other theorists continue to think that mastery goals are the most favorable goals students can have. A complete discussion of this debate is beyond the scope of this chapter; interested readers should see Linnenbrink ( 2005 ), Maehr and Zusho ( 2009 ), Senko ( 2016 ), and Murayama and Elliot (this volume).

To conclude this section, researchers have identified a number of important belief, value, and goal constructs that impact students’ motivation. These variables relate to achievement and choice in many different academic areas. We discussed these constructs individually and many researchers indeed have studied each one separately. There is increasing interest currently in how they interrelate and relate to various achievement outcomes (e.g., Conley, 2012 ; Wigfield & Cambria, 2010 ). For instance, having positive competence beliefs, intrinsic motivation, and mastery goals for activities may be the most adaptive pattern for positive motivation in different school subject areas.

Researchers also have studied how students’ beliefs, values, and goals change across the school years; such changes are the topic of the next section.

Development of Children’s Motivation

A substantial body of research shows that children’s academic motivation declines across the elementary and secondary school years (see Wigfield et al., 2015 , for review). Many young children are optimistic about their competencies in different areas, and this optimism changes to greater realism and (sometimes) pessimism for many children as they go through school (Fredricks & Eccles, 2002 ; Jacobs, Osgood, Eccles, & Wigfield, 2002 ; Watt, 2004 ). Children’s intrinsic motivation for different academic subjects also declines (Gottfried, Fleming, & Gottfried, 2001 ), as does their valuing of achievement (Jacobs et al., 2002 ). Children also appear to focus more on performance goals as they get older (Maehr & Zusho, 2009 ). Although the pattern of these findings is clear, most of the research just mentioned is normative, describing mean-level change across all children. Researchers have shown that there are different trajectories of change (Archambault, Eccles, & Vida, 2010 ; Musu-Gillette, Wigfield, Harring, & Eccles, 2015 ), but the overall pattern remains one of decline.

These changes have been explained with respect to children’s understanding of their performance and changes in the school environments children experience. First, children both receive more information about their performance and learn to interpret it more clearly. Because they are with same-aged peers in school, they also learn to compare themselves more systematically with others, which can lead to decreases in motivation for some children (see Wigfield et al., 2016 ). Second, schools focus more on evaluation and performance outcomes as children progress through school, which can negatively impact some children’s motivation. We turn next to a more detailed consideration of schooling’s influences on students’ motivation.

School’s Influences on Students’ Motivation

How do different kinds of tasks, activities, and structures in school impact children’s motivation? How do the relationships children have with their teachers and peers influence their motivation? We focus on these issues in this section.

Tasks and Classroom Practices and Student Motivation

In the chapter for the first edition of this handbook we focused on Stipek’s ( 1996 ) discussion of how different kinds of classroom practices and achievement tasks can enhance students’ competence beliefs, intrinsic motivation, and mastery goals. These practices include teachers providing tasks with appropriate levels of challenge; focusing on improvement as the main criteria for success, evaluation, and the basis for distributing rewards; and treating mistakes as an important part of the learning process. We also discussed Ames’s ( 1992 ) tasks, authority, rewards, grouping, evaluation, and time allowed for learning approach (TARGET) to increasing motivation. In her model, Ames described several additional methods by which teachers can foster students’ intrinsic motivation and mastery goal orientation in the classroom, including making tasks meaningful, distributing authority between teachers and students, rewarding and evaluating students’ growth and improvement rather than basing them in normative comparisons, grouping students to foster collaboration, and allotting enough time for meaningful learning.

Building on this work, Urdan and Turner ( 2005 ) noted the following practices as shown to foster students’ competence beliefs, intrinsic motivation, and mastery goals: providing academic tasks or activities that are meaningful and moderately challenging, providing many opportunities for student choice of learning activities and control over them, focusing on mastery and improvement rather than test scores, helping students set challenging but achievable goals, changing the routine so that classroom learning stays novel and fresh, and providing accurate feedback that provides students with clear information about how they are doing.

Although there is research support for how these practices can enhance students’ motivation, researchers taking a sociocultural approach to motivation (e.g., Kaplan, Katz, & Flum, 2012 ; Perry et al., 2006 ) note that the dynamic and complex nature of classrooms means that these practices may have different meanings in different classrooms and operate differently for different students. Other researchers have made similar points about the dynamic, situation-based nature of motivation itself (Hickey, 1997 , 2008 ; Hickey & Granade, 2004 ; Nolen, 2007 ; Nolen & Ward, 2008 ; Urdan, 1999 ). They argue that motivation is not a stable individual characteristic that operates uniformly across settings. Classrooms themselves are very fluid settings that change depending on who is in them and the interacting influences of teachers, students, and classroom activities. Thus, these motivation theorists challenge some of the premises of the social cognitive models of motivation that focus on the individual as the main source of motivation. An important research implication of these points is that we must look carefully at how practices shown to facilitate motivation operate in different classroom settings to understand the breadth of their impact as well as its limits. We return to this point in the future directions section.

Teacher–Student Relationships and Student Motivation

A variety of researchers have studied how the affective relationships teachers have with students impact students’ motivation and achievement in school (see Juvonen & Knifsend, 2016 ; Wentzel, 2016 , for reviews). When teachers support students emotionally, they have higher school-related perceptions of competence, clearer positive social and academic goals, and willingness to engage in school activities. These relations emerge even when children’s relations with peers and parents are taken into account; research measuring support from all three kinds of socialization agents shows that teacher support is particularly important for academic motivation and adjustment.

Teachers’ relations with students are crucial to students’ early adjustment in school (Birch & Ladd, 1996 ), and the emotional quality of student–teacher relations during the early school years predicts growth in their reading and mathematics achievement (Pianta, Belsky, Vandegrift, Houts, & Morrison, 2008 ). The importance of such relations continues into middle school and beyond. Goodenow ( 1993 ) found that students’ perceptions of support from teachers and their sense of belongingness in their classrooms related strongly to their perceived valuing of the schoolwork they were doing. Similarly, Wentzel ( 2002 ) found that students’ academic goals and performance were strongly related to their sense that their middle school teachers were “caring.” Although extant research has provided much important information about teacher–student relationships, Wentzel ( 2009 ) noted that much of the work showing how teacher–student relations impact student achievement is correlational and she discussed a variety of design and measurement issues that must be considered in the next generation of this research. She further posited that we need work investigating the mechanisms underlying the observed relations of teacher emotional support and student motivation and achievement.

Peers and Motivation

Peers are another important social influence on motivation. When children are socially supported and accepted by their peers, they have stronger motivation, have better achievement outcomes, and are more engaged in school (see Juvonen & Knifsend, 2016 ; Ladd et al., 2009 , for reviews). Further, social competence and social support can help ease school transitions, including the transition from home to school (Ladd, 1990 ). By contrast, socially rejected and highly aggressive children, and also those who are victimized by others, are at risk for poorer achievement and motivation (Birch & Ladd, 1996 ; Ladd et al., 2009 ). Moreover, it appears that both the quantity of children’s friendships with peers and the quality of the friendships are related to positive outcomes; in fact, the quality of children’s friendships may be especially important as children move into adolescence (Berndt & Keefe, 1996 ).

Peer groups in school can have either a positive or a negative effect on motivation across various activity settings. Children who come together in peer groups often share similar motivational orientations and activity preferences, and such groupings reinforce and strengthen children’s existing motivational orientation and activity preferences over time (e.g., Berndt & Keefe, 1996 ; Berndt, Laychak, & Park, 1990 ; Kindermann, 1993 , 2007 ). Whether such effects are positive or negative depends on the nature of the peer groups’ motivational orientation. High-achieving children who seek out other high achievers as friends develop even more positive academic motivation over time. The role of peer group influences is likely to vary across age. For example, peers may play an especially important role vis-à-vis motivation and achievement during adolescence, for two reasons: Adolescents are more aware of, and concerned about, peer group acceptance and they spend much more unsupervised time with peer groups than younger children (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006 ). Consequently, adolescents should be especially susceptible to peer group influences on motivation and achievement.

Learning in Groups and Motivation

There is an extensive body of research on how students learn in groups and the impact of students on each other’s learning and motivation; much of this work has focused on cooperative learning (see O’Donnell, 2006 ; Webb & Palincsar, 1996 , for systematic reviews of the research on group processes in the classroom, and Johnson & Johnson, 2009 , for a review of the effects of cooperative learning). Motivation researchers have particularly focused on how cooperative and competitive reward structures in classrooms influence students’ motivation. Ames ( 1984 ) discussed how competitive reward structures heighten social comparison and a focus on one’s ability relative to others. Cooperative reward structures help children focus on shared effort and interdependence. More broadly, the research on cooperative learning shows that children’s achievement often improves, social relations are more positive, and students’ motivation is enhanced (Johnson & Johnson, 2009 ). By working together, students can create communities of learners and learn to co-regulate each other’s motivation and achievement (McCaslin & Good, 1996 ).

School Transitions and Changes in Student Motivation

Entrance into kindergarten and then the transition from kindergarten to first grade introduces several systematic changes in children’s social and academic worlds (Pianta, Rimm-Kaufman, & Cox, 1999 ). First, classes are age stratified, making within–age ability social comparison much easier. Second, formal evaluations of competence by “experts” begin. Third, formal ability grouping begins, usually with reading group assignment. Fourth, peers have the opportunity to play a much more constant and salient role in children’s lives. Each of these changes can impact children’s motivational development (Pianta et al, 1999 ). Unfortunately, very little longitudinal research has focused on this transition and how it influences children’s motivation and achievement (one important exception is Pianta and colleagues’ work; see Pianta et al., 2008 ).

Instead, most of the research on the early elementary school years has focused on individual differences in the link between children’s early school experiences and their subsequent development. This research suggests significant long-term consequences of children’s experiences in the early school years for their motivation and achievement, particularly, experiences associated with ability grouping and within-class differential teacher treatment. For example, teachers use a variety of information to assign first graders to reading groups, including temperamental characteristics like interest and persistence, race, gender, and social class (e.g., Alexander, Entwisle, & Dauber, 1993 ; Brophy & Good, 1974 ). Alexander et al. ( 1993 ) demonstrated that differences in first grade reading group placement and teacher–student interactions predict subsequent motivation and achievement even after controlling for initial differences in reading competence.

As noted earlier, there are substantial changes in academic motivation and achievement across the upper elementary and secondary school years, including changes in grades, interest in school, perceptions of competence in different areas, and increases in performance goals at the expense of mastery goals. These changes are particularly large for students who are doing poorly (either emotionally or academically) in school (see Eccles & Roeser, 2009 ). The transition from elementary to middle school can accelerate these negative changes. In explaining them, Eccles, Wigfield, and Schiefele ( 1998 ) discussed how the multiple changes that occur during this period (e.g., puberty, school transitions, changing relations with parents, increasing cognitive maturity, increasing concern with identity, increasing sexuality and heterosociality, increasing focus on peer relationships) likely impact students’ motivation and achievement. They also discussed how differences in school environments between elementary and secondary schools, such as school size and structure, and tracking practices can contribute to these changes (see Eccles & Roeser, 2009 ; National Research Council, 2004 , for more detailed discussion of these changes).

The nature of instruction also changes: Secondary school instruction often is organized and taught departmentally—making it likely that secondary school teachers teach several different groups of students each day and are unlikely to teach any particular student for more than 1 year. This departmental structure can create many difficulties for students. First, the curriculum often is not integrated across different subjects. Second, students typically have several teachers each day, with little opportunity to interact with any one teacher on any deeper dimension beyond the academic content of what is being taught and disciplinary issues. As a result, the likelihood of students and teachers forming close, supportive bonds is much less in secondary schools than in elementary schools.

Based in part on the research just reviewed, during the 1980s and 1990s different middle school reform efforts were undertaken; many of the recommendations were included in a report by the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development ( 1989 ). These changes include replacing departmentalized curriculum structures with teams of teachers working with the same group of students and having some teachers serve as advisors and counselors to students to enhance adolescent–teacher relationships. However, relatively few of the middle school reform efforts focused specifically on students’ motivation (see Maehr & Midgley, 1996 , for one important exception; we discuss their work later).

Research on the transition to high school suggests that similar changes occur at this transition (Lee & Smith, 2001 ; National Research Council, 2004 ). For example, high schools are typically even larger and more bureaucratic than middle and junior high schools. Lee and Smith ( 2001 ) provided numerous examples of how the sense of community among teachers and students is undermined by the size and bureaucratic structure of most high schools. Such environments are likely to undermine the motivation and involvement of many students, especially those not doing particularly well academically and those who are alienated from the values of the adults in the high school. The coincidence of declining social support and the increasingly social comparative and competitive evaluation systems at both the middle and the high school levels likely contribute to some adolescents’ decisions to withdraw from school prior to graduation (Fine, 1991 ; Roderick & Camburn, 1999 ). Those who are already on the margins of the school community both academically and socially are particularly likely to drop out.

Even less work has been done within high school reform efforts with respect to motivation, the limited results of which are less consistent (National Research Council, 2004 ). These reform efforts have followed similar principles aimed at creating schools that better meet the competence, belonging, autonomy, and mattering needs of the adolescent students. As is true for the middle school reform efforts, when these principles are well implemented, improvements in students’ motivation, school engagement, and academic performance are obtained (National Research Council, 2004 ). However, successfully implementing these kinds of changes has proven to be very difficult at the high school level.

Motivation Interventions

There is a growing body of work examining the effectiveness of different kinds of interventions designed to improve students’ motivation (see Karabenick & Urdan, 2014 ; Wigfield & Wentzel, 2007 , for more detailed information on a variety of motivation interventions). Interventions can be done at different levels, including working with individual students to improve aspects of their motivation such as their self-efficacy (e.g., Schunk & Rice, 1991 ) or working at the classroom or school levels; we focus here on the latter kind of work and organize our discussion around many of the motivation constructs discussed earlier in this chapter.

Interventions Focused on Single Motivation Constructs

Student views of ability.

Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck ( 2007 ) provided seventh grade students with an eight-session intervention designed to help them develop an incremental rather than entity view of their ability. The intervention involved teaching children that they can grow their intelligence through their efforts and students were assigned randomly by classroom to the intervention or control group. The intervention significantly enhanced the intervention group’s incremental beliefs about their intelligence. Although overall students’ math grades declined over the course of the year, this decline was reversed for the students in the intervention group who initially endorsed an entity view of intelligence. Blackwell and colleagues concluded that altering students’ views of their intelligence impacted both their motivation and their mathematics achievement.

Building on this work, Yeager et al. ( 2016 ) conducted several large studies with ninth grade students that “scaled up” the mindset intervention (for another example, see Paunesku et al., 2015 ). In an attempt to improve the original mindset intervention, they used two main methods: qualitative interviews asking participants their opinions of the intervention and A/B testing in which modified mindset interventions were tested against the original intervention. The A/B studies were done with adults, using the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. Yeager and colleagues then conducted two large online studies with ninth graders testing the revised interventions (administered in two sessions) against either the original intervention or a control condition that gave participants general information about high school. In Study 1, students receiving the revised mindset intervention had lower fixed mindset beliefs than did those in the original intervention, were more willing to take on challenging problems, and had lower performance goals. In Study 2, relative to the control group, the intervention group had a higher overall grade point average (0.13 grade points) and a reduced rate of receiving D and F grades. Yeager and colleagues concluded that the mindset intervention can be both taken to scale and improved, resulting in improved grades for the lowest achieving students and positive belief and behavior change in other students.

Student Interest

Renninger and her colleagues ( 2014 ) adapted an intervention called ICAN, which they implemented in after-school science workshops for at-risk middle school students. ICAN uses writing activities to help participants reflect on the concepts and specific skills they had learned and still would like to learn in the workshops. Results indicated that students receiving the ICAN intervention developed and maintained their interest in science to a greater extent than did students in the control condition. They also gained more science knowledge; this was true for participants with both high and low interest in science. Renninger and colleagues concluded that the findings “suggest that it is possible for the inquiry setting to support achievement (science learning) when reflection is integrated into ongoing practice” (p. 127).

Students’ Achievement Values

Over the past 10 years much intervention work focused on enhancing students’ valuing of different academic subjects, notably in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics areas (see Harackiewicz, Canning, Tibbetts, Priniski, & Hyde, 2015 Rosenzweig & Wigfield, 2016 ; Wigfield et al., 2016 , for reviews), in part because students’ valuing of different subjects influences their choices of whether to continue taking them. This work often involves relatively brief interventions (see Yeager & Walton, 2011 ) both in terms of the number of sessions and in terms of the length of each session. By and large, results of this work show that these interventions do enhance students’ utility value, interest, and achievement in the subject of focus in the study. For instance, Hulleman and colleagues (Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009 ; Hulleman, Godes, Hendricks, & Harackiewicz, 2010 ) conducted experiments in which high school or college student treatment participants wrote a brief essay, either once in the lab or in class every 3 or 4 weeks, about the relevance of what they were learning to their lives. A control group completed an unrelated task, such as summarizing what they learned (students were learning science, psychology, or a new mental math technique). Results showed that, relative to the control group, the intervention boosted students’ utility value and interest in the topics they were learning, as well as their achievement; however, the effects were stronger for students who started with low expectations for their performance.

Canning and Harackiewicz ( 2015 ) found in a laboratory study that directly communicating utility value information to low-confidence students undermined their mathematics performance and interest, but when these students received this information and generated their own examples of utility value, they performed better and were more interested in the math technique than when they only generated their own examples. They also found that low-confidence students preferred to read examples of utility value that connected to their everyday life versus to their careers or academics. Harackiewicz, Rozek, Hulleman, and Hyde ( 2012 ) targeted high school students’ utility value by intervening with their parents. Parents randomly assigned to treatment received brief materials a few times over 2 years on how to help their children make decisions about their futures, emphasizing the importance of mathematics and science. Students whose parents received the materials took significantly more math and science courses than did those in the control group. Further, mothers’ perceived utility value of math and science partially mediated these effects. Interestingly, however, follow-up analyses of these data done by Rozek, Hyde, Svoboda, Hulleman, and Harackiewicz ( 2014 ) showed that the intervention improved course-taking only for lower achieving boys and higher achieving girls.

Finally, some researchers have targeted several aspects of students’ achievement values. Gaspard et al. ( 2015 ) designed an intervention program centered on achievement values (called MoMa) focused on enhancing ninth grade student’s math utility value. They implemented the 1-hour intervention in 25 German high schools and either encouraged students to write a brief essay connecting math to their lives or asked them to read and respond to quotations from fellow students about the relevance of math. Compared to a waiting control condition, students in both intervention conditions reported higher utility value for math, but effects were stronger in the quotation condition than in the essay condition. Also, even though the intervention focused on utility value, students in the quotation condition also reported higher perceptions of intrinsic and attainment value (but not lower perceptions of cost) than students in the control group. Female students benefitted from the intervention more than males on some measures.

Students’ Achievement Goals

Basing their work in Ames’s ( 1992 ) tasks, authority, rewards, grouping, evaluation, and time allowed for learning TARGET approach, Maehr and Midgley ( 1996 ) worked with teachers and administrators in an elementary and middle school to change the school culture from performance-goal based to mastery-goal based over the course of 3 years. At the middle school they focused on creating teams of teachers, creating “schools within the school,” lessening the use of ability grouping practices, and changing the student recognition patterns so that not just the honor roll students were recognized. They also worked to loosen the rigid bell schedule so that longer class periods were sometimes possible. Despite some resistance to these reforms (especially from math teachers), the changes had positive effects on students’ motivation (Anderman, Maehr, & Midgley, 1999 ).

Student Autonomy Support

Reeve and his colleagues (see Reeve & Cheon, 2014 , for review) developed an autonomy-supportive intervention program (ASIP) derived from self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2016 ) and designed to help teachers support student autonomy in the classroom. The ASIP model includes autonomy-supportive teaching methods such as taking students’ perspectives, being respectful of students’ attempts to initiate their own learning activities, and encouraging students to express their thoughts and feelings about what they are learning. They contrasted this with controlling practices such as pressuring students to follow teachers’ (rather than students’ own) agendas in the classroom.

In a series of experimental studies in different achievement domains, Reeve and his colleagues (see Reeve & Cheon, 2014 , for review) showed that teachers receiving training in implementing ASIP methods became more autonomy supportive in their teaching. Their students reported more psychological need satisfaction than students in the control group, more autonomous motivation, greater classroom engagement, and higher achievement. Interestingly, ASIP teachers themselves reported higher need satisfaction, teaching efficacy, and well-being than control group teachers. Finally, autonomy-supportive teachers actually provided more structure to their students than did teachers in the control group (see Jang, Reeve, & Deci, 2010 ). Reeve and colleagues concluded that ASIP “represents a success story in education-based intervention research” (Reeve & Cheon, 2014 , p. 332) benefitting both students and their teachers participating in the intervention.

Intervention Research Focused on Multiple Constructs

Guthrie, McRae, and Klauda ( 2007 ) reviewed the research on how different kinds of reading instruction programs influence motivation and achievement, focusing specifically on Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI), a reading comprehension instruction program that integrates science and reading. The CORI program focuses on instructional practices to enhance students’ motivation for reading and ability to use cognitive reading strategies. The classroom practices are designed to enhance reading motivation including increasing personal relevance of the material being learned, providing choices with respect to learning activities, ensuring enough success that students’ self-efficacy is fostered, giving many opportunities for student collaboration, and teaching in thematic units so that students have clear content goals for learning. Guthrie and colleagues’ meta-analysis of the work on CORI’s effectiveness in boosting students’ reading motivation, reading comprehension, and strategy use showed that CORI is indeed effective in increasing these outcomes for students in grades 3 to 5. More recently, Guthrie and his colleagues (e.g., Guthrie, Wigfield, & Klauda, 2012 ) implemented CORI in seventh grade middle school classrooms and again found that students in the CORI treatment had higher reading motivation and better reading comprehension than students in the district’s regular reading program.

Scaling-Up Brief Interventions: Issues to Consider

With the success of the brief social psychological–based interventions on (relatively) small scales, there is interest among researchers and educational policymakers to take them to scale. We endorse this idea in general, but think it is important to point out several difficulties associated with schools attempting to scale up the delivery of even brief psychological or educational interventions without knowledge of the complexities associated with the intervention’s success. A key lesson from the history of school reform is that although the superficial features or specific activities of an intervention can be scaled up with relative ease, if done in absence of the theoretically essential components of the intervention, administrators will not produce the intervention’s intended effect (Yeager & Walton, 2011 ). The challenge of delivering social–psychological or educational interventions outside of laboratory contexts may be more acute when they are delivered by teachers or other educational practitioners in dynamic school contexts. Teachers, operating independently in their classrooms, may make small and seemingly insignificant variations in how they deliver an intervention, changing the intervention in a way that it leads recipients to perceive a different meaning than that which was intended and undermining the intervention’s effectiveness (see Kaplan et al., 2012 ). In addition, although social–psychological interventions potentially reduce heterogeneity in implementation by being brief and discrete exercises, contextual distractions, such as a rowdy classroom, can undermine an intervention’s effectiveness. Hulleman and Cordray ( 2009 ) found that a social–psychological intervention administered in classrooms varied in fidelity and resulted in no overall positive effect, whereas the same intervention administered in a laboratory setting was effective. It is also possible for an intervention to be administered properly to different individuals, but result in different psychological experiences for each person that produce unique meanings and interpretations. These differences may be caused by an infinite number of influences associated with the participants’ interactions with their social context. Rosenzweig and Wigfield ( 2016 ) discussed how replicated intervention studies commonly produce mixed results and argue that much of this variation is a result of untested individual (e.g., student gender, entering levels of motivation) and/or contextual (e.g., teacher–student relationships, school culture) moderators that constrain the effects of many interventions to certain groups or situations. Studies that develop interventions with consideration to these moderating influences are necessary to expand the breadth of who is able to be helped by social–psychological interventions and the diversity of motivational theory and educational practice.

In sum, research on the nature of motivation has informed the design of extensive classroom-based interventions as well as brief social–psychological interventions, which have been shown to increase students’ motivation and achievement in various domains. For the most part, these interventions have not been taken to scale, and as just discussed, there are challenges to doing so. Further, to be scaled up, such interventions should align with broader educational policies formulated at the state or national levels. Do they? That is the topic of the next section.

National Educational Policies and Motivation Theory: What Is the Interface?

One of the challenges for motivation researchers is that many of the reform efforts they espouse have not fit well with national educational policy, particularly the remains of the policies of the No Child Left Behind era in which a focus on performance, testing, and accountability were deeply entrenched. The severe pressure that many teachers and principals faced (and many still face) to produce higher test scores and other indicators of student performance can lead to a strong focus on performance goals, often at the expense of focusing on how efforts to enhance students’ interest and mastery can enhance their performance (Deci & Ryan, 2002 ). We understand the importance of students showing continual progress in their learning and believe teachers and principals must be accountable for this progress. Yet focusing too much on test results can come at the expense of focusing on deeper, meaningful learning.

Fortunately, during the Obama era educational policies replacing No Child Left Behind prioritize the use of evidence-based educational practices, and the motivation interventions just described are better aligned with these policies (see Harackiewicz, Smith, & Priniski, 2016 ). The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 granted more autonomy to local and state agencies to establish performance, assessment, and accountability standards for teachers and students. Further, the Every Student Succeeds Act shifted evaluative focus from students’ grade-level proficiency to their academic growth and allowed teachers more flexibility in the construction of their curricula (U.S. Department of Education, 2015 ), making it possible for teachers to tailor course topics and instructional strategies to be more relevant to students’ interests and daily life. Because students are affected by policies enacted at all levels of school governance, these new regulations have direct and potentially powerful implications for student motivation depending on decisions made by state and local policymakers, school administrators, and teachers on the type of content, assessments, and interventions delivered to their students. It is unclear at the time we are writing this chapter whether these policies will remain in place during the current presidential administration. We discuss in this section what we believe are the most important issues regarding education policies and their potential effects on student motivation, focusing specifically on course content, standardized assessments, and publicly funded educational interventions.

Course Content

In their ecological view of schools, Eccles and Roeser ( 2009 ) discussed how the instructional context of school environments—conceptualized as the influence of teachers, other students, content area, and instructional activities on students’ learning and motivation (Turner & Meyer, 2000 )—has the most immediate impact on students’ motivation because of the time spent in classrooms and the direct contract students have with others in these contexts (Anderman & Gray, 2017 ). Instructional contexts are determined by several individuals at the district and federal levels. For example, course curricula are predominantly determined by school or district administrators to align with standards in a particular subject for a specific age group. The growing popularity of highly standardized educational standards such as the Common Core State Standards emphasizes the efforts to provide educators with the tools to ensure that their students meet these academic standards. Although the Every Student Succeeds Act and standards like Common Core do not explicitly grant more decision-making power to teachers, they highlight a shift to providing competence-based learning goals instead of precise content guidelines. This shift may not only encourage teachers to choose content that they find relates more to students’ interests, values, and goals, but also facilitate teachers affording students themselves more choice and control in the content with which they engage, thus enhancing motivation of both teacher and students in ways that are in line with the self-determination theoretical approach to fostering motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2016 ).

As seen in our discussion of CORI, students’ motivation and engagement, strategy use, and reading comprehension improve in environments where they have some autonomy in selecting content, tasks, and methods (Guthrie et al., 2006 , 2012 ). Autonomy was found to be particularly important at the middle school level when adolescents often experience less autonomy in school at a period when the need for autonomy is heightened (Guthrie & Klauda, 2014 ). In addition, Walkington and Bernacki ( 2014 ) found that middle and high school students adopted more positive attitudes toward math content when instruction was presented in the context of learners’ individual interests compared to generic textbook material. Students also displayed more effort and performed better on personalized tasks compared to a control group, even after personalization had been removed.

As discussed earlier, Renninger et al. ( 2014 ) have shown that teachers’ direct promotion of student interest in their classrooms can significantly influence student engagement in the subject material and enhance their academic achievement. Another option is for teachers to incorporate into the curriculum problem-based instruction, which encourages students’ learning and situational interest by creating a need to solve complex authentic problems (e.g. Knogler, Gröschner, & Lewalter, 2016 ). However, because decision-making power over course content is still primarily in the hands of individuals other than teachers, it may be more feasible for teachers to concentrate on helping students find meaning and value in course tasks. We previously discussed the extensive evidence of both expectancy and value-related beliefs as powerful predictors of interest, effort, and performance. In particular, we highlighted utility value because it appears to be the task value component most amenable to external influence and intervention (Harackiewicz & Hulleman, 2010 ). Educators can also make alterations in their instructional style to facilitate the development of student motivation by creating more opportunities for cooperative learning, given the importance of peer relations to students (see Johnson & Johnson, 2009 ; Juvonen & Knifsend, 2016 ).

Testing and Other Assessment Practices

One of the areas in which teachers and schools have the strongest influence on the development of students’ competence and motivation is the assessment of student learning. The use of standardized tests as a measure of accountability in meeting educational standards has persisted beyond the era of No Child Left Behind, although the stakes to students, teachers, and schools associated with these tests are thankfully not as high or severe (U.S. Department of Education, 2015 ). The reframing of educational assessments as tools to identify areas for improvement and strategy change as opposed to “failures” deserving of harsh consequences has significant implications for all aspects of students’ academic motivation, evidence of which applies to both standardized and generalized achievement assessment. Assessments tied to high stakes such as grade advancement, graduation, or career decisions strongly encourage students and teachers alike to adopt a performance-goal rather than a mastery-goal orientation toward learning (Kumar, Gheen, & Kaplan, 2002 ). As noted earlier, there are mixed empirical results regarding whether the processes and outcomes associated with performance-approach goals are positive or negative (see Senko, 2016 , for review). However, it is clear that high-stakes testing is associated with students experiencing a host of negative emptions when they do poorly (e.g., achievement-related anxiety, shame, hopelessness) and fear of failure (Elliot, Murayama, & Pekrun, 2011 ; Pekrun, Cusack, Murayama, Elliot, & Thomas, 2014 ). Furthermore, high-stakes assessments may have the power to affect students’ views of their academic competence. When students receive their test scores, they often conduct an attributional search to explain their success or failure (Weiner, 1986 ). Students may attribute their score to their academic ability—perceived as uncontrollable, stable, and internal—or to the effort they put into preparing for the test—perceived as controllable, unstable, and internal. How students choose to explain their test scores has a strong impact on their competence beliefs, such that students who consistently attribute their academic failures to their low ability are unlikely to believe that they will ever become highly competent within a given academic domain (Anderman & Gray, 2017 ). As discussed above, Dweck’s ( 2017 ) work on altering students’ mindset about their ability can successfully alter the debilitating beliefs that such students hold.

However, our discussion of these findings is not meant to suggest that assessments themselves are inherently harmful. Periodic testing of student domain knowledge provides useful data to students, teachers, parents, and administrators and helps to identify which students need additional assistance and whether the current curricula is achieving the goals of ensuring students are learning the knowledge and skills appropriate for their age. In fact, low-stakes assessments can be helpful to students and teachers if they are administered frequently and give students a chance to fail without grim consequences. In this manner, assessments provide students with the opportunity to receive more refined and responsive forms of feedback that are most effective for enhancing feelings of competence (Rigby & Ryan, 2011 ) and are essential for students’ goal pursuit (Bandura, 1991 ).

Policy’s Misalignment With Researcher Recommendations for Enhancing Motivation

As discussed earlier, over the past 2 decades, researchers have increasingly focused on intervention work designed to enhance children’s ability beliefs, interest, and achievement values and promote mastery goals, with many studies having encouraging results. Policymakers at different levels have begun to notice this work. In particular, the success of the brief motivation interventions has attracted the attention of educational leadership and policymakers in their ability to address fundamental problems, including low student achievement and large group differences, at fairly minimal expense to individual schools and districts and resulting in long-term effects (see Yeager & Walton, 2011 , for more detailed discussion).

One crucial misconception regarding brief interventions by many educational administrators and policymakers is that the causal force behind any long-term impact of an intervention is the construction of some stable internal ability or noncognitive skill (e.g., cognitive aptitude, self-control, grit) and that interventions focused on these constructs can be a one-size-fits-all cure to students’ academic problems. However, the reality of social–psychological interventions is that, although they are powerful tools rooted in theory,

they are also context dependent and reliant on the nature of the educational environment to which they are applied (Yeager & Walton, 2011 ). Further, rather than representing a cure, interventions serve as a catalyst for students’ motivational processes that can be repeatedly built on and eventually solidified through students’ interactions with their social context (Cohen, Garcia, & Goyer, 2017 ).

Because interventions target students’ internal processes, significant psychological change can occur without immediately manifesting into observable behavioral change, such as higher achievement or evidence of increased motivation. Furthermore, because the effects of many interventions progress at a slow pace, students may not show behavioral change until well after the conclusion of the intervention (Cohen et al., 2017 ). These steady timelines for social–psychological and other, more large-scale and time-intensive interventions often come into conflict with the expectations of policymakers and the public for tangible results that occur quickly. This tension was most apparent during the No Child Left Behind era, in which schools that failed to demonstrate improvement on standardized test scores for certain subgroups of students (e.g., ethnic minorities, low income, learning disabled) for 2 consecutive years faced being labeled as low performing, with withdrawal of federal funding and potentially being shut down (Ryan & Brown, 2005 ). A study by Goyer et al. ( 2017 ) showed that, although they earned low grades, ethnic minority students who felt an enhanced sense of belongingness in middle school after an intervention were more likely to attend college than students in the control group. If the public continues to judge the efficacy of an intervention only by visible indicators of success, such as test scores, rather than understanding that long-term behavioral change often arises from transformations of an invisible state of mind, we are at risk of abandoning educational policies and programs with similarly subtle benefits before they have a chance to fully emerge (Cohen et al., 2017 ).

Conclusion and Future Directions

We have learned much about the nature of students’ motivation and how it changes across the school years; indeed, research on students’ motivation in educational settings has continued to flourish since the publication of the first edition of this handbook. We also have learned much about how different kinds of tasks, activities, and other characteristics of school and classroom environments impact students’ motivation, as well as how teacher–student and peer relations influence motivation. Although the frequently observed declines in student motivation continue to be cause for concern, various motivation-based intervention studies have shown that the declines can be reversed. We have a growing body of knowledge about how students’ motivation can be enhanced in classrooms, which is a reason for optimism. We also are encouraged that (at least some) national educational policies seem to be more in line with principles derived from motivational research, although the history of education has proved policies are often fleeting. We close our chapter with some issues that need further research attention over the next few years.

How Does Motivation Vary in Different Groups of Children?

Many researchers studying children’s motivation have long been interested in group differences, with a particular focus on gender and ethnic differences in motivation (see Graham & Hudley, 2005 ; Meece, Glienke, & Askew, 2009 ; Murdock, 2009 ; Wigfield, Eccles, Schiefele, Roeser, & Davis-Kean, 2006 , for reviews). This work shows that boys’ and girls’ competence-related beliefs and values tend to follow gender stereotypic patterns, with boys having more positive beliefs and values in domains such as math and sports and girls in reading/English and music (Eccles, 1984 ; Eccles, Wigfield, Harold, & Blumenfeld, 1993 ). More recent studies show that these patterns may be changing; for instance, Jacobs et al. ( 2002 ) did not find significant gender differences in value of math, though gender differences in competence beliefs in math (favoring boys) and English (favoring girls) were found, along with gender differences in English value (favoring girls) and sport value and competence beliefs (favoring boys).

Further, researchers working in other countries find somewhat different patterns in gender differences in children’s competence and values (Watt, 2004 ). The changing patterns in gender differences as well as the different findings from studies done in different cultural contexts demonstrate the importance of continuing to assess gender differences in achievement motivation.

With respect to ethnic differences in motivation, some research shows that African American children have more positive competence beliefs than do European American children, but that these beliefs do not relate as strongly to achievement for the African American children (see Graham, 1994 ). Graham and her colleagues found interesting interactions of ethnicity and gender, using a peer nomination measure asking who students admire in their school that they describe as a way to measure task value (Graham, Taylor, & Hudley, 1998 ; Taylor & Graham, 2007 ). They found that, during elementary school, African American, European American, and Hispanic American children chose students who were fashionable, athletic, and high achievers as ones they admired; females in all groups and European American boys continued to do so in middle school. However, in middle school, African American and Hispanic American males nominated classmates who were fashionable and athletic, but were not high achievers. This work shows why it is important to consider gender and ethnicity together, because there are different patterns for boys and girls in different ethnic groups with respect to motivation-related beliefs.

Researchers interested in ethnic differences in motivation point to broader cultural and societal issues such as the perceived opportunity structure for different groups (e.g., if I work hard in school will it lead to more economic opportunities for me and members of my group?), discrimination, and stereotypes about the capabilities of individuals from different groups as impacting motivation and achievement (Aronson, 2002 ; Graham & Hudley, 2005 ; Murdock, 2009 ). The complex influences of these factors on students’ motivation need further research attention. As Graham ( 1994 ) noted, studying within -group differences in various ethnic groups’ motivation and achievement is as important, if not more so, than studying between-group differences. Finally, cultural influences likely will impact the success of various kinds of motivation interventions and must be taken into account in the design of future interventions. Motivation researchers are focusing more on these issues, which is an important step for the field (e.g., Usher, 20

What Are the Next Steps in Motivation Interventions?

We are encouraged by the results from the different motivation intervention studies discussed earlier and note in particular the positive results of the “simple” scaled-up mindset interventions by Yeager et al. ( 2016 ). There are several important next steps for research of this kind. We continue to need both quasi-experimental and randomized trial design intervention studies done in classrooms to build a strong experimental support for effective interventions. Second, we must do these kinds of studies at different grade levels to see how effective programs are with different aged students and how they need to be modified for use with students of different ages. We predict that it may be easier to change students’ motivation when they are younger, before long-term patterns of failure and avoidance set in for children performing poorly in school. However, because some motivation problems emerge later, we need effective interventions for middle and high school students as well. Finally, given the concerns of sociocultural motivational researchers about the importance of context and how motivational principles might vary in effectiveness across contexts, we must assess the effectiveness of interventions in different kinds of classrooms. The simple large-scale mindset interventions conducted by Yeager and colleagues paid no attention to context and still produced positive outcomes; Would the same be true for other kinds of interventions? Perhaps more complex interventions would be more affected by different classroom organization, practices, and structure. This possibility awaits testing.

Given the complexity of the processes underlying social–psychological and other motivation interventions and the potential for them to have foreseeable in addition to unforeseeable side effects on its participants, their indiscriminate and underprepared implementation should be discouraged (Cohen et al., 2017 ). The best way for educational practitioners and administrators to maximize the effectiveness of empirically supported social–psychological interventions is to construct working relationships that bring together contextual expertise and theoretical knowledge. Several research initiatives (e.g., National Study of Learning Mindsets) have begun exploring the effectiveness of this strategy for psychological theory and student outcomes. However, both researchers and school administrations have a responsibility to further progress in forging relationships, trust, and understanding so that research is more a prominent element in the everyday decision-making affecting students’ motivation.

How Can Findings From Research on Motivation Be Better Linked to School Reform?

As noted earlier, many of the principles derived from research on motivation about how to enhance students’ motivation in school do not mesh well with the press for more assessments and evaluation of student performance and teacher and principal accountability for student performance on these tests. These pressures can lead to a strong focus on teaching to the tests being used and the (sometimes) surface learning needed to do well on such tests, rather than a deep engagement in meaningful and interesting learning activities. We are encouraged that the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act and the implementation of Common Core standards have changed this to at least some extent. More broadly, we do not believe that the motivational principles we have discussed are antithetical to educational policymakers’ focus on student achievement in school; indeed, we think that when students believe they are competent, see that what they are learning is relevant and interesting, and have the goals of mastering material and increasing their skills, they will perform very well in school. Motivation researchers, particularly those doing intervention work, should work with policymakers to ensure that motivation is included in the debates about effective education policy and how best to assess children’s learning and promote both achievement and motivation. One good example of this type of work is the National Research Council’s ( 2004 ) book on engaging schools. More of this kind of work is needed.

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Wigfield, A. , Eccles, J. S. , Fredricks, J. A. , Simpkins, S. , Roeser, R. W. , & Schiefele, U. ( 2015 ). Development of achievement motivation and engagement. In M. E. Lamb & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology and developmental science: Socioemotional processes (Vol. 3, 7th ed., pp. 657–700). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Wigfield, A. , Eccles, J. S. , & Rodriguez, D. ( 1998 ). The development of children’s motivation in school contexts. In A. Iran-Nejad & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Review of research in education (Vol. 23, pp. 73–118). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Wigfield, A. , Eccles, J. S. , Schiefele, U. , Roeser, R. W. , & Davis-Kean, P. ( 2006 ). Development of achievement motivation. In N. Eisenberg (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 933–1002). New York, NY: Wiley.

Wigfield, A. , Rosenzweig, E. Q. , & Eccles, J. S. ( 2017 ). Achievement values: Interactions, interventions, and future directions. In A. J. Elliot , C. S. Dweck , & D. S. Yeager (Eds.), Handbook of competence and motivation: Theory and application (pp. 116–134). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Wigfield, A. , Tonks, S. , & Klauda, S. L. ( 2016 ). Expectancy-value theory. In K. R. Wentzel & D. B. Miele (Eds.), Handbook of motivation at school (pp. 55–74). New York, NY: Routledge.

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Center for Teaching

Motivating students.

Introduction

• Expectancy – Value – Cost Model

ARCS Model of Instructional Design

Self-determination theory, additional strategies for motivating students.

Fostering student motivation is a difficult but necessary aspect of teaching that instructors must consider. Many may have led classes where students are engaged, motivated, and excited to learn, but have also led classes where students are distracted, disinterested, and reluctant to engage—and, probably, have led classes that are a mix. What factors influence students’ motivation? How can instructors promote students’ engagement and motivation to learn? While there are nuances that change from student to student, there are also models of motivation that serve as tools for thinking through and enhancing motivation in our classrooms. This guide will look at three frameworks: the expectancy-value-cost model of motivation, the ARCS model of instructional design, and self-determination theory. These three models highlight some of the major factors that influence student motivation, often drawing from and demonstrating overlap among their frameworks. The aim of this guide is to explore some of the literature on motivation and offer practical solutions for understanding and enhancing student motivation.

Expectancy – Value – Cost Model

The purpose of the original expectancy-value model was to predict students’ achievement behaviors within an educational context. The model has since been refined to include cost as one of the three major factors that influence student motivation. Below is a description of the three factors, according to the model, that influence motivation.

• Expectancy refers to a student’s expectation that they can actually succeed in the assigned task. It energizes students because they feel empowered to meet the learning objectives of the course.
• Value involves a student’s ability to perceive the importance of engaging in a particular task. This gives meaning to the assignment or activity because students are clear on why the task or behavior is valuable.
• Cost points to the barriers that impede a student’s ability to be successful on an assignment, activity and/or the course at large. Therefore, students might have success expectancies and perceive high task value, however, they might also be aware of obstacles to their engagement or a potential negative affect resulting in performance of the task, which could decrease their motivation.

Three important questions to consider from the student perspective:

1. Expectancy – Can I do the task?

2. Value – Do I want to do the task?

• Intrinsic or interest value : the inherent enjoyment that an individual experiences from engaging in the task for its own sake.

• Utility value : the usefulness of the task in helping achieve other short term or long-term goals.

• Attainment value : the task affirms a valued aspect of an individual’s identity and meets a need that is important to the individual.

3. Cost – Am I free of barriers that prevent me from investing my time, energy, and resources into the activity?

It’s important to note that expectancy, value and cost are not shaped only when a student enters your classroom. These have been shaped over time by both individual and contextual factors. Each of your students comes in with an initial response, however there are strategies for encouraging student success, clarifying subject meaning and finding ways to mitigate costs that will increase your students’ motivation. Everyone may not end up at the same level of motivation, but if you can increase each student’s motivation, it will help the overall atmosphere and productivity of the course that you are teaching.

Strategies to Enhance Expectancy, Value, and Cost

Hulleman et. al (2016) summarize research-based sources that positively impact students’ expectancy beliefs, perceptions of task value, and perceptions of cost, which might point to useful strategies that instructors can employ.

Research-based sources of expectancy-related beliefs

Research-based sources of value, research-based sources of cost.

• Barron K. E., & Hulleman, C. S. (2015). Expectancy-value-cost model of motivation. International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 8 , 503-509.
• Hulleman, C. S., Barron, K. E., Kosovich, J. J., & Lazowski, R. A. (2016). Student motivation: Current theories, constructs, and interventions within an expectancy-value framework. In A. A. Lipnevich et al. (Eds.), Psychosocial Skills and School Systems in the 21st Century . Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.

The ARCS model of instructional design was created to improve the motivational appeal of instructional materials. The ARCS model is grounded in an expectancy-value framework, which assumes that people are motivated to engage in an activity if it’s perceived to be linked to the satisfaction of personal needs and if there is a positive expectancy for success. The purpose of this model was to fill a gap in the motivation literature by providing a model that could more clearly allow instructors to identify strategies to help improve motivation levels within their students.

ARCS is an acronym that stands for four factors, according to the model, that influence student motivation: attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction.

• Attention refers to getting and sustaining student attention and directing attention to the appropriate stimuli.
• Relevance involves making instruction applicable to present and future career opportunities, showing that learning in it of itself is enjoyable, and/or focusing on process over product by satisfying students’ psychological needs (e.g., need for achievement, need for affiliation).
• Confidence includes helping students believe that some level of success is possible if effort is exerted.
• Satisfaction is attained by helping students feel good about their accomplishments and allowing them to exert some degree of control over the learning experience.

To use the ARCS instructional design model, these steps can be followed:

• Classify the problem
• Analyze audience motivation
• Prepare motivational objectives (i.e., identify which factor in the ARCS model to target based on the defined problem and audience analysis).
• Generate potential motivational strategies for each objective
• Select strategies that a) don’t take up too much instructional time; b) don’t detract from instructional objectives; c) fall within time and money constraints; d) are acceptable to the audience; and e) are compatible with the instructor’s personal style, preferences, and mode of instruction.
• Prepare motivational elements
• Integrate materials with instruction
• Conduct a developmental try-out
• Assess motivational outcomes

Strategies to Enhance Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction

Keller (1987) provides several suggestions for how instructors can positively impact students’ attention, perceived relevance, confidence, and satisfaction.

Attention Strategies

Incongruity, Conflict

• Introduce a fact that seems to contradict the learner’s past experience.
• Present an example that does not seem to exemplify a given concept.
• Introduce two equally plausible facts or principles, only one of which can be true.
• Play devil’s advocate.

Concreteness

• Show visual representations of any important object or set of ideas or relationships.
• Give examples of every instructionally important concept or principle.
• Use content-related anecdotes, case studies, biographies, etc.

Variability

• In stand up delivery, vary the tone of your voice, and use body movement, pauses, and props.
• Vary the format of instruction (information presentation, practice, testing, etc.) according to the attention span of the audience.
• Vary the medium of instruction (platform delivery, film, video, print, etc.).
• Break up print materials by use of white space, visuals, tables, different typefaces, etc.
• Change the style of presentation (humorous-serious, fast-slow, loud-soft, active-passive, etc.).
• Shift between student-instructor interaction and student-student interaction.
• Where appropriate, use plays on words during redundant information presentation.
• Use humorous introductions.
• Use humorous analogies to explain and summarize.
• Use creativity techniques to have learners create unusual analogies and associations to the content.
• Build in problem solving activities at regular interval.
• Give learners the opportunity to select topics, projects and assignments that appeal to their curiosity and need to explore.

Participation

• Use games, role plays, or simulations that require learner participation.

Relevance Strategies

• State explicitly how the instruction builds on the learner’s existing skills.
• Use analogies familiar to the learner from past experience.
• Find out what the learners’ interests are and relate them to the instruction.

Present Worth

• State explicitly the present intrinsic value of learning the content, as distinct from its value as a link to future goals.

Future Usefulness

• State explicitly how the instruction relates to future activities of the learner.
• Ask learners to relate the instruction to their own future goals (future wheel).

Need Matching

• To enhance achievement striving behavior, provide opportunities to achieve standards of excellence under conditions of moderate risk.
• To make instruction responsive to the power motive, provide opportunities for responsibility, authority, and interpersonal influence.
• To satisfy the need for affiliation, establish trust and provide opportunities for no-risk, cooperative interaction.
• Bring in alumni of the course as enthusiastic guest lecturers.
• In a self-paced course, use those who finish first as deputy tutors.
• Model enthusiasm for the subject taught.
• Provide meaningful alternative methods for accomplishing a goal.
• Provide personal choices for organizing one’s work.

Confidence Strategies

Learning Requirements

• Incorporate clearly stated, appealing learning goals into instructional materials.
• Provide self-evaluation tools which are based on clearly stated goals.
• Explain the criteria for evaluation of performance.
• Organize materials on an increasing level of difficulty; that is, structure the learning material to provide a “conquerable” challenge.

Expectations

• Include statements about the likelihood of success with given amounts of effort and ability.
• Teach students how to develop a plan of work that will result in goal accomplishment.
• Help students set realistic goals.

Attributions

• Attribute student success to effort rather than luck or ease of task when appropriate (i.e., when you know it’s true!).
• Encourage student efforts to verbalize appropriate attributions for both successes and failures.

Self-Confidence

• Allow students opportunity to become increasingly independent in learning and practicing a skill.
• Have students learn new skills under low risk conditions, but practice performance of well-learned tasks under realistic conditions.
• Help students understand that the pursuit of excellence does not mean that anything short of perfection is failure; learn to feel good about genuine accomplishment.

Satisfaction Strategies

Natural Consequences

• Allow a student to use a newly acquired skill in a realistic setting as soon as possible.
• Verbally reinforce a student’s intrinsic pride in accomplishing a difficult task.
• Allow a student who masters a task to help others who have not yet done so.

Unexpected Rewards

• Reward intrinsically interesting task performance with unexpected, non-contingent rewards.
• Reward boring tasks with extrinsic, anticipated rewards.

Positive Outcomes

• Give verbal praise for successful progress or accomplishment.
• Give personal attention to students.
• Provide informative, helpful feedback when it is immediately useful.
• Provide motivating feedback (praise) immediately following task performance.

Negative Influences

• Avoid the use of threats as a means of obtaining task performance.
• Avoid surveillance (as opposed to positive attention).
• Avoid external performance evaluations whenever it is possible to help the student evaluate his or her own work.
• Provide frequent reinforcements when a student is learning a new task.
• Provide intermittent reinforcement as a student becomes more competent at a task.
• Vary the schedule of reinforcements in terms of both interval and quantity.

Source: Keller, J. M. (1987). Development and use of the ARCS model of instructional design. Journal of Instructional Development, 10 , 2-10.

Self-determination theory (SDT) is a macro-theory of human motivation, emotion, and development that is concerned with the social conditions that facilitate or hinder human flourishing. While applicable to many domains, the theory has been commonly used to understand what moves students to act and persist in educational settings. SDT focuses on the factors that influence intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, which primarily involves the satisfaction of basic psychological needs.

Basic Psychological Needs

SDT posits that human motivation is guided by the need to fulfill basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

• Autonomy refers to having a choice in one’s own individual behaviors and feeling that those behaviors stem from individual volition rather than from external pressure or control. In educational contexts, students feel autonomous when they are given options, within a structure, about how to perform or present their work.
• Competence refers to perceiving one’s own behaviors or actions as effective and efficient. Students feel competent when they are able to track their progress in developing skills or an understanding of course material. This is often fostered when students receive clear feedback regarding their progression in the class.
• Relatedness refers to feeling a sense of belonging, closeness, and support from others. In educational settings, relatedness is fostered when students feel connected, both intellectually and emotionally, to their peers and instructors in the class. This can often be accomplished through interactions that allow members of the class to get to know each other on a deeper, more personal level.

Continuum of Self-Determination

SDT also posits that motivation exists on a continuum. When an environment provides enough support for the satisfaction of the psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness, an individual may experience self-determined forms of motivation: intrinsic motivation, integration, and identification. Self-determined motivation occurs when there is an internal perceived locus of causality (i.e., internal factors are the main driving force for the behavior). Integration and identification are also grouped as autonomous extrinsic motivation as the behavior is driven by internal and volitional choice.

Intrinsic motivation , which is the most self-determined type of motivation, occurs when individuals naturally and spontaneously perform behaviors as a result of genuine interest and enjoyment.

Integrated regulation is when individuals identify the importance of a behavior, integrate this behavior into their self-concept, and pursue activities that align with this self-concept.

Identified regulation is where people identify and recognize the value of a behavior, which then drives their action.

When an environment does not provide enough support for the satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, an individual may experience non-self-determined forms of motivation: introjection and external regulation. Introjection and external regulation are grouped as controlled extrinsic motivation because people enact these behaviors due to external or internal pressures.

Introjected regulation occurs when individuals are controlled by internalized consequences administered by the individual themselves, such as pride, shame, or guilt.

External regulation is when people’s behaviors are controlled exclusively by external factors, such as rewards or punishments.

Finally, at the bottom of the continuum is amotivation, which is lowest form of motivation.

Amotivation exists when there is a complete lack of intention to behave and there is no sense of achievement or purpose when the behavior is performed.

Below is a figure depicting the continuum of self-determination taken from Lonsdale, Hodge, and Rose (2009).

Although having intrinsically motivated students would be the ultimate goal, it may not be a practical one within educational settings. That’s because there are several tasks that are required of students to meet particular learning objectives that may not be inherently interesting or enjoyable. Instead, instructors can employ various strategies to satisfy students’ basic psychological needs, which should move their level of motivation along the continuum, and hopefully lead to more self-determined forms of motivation, thus yielding the greatest rewards in terms of student academic outcomes.

Below are suggestions for how instructors can positively impact students’ perceived autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Strategies to Enhance Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness

Autonomy strategies.

• Have students choose paper topics
• Have students choose the medium with which they will present their work
• Co-create rubrics with students (e.g., participation rubrics, assignment rubrics)
• Have students choose the topics you will cover in a particular unit
• Drop the lowest assessment or two (e.g., quizzes, exams, homework)
• Have students identify preferred assignment deadlines
• Gather mid-semester feedback and make changes based on student suggestions
• Provide meaningful rationales for learning activities
• Acknowledge students’ feelings about the learning process or learning activities throughout the course

Competence Strategies

• Set high but achievable learning objectives
• Communicate to students that you believe they can meet your high expectations
• Communicate clear expectations for each assignment (e.g., use rubrics)
• Include multiple low-stakes assessments
• Give students practice with feedback before assessments
• Provide lots of early feedback to students
• Have students provide peer feedback
• Scaffold assignments
• Praise student effort and hard work
• Provide a safe environment for students to fail and then learn from their mistakes

Relatedness Strategies

• Share personal anecdotes
• Get to know students via small talk before/after class and during breaks
• Require students to come to office hours (individually or in small groups)
• Have students complete a survey where they share information about themselves
• Use students’ names (perhaps with the help of name tents)
• Have students incorporate personal interests into their assignments
• Share a meal with students or bring food to class
• Incorporate group activities during class, and allow students to work with a variety of peers
• Arrange formal study groups
• Convey warmth, caring, and respect to students
• Lonsdale, C., Hodge, K., & Rose, E. (2009). Athlete burnout in elite sport: A self-determination perspective. Journal of Sports Sciences, 27, 785-795.
• Niemiec, C. P., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the classroom: Applying self-determination theory to educational practice. Theory and Research in Education, 7, 133-144.
• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness . New York: Guilford.

Below are some additional research-based strategies for motivating students to learn.

• Become a role model for student interest . Deliver your presentations with energy and enthusiasm. As a display of your motivation, your passion motivates your students. Make the course personal, showing why you are interested in the material.
• Get to know your students.  You will be able to better tailor your instruction to the students’ concerns and backgrounds, and your personal interest in them will inspire their personal loyalty to you. Display a strong interest in students’ learning and a faith in their abilities.
• Use examples freely.  Many students want to be shown why a concept or technique is useful before they want to study it further. Inform students about how your course prepares students for future opportunities.
• Teach by discovery. Students find it satisfying to reason through a problem and discover the underlying principle on their own.
• Cooperative learning activities are particularly effective as they also provide positive social pressure.
• Set realistic performance goals  and help students achieve them by encouraging them to set their own reasonable goals. Design assignments that are appropriately challenging in view of the experience and aptitude of the class.
• Place appropriate emphasis on testing and grading.  Tests should be a means of showing what students have mastered, not what they have not. Avoid grading on the curve and give everyone the opportunity to achieve the highest standard and grades.
• Be free with praise and constructive in criticism.  Negative comments should pertain to particular performances, not the performer. Offer nonjudgmental feedback on students’ work, stress opportunities to improve, look for ways to stimulate advancement, and avoid dividing students into sheep and goats.
• Give students as much control over their own education as possible.  Let students choose paper and project topics that interest them. Assess them in a variety of ways (tests, papers, projects, presentations, etc.) to give students more control over how they show their understanding to you. Give students options for how these assignments are weighted.
• Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• DeLong, M., & Winter, D. (2002).  Learning to teach and teaching to learn mathematics: Resources for professional development . Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America.
• Nilson, L. (2016). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors  (4 th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass.

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How to Motivate Students to Learn Essay

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How to Motivate Students in the Classroom: Essay Introduction

How to motivate learners to learn, how to motivate students: essay conclusion, works cited.

Wondering how to motivate students in the classroom? Essay examples like this one will help you find the answer! Learn here about lack of motivation in college students, the importance of addressing this issue, the role of a teacher in motivating students, and factors influencing motivation.

It is not quite strange to see many schoolchildren and students eager to learn. However, many of these learners require or anticipate their teachers to hearten, challenge, and stimulate them to learn. In the contemporary learning environments, many distracters prevent the learners from effective learning both inside and outside classroom.

Thus, the ability of schoolchildren and students to learn effectively depends on the teacher’s capability to preserve the enthusiasm, which brought learners to their learning environment. It does not matter the level of motivation the learners bring into the classroom because the occurrences within the classroom affects motivation of learners, positively or negatively.

Regrettably, there is no solitary modus operandi of motivating learners. Among the very many factors that affect the motivation of learners, include interest in a given area, an aspiration to achieve, self-confidence, doggedness, expediency of knowledge and determination.

The motivating factors such as principles, wishes, needs and wants vary from on student to another meaning. For example, to some, endorsement of others is the biggest motivation, while to others, winning is a motivation factor (Barbara, p.1).

Motivation is an act of promoting power in students so that they engage in useful learning activities. In most cases, motivation falls into two classes: extrinsic and intrinsic. A new teacher can find these two types of motivation so challenging. However, as a person trained to impart knowledge into students, a teacher is the primary source of motivation.

For example, when a teacher gives a token to a troublesome student in exchange of reverential behavior, we call this extrinsic behavior. Research shows that teachers can motivate students by giving learners some tokens. Under extrinsic motivation, the teacher uses anticipation as a factor to motivate students.

On the other hand, intrinsic motivation involves the inner longing of a student to perform well and follow rules. Thus, intrinsic motivation does not rely on material things in order to motivate students.

Although material things can motivate students to learn, research show that it is not long lasting. Thus, teachers should develop intrinsic modalities of motivating students to learn. For example, in order to motivate students to learn, a teacher should praise students whenever they perform well or portray excellent behavior and ethics, particularly before other students.

Although this appears like an extrinsic motivator, it provides a positive feedback that is imperative in boosting the student’s echelon of intrinsic motivation. Thus, new educators should praise students effectively in order to motivate them to learn. (Brophy, 40-44).

Teachers should ensure that they create lesson plans that increase intrinsic motivation in students. For example, before engaging in a new concept, a teacher should take some time to dwell on the previous learnt concepts.

This will enable students to connect their individual lives with the reading materials. Additionally, teachers should use recognizable examples whenever they engage in new concepts thus, making learning so interesting to students.

Another way that a teacher can apply to motivate students to learn is by encouraging students discover new ideas and ask questions on what they did not grasp well. Sometimes, students fear asking questions in class fearing embarrassment. Clearly, this affects the intrinsic motivation of students negatively.

Thus, teachers should create a good classroom environment where learners feel free to ask questions that will motivate them to learn. Do not tolerate malevolent comments and nasty hilarity in the classroom, as some students feel embarrassed. Moreover, teachers should cultivate a sense of unity among students, which will enable them learn from one another whenever they get involved in learning activities (Brophy, 45-48).

Research shows that teachers have a positive impact in motivating students to learn. Thus, the motivation of students to learn largely depends on educators. From the instructor’s zeal to relevance of materials to organization of the course, teachers can motivate students to learn and achieve better grades.

Barbara, Gross. Motivating Students. 1999. Web.

Brophy, Jere. Synthesis of Research for Motivating Students to Learn. Educational Leadership, 45(2), 1987, 40-48.

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Motivation Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on motivation.

Everyone suggests other than the person lack motivation, or directly suggests the person remain motivated. But, no one ever tells what is the motivation of how one can stay motivated. Motivation means to face the obstacle and find an inspiration that helps you to go through tough times. In addition, it helps you to move further in life.

Meaning of Motivation

Motivation is something that cannot be understood with words but with practice. It means to be moved by something so strongly that it becomes an inspiration for you. Furthermore, it is a discipline that helps you to achieve your life goals and also helps to be successful in life .

Besides, it the most common practice that everyone does whether it is your boss in office or a school teacher or a university professor everyone motivates others in a way or other.

Role of Motivation

It is a strong tool that helps to get ahead in life. For being motivated we need a driving tool or goal that keeps us motivated and moves forward. Also, it helps in being progressive both physically and mentally.

Moreover, your goal does not be to big and long term they can be small and empowering. Furthermore, you need the right mindset to be motivated.

Besides, you need to push your self towards your goal no one other than you can push your limit. Also, you should be willing to leave your comfort zone because your true potential is going to revel when you leave your comfort zone.

Types of Motivation

Although there are various types of motivation according to me there are generally two types of motivation that are self- motivation and motivation by others.

Self-motivation- It refers to the power of someone to stay motivated without the influence of other situations and people. Furthermore, self-motivated people always find a way to reason and strength to complete a task. Also, they do not need other people to encourage them to perform a challenging task.

Motivation by others- This motivation requires help from others as the person is not able to maintain a self-motivated state. In this, a person requires encouragement from others. Also, he needs to listen to motivational speeches, a strong goal and most importantly and inspiration.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Importance of Motivation

Motivation is very important for the overall development of the personality and mind of the people. It also puts a person in action and in a competitive state. Furthermore, it improves efficiency and desire to achieve the goal. It leads to stability and improvement in work.

Above all, it satisfies a person’s needs and to achieve his/her goal. It helps the person to fight his negative attitude. The person also tries to come out of his/her comfort zone so that she/ he can achieve the goal.

To conclude, motivation is one of the key elements that help a person to be successful. A motivated person tries to push his limits and always tries to improve his performance day by day. Also, the person always gives her/his best no matter what the task is. Besides, the person always tries to remain progressive and dedicated to her/his goals.

FAQs about Motivation Essay

Q.1 Define what is motivation fit. A.1 This refers to a psychological phenomenon in which a person assumes or expects something from the job or life but gets different results other than his expectations. In a profession, it is a primary criterion for determining if the person will stay or leave the job.

Q.2 List some best motivators. A.2 some of the best motivators are:

• Inspiration
• Fear of failure
• Power of Rejection
• Don’t pity your self
• Be assertive
• Stay among positive and motivated people
• Be calm and visionary

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Intrinsic Motivation — Importance of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation for Students

Importance of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation for Students

• Categories: Intrinsic Motivation Motivation Student

About this sample

Words: 428 |

Published: Aug 30, 2022

Words: 428 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

• Intrinsic Motivation During Educational Process
• Extrinsic Motivation During Educational Process

Works Cited:

Intrinsic motivation during educational process, extrinsic motivation during educational process.

• Ezeanu, E. (2011). Generalization: A Key Element of Human Thinking. Art of Wellbeing.
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• Vorauer, J. D., & Kumhyr, S. M. (2001). Is this about you or me? Self-versus other-directed judgments and feelings in response to intergroup interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(2), 476-493.

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The Vital Importance and Benefits of Motivation

Otherwise, we would have been born as a sloth or a panda bear (no offense to these lovely creatures).

It is in our nature to strive, to want, and to move in a direction of something we desire and deem valuable.

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

William James

This article explains the reasons why understanding human motivation is important and well worth the time spent on learning to increase it. It lists many benefits of healthy motivation and distinguishes the types of motivation that are more effective in dealing with our complex and rapidly changing environment.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques to create lasting behavior change.

This Article Contains:

Why is motivation important, benefits of motivation, extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation.

• Self-Motivation

A Motivational Quote

11 top motivational videos, a take-home message.

Why is it important to understand motivation? Why do we care about what people want and why they want it? How about because it can improve our lives.

Understanding motivation gives us many valuable insights into human nature. It explains why we set goals, strive for achievement and power, why we have desires for psychological intimacy and biological sex, why we experience emotions like fear, anger, and compassion.

Learning about motivation is valuable because it helps us understand where motivation comes from, why it changes, what increases and decreases it, what aspects of it can and cannot be changed, and helps us answer the question of why some types of motivation are more beneficial than others.

Motivation reflects something unique about each one of us and allows us to gain valued outcomes like improved performance, enhanced wellbeing, personal growth, or a sense of purpose. Motivation is a pathway to change our way of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Finding ways to increase motivation is crucial because it allows us to change behavior, develop competencies, be creative, set goals, grow interests, make plans, develop talents, and boost engagement. Applying motivational science to everyday life helps us to motivate employees, coach athletes, raise children, counsel clients, and engage students.

The benefits of motivation are visible in how we live our lives. As we are constantly responding to changes in our environment, we need motivation to take corrective action in the face of fluctuating circumstances. Motivation is a vital resource that allows us to adapt, function productively, and maintain wellbeing in the face of a constantly changing stream of opportunities and threats.

I have learned from my mistakes, and I am sure I can repeat them exactly.

There are many health benefits of increased motivation. Motivation as a psychological state is linked to our physiology. When our motivation is depleted, our functioning and wellbeing suffer.

Some studies show that when we feel helpless in exerting control for example, we tend to give up quickly when challenged (Peterson, Maier, & Seligman, 1993). Others have proven than when we find ourselves coerced, we lose access to our inner motivational resources (Deci, 1995).

High-quality motivation allows us to thrive, while its deficit causes us to flounder. Societal benefits of increased motivation are visible in greater student engagement, better job satisfaction in employees, flourishing relationships, and institutions.

But unhealthy fluctuations in motivation also explain addiction, gambling, risk-taking, and excessive internet usage. The motivation that underlies addictive behaviors shares the neurological underpinning associated with dopamine centric rewards system and tricky inner working of the pleasure cycle.

This makes it challenging and often difficult to change behavior in situations involving addiction. See our article on Motivational Interviewing to learn more about the stages of change and motivational interviewing techniques practitioners use to motivate clients to change unwanted behaviors.

The distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation goes back to Deci and Ryan’s (2008) Self-Determination Theory of motivation.

Extrinsic motivation involves engaging in an activity because it leads to a tangible reward or avoids punishment.

Intrinsic motivation involves doing something because it is both interesting and deeply satisfying. We perform such activities for the positive feelings they create. Studies have consistently shown that intrinsic motivation leads to increased persistence, greater psychological wellbeing, and enhanced performance.

Deci and Ryan (2008) assume that humans are naturally self-motivated, curious, and interested, but the right conditions must be in place to be intrinsically motivated.

The three basic and universal psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness, and competence are foundational for human flourishing and optimal motivation, according to Susan Fowler (2019).

Satisfying the need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence leads to engaged, passionate individuals doing high-quality work in any domain. Therefore, we share tips and ideas for building the ideal working environment to promote intrinsic motivation.

Is any source of motivation more potent or more effective in motivating people than the other? Are people primarily motivated by internal motives or by external rewards, or are people driven equally by internal and external triggers?

Human motives are complex, and as social creatures, we are embedded into our environment, and social groups are often an important source of influence through the presence of rewards and considerations of potential consequences of our choices on those around us.

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) explains how external events like rewards or praise sometimes produce positive effects on motivation, but at other times can be quite detrimental (Ryan & Deci, 2008). The hidden cost of certain types of rewards is that they undermine intrinsic motivation by decreasing the sense of autonomy and competence.

There is a tradeoff between satisfying and undermining the need for competence when we offer rewards (Reeve, 2018). This form of extrinsic motivation also can undermine our sense of autonomy since rewards are used for both purposes: to control behavior and to affirm someone of their level of competence. We want to reward in a way that encourages competence without threatening the sense of autonomy.

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.

Indira Gandhi

Rewards should be reserved for activities that are not interesting and should be given when not expected. Praise is preferable to monetary rewards, for example, as it supports psychological needs and is of more lasting value (Reeve, 2018).

Similarly to rewards, imposed goals were found to narrow focus and impair creativity. Studies show that imposed goal setting increases unethical behavior and risk-taking, narrows focus, and decreases cooperation, intrinsic motivation, and creativity. This is an excellent example of goals gone wild (Pink, 2009).

Much of contemporary research shows that intrinsic motivation is more effective more often and of more enduring value. In some circumstances, however, extrinsic motivation may be more appropriate, as in the case of uninteresting activities.

It is also possible to make use of incentives more effective by encouraging people to identify with it and integrate it into their sense of self (Reeve, 2018). To give an example of identifying and integrating extrinsic motives respectively would be like describing the difference between saying: “ I do this because it’s the right thing to do ” versus “ I do this because I am a good person. ”

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Intrinsic motivation is inherent in the activities we perform for pure enjoyment or satisfaction. We engage in intrinsically motivated behavior because we want to experience the activity for its own sake. Unlike extrinsically motivated behavior, it is freely chosen (Deci, & Ryan, 1985).

Intrinsic motivation can be driven by curiosity, which is linked to a desire to know and motivates us to learn and explore our environment for answers (Loewenstein, 1994). Intrinsic motivation can also come from the need to actively interact and control our environment. The effectance motivation theory explains how intrinsic motivation drives us to develop competence (White, 1959).

Finally, Allport’s concept of the functional autonomy of motives explains how behavior originally performed for extrinsic reasons can become something to perform for its own sake (1937).

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

William Jennings Bryan

When it comes to intrinsic motivation, it is important to distinguish between activities that are intrinsically motivating and the development of what Csikszentmihalyi calls autotelic self (1975, 1988). The term autotelic is derived from the Greek word auto, which means self and telos meaning goal.

Intrinsic activities are self-contained because performing them is a reward in itself. The autotelic experience produced by an intrinsic activity makes us pay attention to what we are engaged in for its own sake and away from consequences. When the experience is intrinsically rewarding, life is justified in the present and not tied to some hypothetical future gain.

The most important characteristic of the autotelic experience is its intrinsically motivated nature. Professor Csíkszentmihályi, who coined the terms flow, defined this optimal experience as a pursuit of enjoyable, interesting activities for the sake of the experience itself, where the satisfaction derived from the action itself is the motivational factor (1990).

An autotelic self actively seeks out intrinsically motivating activities. A person who is said to have an autotelic personality values opportunities where she or he can experience complete absorption in the tasks at hand. They transform the self by making it more complex. A complex self has these five characteristics:

• Clarity of goals
• Self as the center of control
• Choice and knowing that life is not happening to you
• Commitment and care for what you are doing
• Challenge and increased craving for novelty (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1988).

Autotelic self, according to Csikszentmihalyi, tends to create order out of chaos because it sees a tragedy as an opportunity to rise to the occasion and tends to focus all the psychic energy on overcoming the challenge created by the defeat (1990). Cultivating autotelic personality is, therefore, a worthwhile endeavor as it breeds resilience.

Falko and Engeser, in their recent study on motivation and flow, used the term activity related motivation as a substitute for intrinsic motivation to speak more specifically to the “Extended Cognitive Model of Motivation” (2018).

They measured various activity-related incentives in qualitative and quantitative ways and found the experience of flow to represent one of the most intensely studied. Positive incentives stemming from learning goal orientation, experience of competence, interest, and involvement lead to us engaging in activities purely for the enjoyment of it (Falko & Engeser, 2018).

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

Seneca, 4 B.C.–A.D. 65

Professor Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, who developed the theory of flow, argues that happiness depends on inner harmony, not on the control we can exert over our environment or circumstances, and therefore describes flow as an optimal state of being that brings order to consciousness.

He discovered, in his years of research into creativity and productivity and interviews with people who were deemed successful in a wide range of professions and many of whom were Nobel Prize winners, that the secret to their optimal performance was their ability to enter the flow state frequently and deliberately.

They would describe feeling a sense of competence and control, a loss of self-consciousness, and such intense absorption in the task at hand that they would lose track of time.

Many of the most accomplished and creative people are at their peak when they experience “ a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment; between stimulus and response; or between past, present, and future ” (Csíkszentmihályi, 1997, p. 37).

The contemporary research on motivation shows that intrinsic motivation that originates from internal motives is often experienced as more immediate and potent than extrinsic motivation.

Today we know that intrinsic motivation affects the quality of behavior more, such as school work, while extrinsic motivation influences the quantity of behavior more (Deckers, 2014).

It has also been shown that intrinsically motivated goal pursuit has greater long-term outcomes because it satisfies our psychological needs for autonomy and competence, and in turn, creates more positive states which reinforce the positive feedback loop and increase the likelihood of repetition (Reeve, 2018).

Self-motivation

No one knows more about self-motivation that the authors of self-determination theory . Based on the assumption that we have an innate tendency for personal growth toward psychological integration, the self-determination theory of Ryan and Deci proposed that all behavior can be understood as lying along a continuum of external regulation, or heteronomy and true self-regulation, or autonomy (2008).

Ryan and Deci distinguish varying degrees of external motivation based on the level of autonomy present while engaging in the desired behavior. On one end, there is the external regulation of behavior where rewards are used purely to control behavior, and compliance occurs to avoid consequences and is defined as one where there is no autonomy present.

They explain that while external regulation, as in the form of rewards, can control behavior, it does not constitute motivation per se.

In all human affairs there is always an end in view—of pleasure, or honor, or advantage.

Polybius, 125 B.C

We can also be motivated by the avoidance of guilt and by the need to build self-esteem. This form of self-regulation of behavior is characterized by low autonomy and a language of “ I should ” and “ I have to .”

When we are motivated by the contingencies related to our self-esteem and impose pressures on ourselves for fear of shame or failure, we are said to have introjected regulation. This form of regulation, while more effective than external motivation, remains ambivalent and unstable because it is accompanied by inner conflict, tension, and negative emotions (Ryan & Deci, 2008).

These are closely related to what is known in wellbeing research as prevention focus orientation, where emotional regulation is driven by security needs and avoidance (Kahneman, Diner, & Schwartz, 1999).

When we consciously accept behavior as important, and when we truly value the outcome, this provides strong incentives and leads to identification. This more self-determined form of regulation is particularly important when it comes to the maintenance of behaviors that involve activities that are not inherently interesting or enjoyable.

When we identify with the regulation AND coordinate with other core values and believes, we are said to have the most autonomous form of extrinsic motivation – integrated regulation. This form of regulation occurs when those values become a part of the self and become congruent with one’s sense of identity.

That leads to the most positive and enduring outcomes of external motivation because a person has archived full autonomy (Reeve, 2018).

This form of regulation is very much like intrinsic motivation because we engage in the behavior willingly. It is entirely self-determined, but unlike intrinsic motivation, it does not have to involve activities that are enjoyable or interesting. This is particularly important to behavioral change in clinical settings where the level of internalization and integration for non-intrinsically motivated behavior is required.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

George Eliot

When it comes to self-motivation in behavioral change, the autonomy versus control orientation can also play a role in maintaining behavioral change over time. Autonomy-oriented individuals generally succeed in maintaining their long-term changes in behavior (e.g., weight loss, smoking cessation), whereas control-oriented individuals generally fail to maintain such behavior change over time.

Autonomy causality orientation is closely linked to prevention focus orientation, where emotional regulation is driven by the possibility of positive outcomes and approach motivation (Kahneman, Diner, & Schwartz, 1999).

Autonomy-oriented individuals see everything in their environment and their responses to it as a matter of their own choice, and this perspective can be empowering and a great source of intrinsic motivation.

They tend to scan their environment for opportunities, they take initiative, set their own goals, and they take an equal interest in their environment as well as their own inner experience. They have an internal locus of control and behave with a strong sense of volition. They understand that their focus determines their reality, and they have a sense of shaping their destiny (Reeve, 2018).

Autonomy causality orientation characterizes individuals with a specific mindset where they rely on internal guides to regulate behavior in contrast to those who are control-oriented and attend to external guides like social queues and environmental incentives — this locus of control effects motivation and perseverance.

When we feel our behavior is something we initiate and regulate, we can make and sustain changes. This is in contrast to those, who at the other end of the spectrum, take on the victim of circumstances mentality (Reeve, 2018).

See our blog post 19 Best Books on Self-Discipline and Self-Control .

Everybody Knows: You can’t be all things to all people. You can’t do all things at once. You can’t do all things equally well. You can’t do all things better than everyone else. Your humanity is showing just like everyone else’s.

So: You have to find out who you are, and be that. You have to decide what comes first, and do that. You have to discover your strengths, and use them. You have to learn not to compete with others, Because no one else is in the contest of *being you*.

Then: You will have learned to accept your own uniqueness. You will have learned to set priorities and make decisions. You will have learned to live with your limitations. You will have learned to give yourself the respect that is due. And you’ll be a most vital mortal.

Dare To Believe: That you are a wonderful, unique person. That you are a once-in-all-history event. That it’s more than a right, it’s your duty, to be who you are. That life is not a problem to solve, but a gift to cherish. And you’ll be able to stay one up on what used to get you down.

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There are dozens of motivational videos and channels on YouTube, but unfortunately we could not list them all. Instead, we picked a few we see as top motivational videos.

In order to achieve great things, you must first believe in yourself and then have a dream big enough to motivate you.

2. The Last Lecture

Even if faced with terminal cancer, it’s possible to find and celebrate the joy in your life.

3. Remember Me

When all is said and done, being human, exactly who you are, is more amazing than all the technology in the world.

Don’t let yourself be hypnotized by technology. Be in the moment and experience the wonder of direct connections.

5. Why We Do What We Do

If you understand why you’re motivated and inspired, it’s easier to become motivated and inspired. Tony Robbins explains it all.

6. Amazing Grace

The classic spiritual hymn rendered a cappella by the amazing and always creative Jesse Campbell.

7. Never Quit

Regardless of the obstacles that life throws your way, if you continue to pursue your dreams you will get results.

8. The Surprising Science of Happiness

Dan Gilbert challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want and explains how to feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.

9. Unbroken

Dedication to your goals keeps you moving forward, even if you encounter obstacles.

10. How Bad Do You Want It?

Sometimes it’s just a matter of wanting success so badly that you’ll do whatever it takes to win.

11. Excuses

Even if you’ve got an uphill battle to fight, you keep fighting. Because if you just give up, you’ve lost.

Context matters, and it is not a question of which type of motivation is more important, but instead, awareness of where we lack the necessary balance to create the ideal catalyst for goal achievement.

The significant problems of today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them.

Albert Einstein

External events can become prompts for the desired behavior and can help to reinforce it, but to notice those we need to be in positive mental and emotional states, away from the sense of learned helplessness, as defined by Dr. Martin Seligman .

Often our goals must also represent something of value to us and satisfy our psychological needs as defined by Ryan and Deci’s self-determination theory, especially to create the energy necessary to persist (Reeve, 2018).

Do you have a story of your ideal catalyst for goal pursuit? Share it with us here.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free .

• Beck, R. C. (2004). Motivation: Theories and principles (5th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Csíkszentmihályi, M. (1997). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life . New York, NY: Basic Books.
• Deci, E. L., Olafsen, A. H., & Ryan, R. M. (2017). Self-determination theory in work organizations: State of the science . Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior.
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2008). Self-determination theory: A macrotheory of human motivation, development, and health.  Canadian psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 49(3) , 182.
• Deckers, L. (2014). Motivation: Biological, psychological, and environmental (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
• DeCatanzaro, D. A. (1999). Motivation and emotion: Evolutionary, physiological, developmental, and social perspectives . Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
• Edwards, D. C. (1999). Motivation and emotion: Evolutionary, physiological, cognitive, and social influences . Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
• Ferguson, E. D. (2000). Motivation: A biosocial and cognitive integration of motivation and emotion . Oxford University Press, New York.
• Fowler, S. (2019). Master your motivation: Three scientific truths for achieving your goals. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
• Franken, R. E. (2006). Human motivation (6th ed.). Wadsworth Thomson Learning, Belmont, CA.
• Gallwey, W. T., Hanzelik, E., & Horton, J. (2009). The Inner Game of Stress: Outsmart Life’s Challenges and Fulfill Your Potential [Kindle iOS version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
• Gollwitzer, P. M. & Bargh, J. A. (1996). The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behavior . Guilford Press, New York/
• Gorman (*). Motivation and emotion
• Heckhausen, J. & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Motivation and self-regulation across the life span . Cambridge University Press, New York.
• Kahneman, D., Diener, E., & Schwartz, N. (1999). Well-Being: Foundations of Hedonic Psychology . New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Nunez, R. & Freeman, W. J. (1999). Reclaiming cognition: The primacy of action, intention, and emotion . Imprint Academic, Thorverton, UK.
• Peterson, C., Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1993). Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Petri, H. L., & Govern, J. M. (2013). Motivation: Theory, research, and applications (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
• Reeve, J. (2015). Understanding motivation and emotion (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
• Sansone, C. & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: The search for optimal motivation and performance . Academic Press, San Diego, CA.
• Sheldon, K. M. (Ed.) (2010). Current directions in motivation and emotion . Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
• Wagner, H. (1999). The psychobiology of human motivation . Routledge, New York.

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The article is well-thought! I appreciate the content which has nourished me a lot. Good bless that intelligence!

I am in absolute awe – fantastic culmination of fields of study to deliver a hard punching, thought provoking article👌Inspiring!

Good article. Keep it up!

Greetings! Great explanation i learned about the meaning of motivation wonderful words. Regards mentor.

Excellent description or explanation or importance of motivation thanks beata spider love you from Kashmir…

This is great!!! Thanks!!!

Everyone needs motivation, the way you explained the benefits of motivation is great. Nicely written and well explained. Good work.

This collection of videos is immensely valuable! I was glad to be reminded of the power of the autotelic self. As I deliver my lectures from home this week, the topic of resilience in the face of adversity has been a continuous theme in our discussions. How timely to receive this wonderful resource, thank you Beata. 🙂

Good stuff. Keep me posted.

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Teacher motivation and learning outcomes

Providing a quality education for all lies at the heart of the Education 2030 Agenda. Achieving this goal will require ‘well-qualified, trained, adequately remunerated, and motivated teachers’ (UNESCO, 2016: 30). However, global trends indicate that teacher motivation has been falling in recent years, leading to teacher shortages (Crehan, 2016; UNESCO IICBA, 2017). With motivation playing an important role in teacher performance, reversing this trend is critical to maintaining quality teaching and thus positively impacting student learning outcomes (TTF, 2016; World Bank, 2018). Motivating teachers with the proper incentives is key to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 targets 4.1 (ensuring all girls and boys complete a quality education) and 4.c (substantially increasing the supply of qualified teachers) (United Nations, 2015).

What we know

Both high- and low-income countries around the world face issues in both attracting and retaining quality teachers, due largely to poor motivation and incentive structures (Crehan, 2016; Han and Yin, 2016; UNESCO IICBA, 2017). Data show that teacher salaries have fallen compared to other occupations with similar educational requirements, leading the profession to suffer a drop in prestige (GMR, 2015; UNESCO, 2019b; World Bank, 2018). In many low-income countries, teachers are facing rising pupil/teacher ratios (PTRs) and deteriorating working conditions due to increased student enrolment rates (UNESCO IICBA, 2017; World Bank, 2018). Additional factors contributing to lowered teacher motivation include lack of support from leadership, poor accountability, inadequate living conditions, or violence in schools (TTF, 2016; World Bank, 2018; UNESCO, 2019b; UNESCO IICBA, 2017). Such issues may lead to increased teacher absenteeism and attrition, meaning students receive fewer hours of instruction (Ramachandran et al., 2018; UNESCO IICBA, 2017).

With teacher motivation driven by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, finding the proper incentives to influence them is complex and multifaceted (Crehan, 2016; Martin, 2018). While many systems have experimented with motivating teachers through bonus pay for meeting specific targets, results have been mixed for such direct extrinsic motivation (Crehan, 2016; Education Commission, 2019; World Bank, 2018). Instead, research shows that allowing teachers more agency to work towards different promotion opportunities can offer a strong incentive to remain in the profession (Cabus, Haelermans, and Flink, 2020; Calvert, 2016; Cordingley et al., 2019; Tournier et al., 2019). Measures that improve teachers’ professionalism, such as collaboration and continuous professional development, have also been shown to improve motivation (Cordingley et al., 2019; Education Commission, 2019; Tournier et al., 2019). School leaders can play a vital role in inspiring teachers, by offering support, consistent standards, and effective evaluation and accountability structures. Such support from school leaders can further improve professionalism and reduce rates of teacher absenteeism (Education Commission, 2019; Martin, 2018; TTF, 2016).

Lack of financial resources

In countries where salaries place teachers at or below the poverty line, or where a teacher’s salary is well below that of professions requiring similar levels of qualifications, research shows that few other policy options can improve motivation among teachers without low pay being addressed first (Tournier et al., 2019; UNESCO, 2019b). Even so, many governments do not have resources to spare for salary increases. For most low- and middle-income countries, teacher salaries already account for 75 per cent or more of the education budget (World Bank, 2018). As such, ministries of education are faced with difficult decisions of whether to pay higher salaries to fewer teachers – and thus increase PTRs – or pay lower salaries to a higher number of teachers and keep ratios at more manageable levels (UNESCO, 2019b).

Inadequate teaching and learning environment

Poor working conditions also affect teacher motivation. Limited education budgets may also lead to insufficient resources for school infrastructure or teaching materials. Data indicate, for example, that approximately 25 per cent of primary schools globally do not have access to clean drinking water or single-sex sanitation facilities (UIS, TTF, and GEMR Team, 2019). Shortages of equipment such as desks, books, computers, and other teaching materials can frustrate teachers and cause drops in motivation (TTF, 2016; UNESCO IICBA, 2017; World Bank, 2018).

Cultural and societal perceptions

Findings from the Global Teacher Status 2018 study suggest that there is a correlation between teacher status and student learning outcomes in a country (Dolton et al., 2018). In many countries, teaching is considered a profession of last resort and does not enjoy the same esteem as other occupations requiring similar levels of education. This makes recruiting and retaining quality candidates especially difficult. Young teachers often leave the profession after only a few years to seek opportunities in other fields offering higher pay or more prestige (IBF International Consulting, 2013). Improving incentives to attract and retain teachers that are better qualified can shift these views, but changing perceptions can take a long time and requires ongoing efforts (World Bank, 2018).

Weak teacher management structures

Many countries have weak teacher management systems. School leaders often do not have suitable training or background experience to provide teachers with proper support or oversight (Chiriboga Montalvo and Pinto Haro, 2019; Tournier et al., 2019; Yimam, 2019). This can lead to teachers losing trust in their leadership and the established system, lowering expectations and motivation (Cordingley et al., 2019). Leaders who recruit or assess teachers based on patronage or political leanings also raise frustrations and reduce confidence in the validity of the system (Education Commission, 2019).

Limited career flexibility

Many teacher career structures are based on a single salary scale, where teachers earn promotions based solely on academic qualifications or years of experience (Chimier and Tournier, 2018 Crehan, 2016; UNESCO, 2019b). However, research shows that this model can stifle teacher agency and reduce motivation (Crehan, 2016; Tournier et al., 2019). Career structures offering more options and choice can improve teacher motivation, but such structures are complicated to implement and typically lead to upheaval in established systems (Chiriboga Montalvo and Pinto Haro, 2019; Sayed and de Kock, 2019; Tournier et al., 2019).

Equity and inclusion

While women make up the majority of the global teaching force, they are underrepresented at the secondary school level, as well as in school leadership and management positions (UNESCO, 2018, 2019a). This lack of opportunity for career progression can have demotivating effects on women teachers seeking professional growth and advancement. In OECD countries, women teachers face a 13.5 per cent wage gap in comparison to men (OECD, 2018). Other factors that lower women teachers’ motivation, especially in displacement or extremely rural settings, include lack of suitable housing, physical safety concerns, and sexual harassment (UNESCO, 2018, 2019a). Such issues can result in a lack of incentives for women to work in such difficult environments. With women teachers and school heads shown to act as role models and improve retention of girls in school in rural and low-income settings, this can have a potentially detrimental effect on girls’ education (UNESCO, 2018, 2019a).

Low-resource schools

School environments and working conditions tend to be worst in rural or low-resource areas. Because of this, these schools have higher rates of teacher turnover and absenteeism, causing students who are already in disadvantaged circumstances to face lower learning opportunities (UNESCO, 2019b; World Bank, 2018). Without providing proper incentives to motivate teachers to work in these areas, the gaps between students in low- and high-resource schools will continue to widen.

Policy and planning

Establish basic conditions for teachers.

While it is recommended that countries devote six per cent of their gross domestic product to education to meet Education for All requirements, only 41 countries in the world currently do so (UNESCO, 2019b). Providing competitive salaries for teachers does not solve every motivation problem, but it is important to establish at least a basic level of financial incentive. It is also important to ensure regularity of pay. If governments cannot designate enough money for teachers to earn a competitive salary, other measures offer little hope of improving teacher motivation (Tournier et al., 2019; UNESCO, 2019b).

Widen opportunities for career progression?

When developing teacher career structures, diverse options for promotion can provide teachers with more self-determination (Chimier and Tournier, 2018; Crehan, 2016). This could include horizontal mobility (earning promotions through more senior teaching positions) as well as traditional vertical mobility that leads to leadership and management positions (Tournier et al., 2019). In conjunction with this, incentives for each promotion level to include salary increases and extra responsibilities could be considered (Martin, 2018; Tournier et al., 2019). Such career progression helps improve teacher motivation and retention by creating goals for teachers to strive towards instead of merely waiting a set amount of time for their next promotion (UNESCO, 2019b). Teacher pay for performance schemes have been found to improve student achievement in some contexts; however, in order for such schemes to function correctly, other mechanisms need to be in place such as a mechanism to assess teacher performance and student learning, as well as a salary scale to make such incentives relevant (World Bank, 2013: 9).

Accountability and feedback structures

School heads cannot expect to have motivated and high-performing teachers without setting out proper guidance and expectations. Written standards with indicators of success to strive towards can provide teachers with direction and motivation (UNESCO, 2019b). Policies should also include a focus on leaders providing oversight and feedback to foster teacher improvement (Martin, 2018; UNESCO IICBA, 2017). It is important to strike a balance between teacher accountability and the support they receive through more formative evaluation (very often the former takes precedence over the latter), and separate as much as possible to ensure trust. Professional and participatory accountability mechanisms are interesting strategies to nurture and sustain professional growth and motivation among teachers (Tournier et al., 2019).

Introduce more collaboration and professional development

By purposely incorporating opportunities for collaboration and quality professional development, well-designed teacher policies can build professionalism (Tournier et al., 2019). When teachers work together in a collaborative and mutually supportive environment, their motivation and confidence can begin to build (Crehan, Tournier, and Chimier, 2019; Education Commission, 2019; STiR Education, n.d.). Teacher networks have been found to increase the amount of time teachers spend in the classroom, leading to gains in actual teaching time (Jeevan, 2017). Collaboration can lead directly to senior teachers providing important professional development for their junior colleagues (Tournier et al., 2019). Professional development should include relevant topics that teachers can use, otherwise it could have a demotivating effect by seeming to teachers to be a waste of time and resources.

Increase teacher inputs to leadership decisions

To better encourage teachers to feel they have a stake in the education system, they should be involved in decision-making processes whenever possible. Seeking teacher input at both the school and system level can lead to higher feelings of agency and improve overall motivation (Calvert, 2016). Whether deciding new policies at the ministry level or simply shifting the focus of a school’s priorities, teacher input should be valued and sought out.

Plans and policies

• Kenya: Teachers Service Commission strategic plan (2019–2023)
• Cambodia: Teacher Policy Action Plan (2015–2020)
• Pakistan: Teacher Education Strategy (2018)
• OECD. Teachers matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. Pointers for policy development  (2011)
• UNESCO. Teacher Policy Development Guide  (2019)
• World Bank. Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) – Teachers  (2020)
• VVOB. Professional learning communities: A guideline for South African schools  (2015)

Cabus, S.; Haelermans, C.; Flink, I. 2020. Evaluating a certificate programme on educational mentorship and coaching leading to induction activities for new teachers in Rwandan primary schools. Leuven: HIVA-KU.

Calvert, L. 2016. Moving from compliance to agency: What teachers need to make professional learning work . Oxford, OH: Learning Forward and NCTAF.

Chimier, C.; Tournier, B. 2018. ‘Three initiatives to foster teacher motivation’. Learning Portal [blog], 21 November. Paris: IIEP-UNESCO.

Chiriboga Montalvo, C.; Pinto Haro, J. 2019. Reforma de la carrera docente en Ecuador. Paris: IIEP-UNESCO.

Cordingley, P.; Crisp, B.; Johns, P.; Perry, T.; Campbell, C.; Bell, M.; Bradbury, M. 2019. Constructing teachers’ professional identities. Brussels: Education International . Brussels: Education International.

Crehan, L. 2016. Exploring the impact of career models on teacher motivation . Paris: IIEP-UNESCO.

Crehan, L.; Tournier, B.; Chimier, C. 2019. Teacher career pathways in New York City. Paris: IIEP-UNESCO.

Dolton, P.; Marcenaro, O.; de Vries, R.; She, P.-W. 2018. Global teacher status index 2018. London: Varkey Foundation.

Education Commission. 2019. Transforming the education workforce: Learning teams for a learning generation . New York: Education Commission.

GMR (Education for All Global Monitoring Report). 2015. The challenge of teacher shortage and quality: Have we succeeded in getting enough quality teachers into classrooms?  Policy paper 19.

Han, J.; Yin, H. 2016. ‘Teacher motivation: Definition, research development and implications for teachers’. In: Cogent Education, 3(1) .

IBF International Consulting. 2013. Study on policy measures to improve the attractiveness of the teaching profession in Europe - Volume 2. Luxembourg: European Union.

Jeevan, S. 2017. ‘From carrots and sticks to lightbulb moments’ . Learning Portal [blog], 23 August. Paris: IIEP-UNESCO.

Martin, J. 2018. Putting the spotlight on teacher performance. UNICEF Think Piece Series: Teacher Performance. Nairobi: UNICEF.

OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). 2018. OECD data: Gender wage gap. Paris: OECD.

Ramachandran, V.; Beteille, T.; Linden, T.; Dey, S.; Goyal, S.; Chatterjee, P.G. 2018. Getting the right teachers into the right schools: Managing India’s teacher workforce . Washington, DC: World Bank Group.

Sayed, Y.; de Kock, T. 2019. Teacher career pathways in South Africa . Paris: IIEP-UNESCO.

STiR Education. No date. Our approach. Accessed 13 January 2020.

Tournier, B.; Chimier, C.; Childress, D.; Raudonyte, I. 2019. Teacher career reforms: Learning from experience. Paris: IIEP-UNESCO.

TTF (International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030). 2016. Teacher motivation: What do we know and what do we need to achieve Education 2030 agenda? Report on the 9th Policy Dialogue Forum. Paris: TTF.

UIS (UNESCO Institute for Statistics); TTF (International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030); GEMR (Global Education Monitoring Report) Team. 2019. World Teachers’ Day 2019: Fact sheet. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO. 2016. Incheon declaration and framework for action for the implementation for sustainable development goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning. Paris: UNESCO.

––––. 2018. Global education monitoring report gender review 2018: Meeting our commitments to gender equality in education . Paris: UNESCO.

––––. 2019a. Global education monitoring report 2019: gender report: Building bridges for gender equality . Paris: UNESCO.

––––. 2019b. Teacher policy development guide. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO IICBA (UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa). 2017. Teacher support and motivation framework for Africa: Emerging patterns . Addis Ababa: UNESCO IICBA.

United Nations. 2015. Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. New York: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

VVOB. No date. Rwanda – Leaders in teaching: Professional development of secondary school leaders and teachers. Accessed 13 January 2020.

World Bank. 2013. What matters most for teacher policies: A framework paper. SABER Working Paper Series no. 4. Washington, DC: World Bank Group.

World Bank. 2018. World development report 2018: Learning to realize education’s promise. Washington, DC: World Bank Group.

Yimam, W. 2019. Teacher career reforms in Ethiopia. Paris: IIEP-UNESCO.

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Enhancing student motivation and achievement in science classrooms through STEM education

• Rommel AlAli 1 ,  ,  , 
• Wardat Yousef 2 , 
• 1. King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia; [email protected]
• 2. Higher Colleges of Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE; [email protected]
• Academic Editor: Ergun Gide
• Received: 06 March 2024 Revised: 19 May 2024 Accepted: 29 May 2024 Published: 03 June 2024
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This qualitative study investigated how science teachers integrate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) into their lessons, focusing on the benefits, challenges, and implementation strategies. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 26 science teachers in public schools in Irbid Governorate, Jordan, during the 2023–2024 academic year. The findings revealed that while teachers generally have a positive attitude toward STEM education, they encountered significant challenges related to inadequate physical resources and time constraints. Additionally, STEM education was shown to promote student engagement in research activities. The study employed a thematic analysis approach to identify, analyze, and report patterns within the data, providing a detailed account of the themes that emerged from the teachers' experiences. The study underscores the importance of addressing these challenges to facilitate the effective integration of STEM into science education.

• STEM education ,
• science teachers ,
• qualitative research ,
• implementation challenges ,
• student engagement

Citation: Rommel AlAli, Wardat Yousef. Enhancing student motivation and achievement in science classrooms through STEM education[J]. STEM Education, 2024, 4(3): 183-198. doi: 10.3934/steme.2024012

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• Figure 1. Integration of STEM into science and mathematics classes