Emerging Trends and Roles

New Insights into Motivation in the Classroom

Motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic, that is it can come from an internal passion, interest, or sense of accomplishment, or it can come from external expectations, or comparisons to role models. Both intrinsic and extrinsic have their pros and cons. Intrinsic motivation is deep and long lasting, but can take a very long time to instill in a student. Extrinsic motivation is easily instilled, but short lived.

Strategies to help motivate students:

Be a role model: Teachers are the most common role models who inspire their students to be passionate about a subject. If the teacher is lacking passion for the subject there is no doubt that the students will be un-motivated to learn as well.

Know your students: Knowing your students on a personal level has many benefits; one being that you can personalize your teaching techniques to their personality and learning style.

Use real life examples: It helps students understand concepts better when they know why something is important and how they can relate to it.

Use activities: After introducing a new concept, have students apply their new knowledge as soon as possible. Think flipped classroom and do the activity right there in the classroom under your supervision to ensure they understood it correctly.

Set a realistic challenge level: Do not assign work that is too easy or too hard, find the right level of challenge, start out with less challenging activities and slowly increase the level of challenge.

Provide encouraging feedback: Tell students as often as possible how good they are doing and provide additional attention to students who may be struggling more than the others.

Give students control of their learning: Provide students the opportunity to choose topics for assignments that interest them and use self-evaluated assignments to allow students to really own their learning capabilities.

Trends in Classroom Motivation

Motivation is a trend itself, it is a leading criteria for almost all trends in education. The following are trends because they encourage classroom motivation, rather than being a trend in motivation.

Current trends that encourage classroom motivation:

Instilling Intrinsic Motivation

As studies and research have progressed, it is becoming apparent that intrinsic motivation is essential for a motivated learner. Instructors need to take the time to ‘sell’ their subject to their learners and prove themselves as a role model for the students.

Flipped Classrooms

Have students learn material on their own at home through readings and multi-media lessons, and come to class prepared to work on activities with the teachers help.

Provide Opportunities for Choice

Learning is personal to every individual and allowing them to choose topics for their own projects allows them to choose something that interests them.

Role of Motivation in the Classroom

Motivation in the classroom is essential to classroom engagement and also impacts the students ability to learn and retain course content. Understanding the role that motivation has on different students is essential for educators. Every student has a different learning style and are therefore motivated by different ques or senses.

How to motivate students of different learning styles:

Deep Learners: Deep learners are intrinsically motivated and will enjoy taking control of their own learning.

Strategic Learners: Strategic learners are extrinsically motivated, especially by rewards. Use small activities worth marks to encourage their motivation.

Surface Learners: Surface learners are motivated to avoid failure and will provide minimum effort to pass. These students need encouraging feedback and real life examples to help encourage an intrinsic interest in the subject matter.

10 Trends for Personalized Learning in 2014. (2014, January 5). Retrieved from http://www.personalizelearning.com/2014/01/10-trends-for-personalized-learning-in.html

Motivating Students. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/motivating-students/