School Children- Lack of Motivation or Boredom?

Teachers constantly argue that is extremely difficult to keep students motivated and interested in learning. They often have to use rewarding methods such as giving out prizes or in some cases cheering relentlessly.

Community organizers believe that there is not such a thing as “motivating others”. On the other hand, there are ways to help people discover what they can use to motivate themselves.

Edward Deci, a premier researcher and authorities on intrinsic motivation, wrote: “The proper question is not, “how can people motivate others?” but rather, “how can people create the conditions within which others will motivate themselves?."

When parents and teachers unsuccessfully try to motivate students by using their energy. It is often more effective according to Edward Deci to help students discover their motivation by getting challenged to use their own energy.


Why incentives and rewards can be dangerous?

Researchers believe this loss of intrinsic motivation occurs because contingent rewards.— If you do this, then you’ll get something in return-- force people to give some of their autonomy.

Rewards (and punishments) have been found to be successful to a certain degree. However, in getting people to do automated and routing work that can be accomplished simply. For instance, they can result in employees working faster in a specific project line or, in the classroom, students making basic changes in their behavior.

However, rewards can also be damaging in increasing anything that requires higher-order thinking. In addition, everyone expects and needs “baseline rewards”. These are the basics of suitable “compensation.” At school, students might expect fair grades, a caring teacher who provides fairly appealing lessons, or a clean classroom.

For the most part, increasing student's motivation in learning might not be as hard as it sounds. Adjusting a couple of things in the classroom and teaching style can help students to have a fun and productive learning experience.

Explaining. Recent Research shows that many students might do poorly at school or in participation because they do not understand what to do or why they should do it. Teachers should spend more time explaining students why that topic or approach or activity is interesting and worthwhile learning.

Enthusiasm and Care. Enthusiasm makes a world of difference when it comes to teaching. By transmitting enthusiasm, students will be more likely to have a better experience becoming more interested in learning. Care is just as important, students respond with interest and motivation to teachers who appear to be human and caring. Sharing part of themselves with students –anecdotes, small stories and mistakes they made—could help students see teachers as human beings and not as a remote authority figure.

Student Participation. Getting students to participate in activities such as group problem solving exercises, helping the teacher, working with each other, or in some other way getting physically involved in the lesson. For instance, if the lesson is about nature, taking the kids outdoors could be way more effective than looking at pictures.


Inductive Teaching. Presenting examples first allows students to discover, making more sense, generalizing and drawing a conclusion on their own. Moreover, these skills would allow students to maintain interest and increase motivation as well as teaching the skills of analysis and synthesis.

Student’s Needs. Happy. Survival, love, power, fun and freedom are some of the basic needs students have. Designing educational activities to fulfill these needs would motivate students to stay more committed to a learning activity that has value to them.

Visual Learning. Using drawings, diagrams, pictures, charts, graphs, bulleted lists, even 3-D objects can help students anchor the idea to an image. Enabling them to develop a mental framework that will help them to learn better and remember more.

Utilizing the same teaching styles over and over again can surely be a recipe for boredom and discipline problems. Ultimately, is up to educators to think beyond their abilities by exploring different options available to them to engage students into the classroom.

Sources

Ferlazzo, Larry. "Helping Students Motivate Themselves" http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/02/19/helping-students-motivate-themselves-practical-answers-to-classroom-problems/

Sasson, Dorit. "3 Teaching Tips to Motivate High School Students"

http://newteacherresourcecenter.com/2010/09/03/3-teaching-tips-to-motivate-high-school-students/

Shewey, Sarah. "How can we empower kids to reshape the education system?" http://www.ted.com/conversations/1481/how_can_we_empower_kids_to_res.html