Student Motivation to Learn - Essay Example

School-level educational policies should be stress-free, and task-oriented rather than competitive and performance-based. In order to help unmotivated students, a process called attribution retraining is employed that involves modeling, socialization and practice exercises among others. Moreover, other potentially helpful practices can be incorporated such as portraying effort as an investment rather than risk, portraying skill development as incremental and domain-specific and always focusing on mastery.

Personal Reaction

During early childhood development, children express their concern through curiosity and exploring new things. However, as children grow, their psychosocial environment influences their learning behavior and learning frequency. Many children though physically present in the classroom remain absent mentally. They do not want to invest their mind and energy in learning things. It is, therefore, important for educators to first understand students’ attitudes and beliefs towards learning and then help minimize students’ lack of concern.

Understanding student motivation is very important. In simple terms, it can be defined as the student's desire to participate in a specific task. However, it is also directly associated with students’ academic achievement. Students can get motivated in two ways: intrinsically and extrinsically. In the former case, motivation comes from rewards inherent to a task. However, extrinsically motivated students perform tasks to avoid punishment such as grades, teacher approval, etc.

However, the phrase, motivation to learn is mainly associated with academic achievement. It does not matter whether the task is intrinsically or extrinsically motivated or not. Well, there are various factors that influence student motivation including modeling, communication, instruction, socialization, etc. In addition, the home environment also shapes the students’ attitudes and beliefs towards learning. Parental care, encouragement and explaining answers to numerous questions positively affect children’s psychosocial development. They gradually understand the meaning of self-worth, competence and autonomy. However, when children enter the school environment, their attitudes towards success and failure develop.

It is true that intrinsic motivation has got an advantage over extrinsic motivation because of the fact that in the former case, students employ more effort in order to perform a particular task, as it gives a sense of enjoyment and completeness. However, in the case of extrinsic motivation, students invest less effort to perform a task.

Teachers play a very crucial role in encouraging students to learn and motivate. If students find the classroom environment more interactive, caring and supportive, they will get motivated. In addition, whatever tasks are given to students should be interesting, challenging and achievable. Teacher-student interaction is very important and once this bond gets stronger, unmotivated students will also perform better in their academic tasks. Read More