Motivation in the classroom

In this reflection, I am going to reflect on how important it is to motivate students and how
to motivate students in your classroom.
In a normal classroom environment, the teacher always assigns work or activities
and these need to be achieved by the students. The problem with assigning the work is
getting the students to do the work. I believe that this work is done by motivation and
motivating the students “motivation: an internal state that arouses us to action, moves us in
particular directions, and keeps us engaged in certain activities” (Schreiber, 2016). I feel that
motivating students to achieve their work is very important. I feel that a big part to a
student learning in your classroom is motivating your student to learn. I feel that motivation
is hugely important as motivating your students to do better will result in them wanting to
come into your classroom to learn rather than them thinking that they must come in. In the
classroom there are so many different types of students and these students require
different types of motivation.
I believe that there are many ways in which teachers can motivate students but the
two main ways are building upon intrinsic and extrinsic motivation “The key strategies
which teachers can use to elicit pupil motivation are thus concerned with building upon
pupils’ intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation” (Kyriacou, Essential Teaching Skills, 2007).
These are the categories that motivation is divided into. All the students in the classroom
work of either intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation and as you are the teacher it is
highly important in knowing how to motivate the different types of students using either
intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation refers to a behaviour that is driven only by internal rewards. This
is when the students are motivated to do the work for their own personal satisfaction, their
willing and wanting to achieve the activity for their own sake. On the other hand, you have
students that work on extrinsic motivation, which means they work for external rewards.
For example, you give the students an activity and inform them that there is a physical
reward for completing it, the students that work on extrinsic motivation will then be
motivated to complete this task assigned. As a teacher, I believe that it is very important
that you know the differences between these two types of motivations and that you know
how to elicit motivation in your classroom.
After motivating your students, the next thing faced by teachers is how to increase
the motivation further “Increasing pupils’ motivation depends on giving pupils more control
over their learning, fostering greater self-confidence and increasing the perceived relevance
and interest of the academic work undertaken” (Kyriacou, 2009). I agree with this statement
from Kyriacou as I fully believe that to increase there motivation you have to give them a bit
of freedom for themselves to find a way to motivate themselves and not having a teacher
constantly motivating them.
As I am now a few weeks into my teaching placement, I have noticed that it can be
quite difficult to motivate some of the students as they are all so different and need
different techniques to motivate them to learn. I feel that I have a good approach to
motivating students in my classroom, I believe that I can really motivate my students to
want to learn. I find it great to see that my students come into my classroom wanting to
learn as every day certain students come in and ask me “sir what are we going learning
today”. When my students ask these types of questions, I feel amazing as it shows that my
students do enjoy my classes and that my motivation skills are good as they are highly
motivated and want to learn more and more in my classroom.
Overall, I believe that motivating your students is highly important as if they are not
motivated, they will not want to learn in your classroom. I feel that it is incredibly important
that you the teacher are there to support the students and encourage them to learn and
always motivating them to do better. “In the context of skilful teaching, the most important
factor is to ensure that pupils are supported and encouraged to learn, with high positive
expectations being conveyed by the teacher” (Kyriacou, Essential Teaching Skills, 2007)

References
Kyriacou, C. (2007). Essential Teaching Skills. Cheltenham : Nelson Thornes LTD.

Kyriacou, C. (2009). Cheltenham: Nleson Thornes LTD.

Schreiber, j. (2016). Motivation 101. New York : Springer Publishing Company.