Motivational Factors

When I think about motivational factors in the classroom, my thoughts inevitably lead me to one fact: in a relatively short amount of time, I will spend in excess of 40 hours a week trying to motivate adolescents to engage themselves mentally in learning material that they frequently find difficult, often find boring, and that they may believe to be useless, irrelevant, or otherwise not worth their time. There are two aspects of the classroom that I have at my disposal to manipulate in order to make the curriculum appealing to students and appear worth learning: the material being presented, and the person presenting it (me).

As far as the material is concerned, most students recognize the inevitability that, however dull or difficult they may find a subject, they must get an acceptable grade in the class, even if for no other reason than to avoid taking it again. Thus, I will have to make the material mentally accessible to them. The best way I can think of to do this is to consider the learning theories, specifically developmental theories. If I consider DLT as much as possible, the curriculum will be presented in a manner that begins very concrete and gradually gets more abstract, yet still returns to concrete examples. At a basic level, the varying modes of representation will motivate most students to give the subject their attention.

Students' relationship with and perception of their teacher is another important factor of motivation. As a teacher, I will be a representation of authority to my students, and my interactions with them will affect their notions of dogmatism both in my class and in the future. I will avoid making the students' goal in the class gaining my approval, encouraging them instead to aim for comprehension. I don't want to be perceived as an arbitrator of knowledge but as a more knowledgeable peer who they also want to respect.