Is Motivation Important for Students’ Success? Is Motivation Important for Students’ Success?

Is Motivation Important for Students’ Success?

Is Motivation Important for Students’ Success?

Motivation is basically the moral support and encouragement we give someone in a particular endeavor. It encourages the person to do a particular task or achieve something. There are lots and really lots of theories on motivation in management studies.

Motivation is the energy that enhances your brain cells to move towards positivity and self-fulfillment. Without the required motivation levels, you feel that getting out of your couch is almost next to impossible. You find difficulty in doing well at school, doing your homework every day, getting fabulous grades at college, and able to earn your promotions at the places of work. A motivation less you can be compared to that of a living vegetable. It is therefore highly essential you keep your motivation levels higher so that you reach the pinnacle summit points of success earlier.

But in this article, we will be confining our thoughts only to students and no one else. All those theories may be applicable to students also but we will keep them aside and focus only on the importance of motivation for student’s success.

Table of Content

  • Importance of motivation for student’s success
    • Motivation improves academic performance in kids
    • Motivation brings a positive outlook to students
    • Motivation reduces school absenteeism
    • Students make more friends
    • The creativity of students increases
    • Motivation calms down students
  • Types of motivation
    • Intrinsic motivation
    • Extrinsic motivation
  • What determines the motivation levels of students?
    • Latency effect
    • Persistence
    • Preferential choices
    • Efforts applied
  • How to improve motivation levels of students
    • Show love and affection towards students
    • Value the efforts of students
    • Keep your students involved
    • Change your teaching styles
    • Use incentives in your teaching

Importance of Motivation for Student’s Success

Motivation works for everyone and also for students. Let’s look at points that make motivating students a good factor in their progress.

Motivation Improves Academic Performance in Kids

A motivated student is driven towards doing well and achieving good grades in school. The desire to get the award of coming first in the class keeps the student striving hard to achieve the grades. After the kid has given good academic performance, parents should take their kids for treats. Most importantly they should praise them openly and show how happy you are with their achievement.

If a student does not do well, you should not admonish but still stand with them and show them that they can do better. Remember, whatever may be the result does motivate the students.

role of teachers in motivating kids

Motivation Brings a Positive Outlook to Students

A pat on the back goes a long way for students. It shows them that their efforts are being recognized and keeps them looking for the next reward. This brings a positive outlook in students towards life making them a better students.

Motivation Reduces School Absenteeism

Kids make a lot of excuses to skip school for a day. These excuses range from slight fever to stomach ache and further depend on how creative your kid is. A motivated student looks forward to going to school the next day and looks forward to learning new things. They make fewer excuses and the school absenteeism reduces drastically.

Students Make More Friends

A student with a positive outlook makes more friends easily and his whole personality changes. Because of the intrinsic happiness that the kid has owing to the motivation, his outward approach becomes more welcoming.

The Creativity of Students Increases

Motivated students show more creativity and create new works. Whenever a kid creates something, give positive feedback and use kind encouraging words. This will further boost their creativity and bring the best out of them.

Motivation Calms Down Students

Kids have the natural characteristics of a rebel in them and they tend to revolt against whatever they do not like. This rebellious nature goes only after they grow up and mature. Till then, motivation act as a cooling factor that keeps the kid’s revolt under check.

Motivating kids make them understand that parents and teachers are also on their side and there is nothing to revolt against.

Types of Motivation

Motivation can be categorized into two major categories.

Intrinsic Motivation

This motivation comes from internal drives and depends on your personality and mental state. If you are a go-getter kind of person, you would aim to achieve whatever you target you set. You do this, as it makes you happy to achieve them. It results in a sense of pride, achievement, or satisfaction, which you can feel internally.

Your kid may have an intrinsic love for building his own engines or cars. The motivation does not have to be educational-based, curriculum-based, or even related to academics. Non-scholastic activities like singing, dancing, or playing for the school’s sports team also stem from intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation can be considered like a fire burning within which will dry only when you achieve your target. It drives your engines and prepares you for the task.

Extrinsic Motivation

Extrinsic motivation comes from external drives. These external factors can be of various kinds like fear of admonishment, desire to be in the good books of a teacher, make a friend, and so on. Extrinsic motivation is therefore based on punishments or success rewards. You don’t want punishments to demoralize you. So even if a particular thing is not of much interest to you, you build the motivation levels to do well in that field.

Extrinsic motivations work as long as the external factors are present. If a student loses the fear of teachers, he will lose the motivation to do homework on time.

motivate students to excel in academics

What determines the Motivation levels of Students?

Different students get motivated differently and at a young age, it becomes really difficult to understand what is driving a student. The below points will give a rough idea to understand the drives that impact students.

Latency effect

Latency basically refers to the time lag the student takes to respond to a motivating stimulus. If a student takes a longer time to respond to the stimulus, it is a simple indication that the student is less-motivated.

Persistence

Persistence is the time period to which the motivation stimulus stays within the student. If you motivate a student to do some task and the student sticks to the motivation for long and does the work, it means the persistence is high.

People with higher levels of persistence take a longer time to complete a particular task but want to do it the perfect way.

Preferential choices

Once motivated, the student weighs in the options in front of him and decides whether to respond to the stimulus or not. This is called a preferential choice to motivation.

If a student prefers hanging out with friends to doing your homework or studying for the next day’s exam, it clearly implies that you are not motivated enough in your academics.

Efforts applied

This basically refers to the amount of effort applied to the task for which a motivation stimulus was provided. More the effort applied, more the motivation level.

There are two batches of students who are asked to submit a project on ‘Technology and Science’. Batch-A puts in tremendous physical effort in creating the needed props for presenting an exhibition; they invest time, energy, and resources in getting the theme organized. While batch B just focuses on doing the model using basic styles. Batch-A students are more motivated than Batch B.

How to Improve Motivation levels of Students

In the segment on the importance of motivation, we are going to learn 5 techniques on how to improve motivation levels among students.

Show love and affection towards students

As a teacher, you have a huge responsibility that is lingering on your shoulders forever. You are the one that is responsible for shaping up the future generation of an evolving society or community.

In order to bring about increased levels of motivation among students, teachers have to be loving and affectionate towards their students. Never underestimate their potential or be rude to them even if they don’t know something. In order to show gestures of love, compassion, or kindness, the teacher can give hand-written birthday cards on the birthdays of each student.

Never resort to negativity or show your job stress on students. However challenging the profession is, you need to make the students feel that they are in a warm and cozy atmosphere of understanding teachers.

Value the efforts of students

This is a very important aspect of touching on the importance of motivation. You need to value the efforts of every individual student.

“You are concentrating so hard. I am sure you will be able to crack it”. You are going to learn a lot today and your hard work is going to give rich yields’ Constant words of motivation value their efforts. And your students are more persistent towards achieving fab grades in classes and outside.

motivate students to do well in school

Keep Your Students Involved

In order to ease the stress or tension of handling a difficult subject, you need to keep your students engaged in other activities. You can have a representative each to clean up the previous session’s notes, decorate the board, write motivational proverbs, solve riddles, etc.

This can keep everyone involved. This way, you set the tone to improve their motivation levels. Then they sit down to listen to the class lectures in an exciting way. Make sure, these activities do not eat up the class time. Interesting two-minute games can also keep students motivated all through the session.

Change Your Teaching Styles

Kids can get bored pretty easily and teachers need to come up with creative ideas to hold their attention. You need to change your teaching styles every now and then. You can use technology or games to touch upon the desired area of study.

To understand the importance of the human cornea, you can let them know how tablets or mobile phones impact the lives of younger children. Showing Educational videos, movies, murals, and educational documentaries also help keep students well motivated. Concepts visualized linger on to their memories longer than theoretical stereotyped explaining.

Use Incentives in Your Teaching

You can offer stickers or yellow star badges to students who improve their percentages from one level to another. A student getting a 60% gets a yellow badge and an improvement certificate once he/she gets 80% in the next semester. Incentive-based styles of rewards can heighten the motivation levels among students. But don’t over-do it as they expect incentives every time in order to perform.

The importance of motivation levels, the factors that reveal higher motivation and tips and techniques on how to improve motivation levels among students form a part of this particular segment.

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-- Study Spectrum

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