Achievement creates motivation

It's not that motivated students achieve more, report Nidhi Sachdeva and Jim Hewitt in Science of Learning. Achievement is motivating, research finds.

Teachers' challenge is how to start the achievement-motivation cycle, writes Natalie Wexler on Minding the Gap.

Rewards can help unmotivated students start the positive-feedback loop, new research suggests. "Once learners start to engage with a task, even if it’s for the gold star or whatever the teacher is dangling, they get the opportunity to experience its intrinsic rewards — like a feeling of accomplishment — which can lead to 'motivation transformation.' Now they’re learning because they’ve discovered they enjoy it."

But what if they try and fail? Many teachers believe students learn through struggling with concepts. (It's supposed to be "productive" struggle.)

Clear teaching, such as "providing concrete examples of problems before asking students to solve them," improved learning and motivation, a 2023 study finds. It also helps to give students "opportunities to practice recalling information they’ve recently learned," Wexler writes.

Of course, if teachers make the work too easy, students won't feel the sense of accomplishment that starts the motivation cycle, she adds. Teachers need to challenge students without overwhelming them.