Factors Affecting Motivation

Teaching and learning in a classroom work well only when the learners want to learn, and that wanting is what motivation supplies. A motivated student asks questions, starts the task on time and keeps going when it gets hard. A student without motivation may sit in the room all day while their mind is somewhere else.

Inborn motivation switches itself on, and nobody has to push it. Acquired motivation is different. It has to be put to work in a suitable environment and in an effective way. This leads to a point every teacher has to understand: motivation cannot work effectively at every time and in every situation.

Picture a class 7 teacher who announces a prize for the best essay. Sita starts writing at once. Ramesh, who has eaten nothing since the morning, does not even pick up his pen. Gita, just back after a week in bed with fever, cannot keep her mind on the essay. The motivation offered was the same for all three, yet its effect was different in each. The causes that raise or lower the effect of motivation are called the factors affecting motivation.

Eight main factors affect motivation: the child's age, stress, poverty and want, illness or fear, interest and need, teaching method and materials, goals, and curiosity. Some of these belong to the child's own life and condition. Others belong to the way the lesson is taught and learned. Each is explained below.

Children's interests, needs and wishes change with age. Something that delights a child of five leaves a fifteen year old cold. Because children have different characteristics at each age, age affects how motivation works. So a teacher uses motivation only after thinking about the child's age and child psychology, which means how children of that age think and feel.

A star stuck in a class 1 pupil's copy can make the whole day happy. Give the same star to a class 10 student and they may feel treated like a baby. What moves the older student is being trusted to lead a group, or a challenge that connects with real life.

Children work hard for the achievements that matter at their age: good marks, a place in the team, respect among friends. When they fail to reach these, they feel a loss, and that loss pushes them into greater stress. Motivation used while a child is in this stressed state does not work.

Suppose a student has just failed the last test. If the teacher says, 'This time you can come first,' the sentence may feel like one more weight rather than encouragement, because the student's mind is already full of worry.

Poverty and want are another major factor. If poverty makes it hard for a child just to get through the daily routine, motivation cannot reach that child. When the stomach is empty, there is no copy or pencil and there is no place at home to study, the wish to learn fades on its own.

A boy who spent the morning cutting grass and looking after his little sisters before walking to school may be told to enjoy the new lesson. His tiredness and hunger will not let him hear it.

When a child is ill or is under treatment, their attention goes to their own health. In the same way, if a child expects that something frightening may happen to them, motivation cannot work directly. Until the body and the mind feel safe, learning comes second.

A student with an aching tooth, or a girl afraid that someone will trouble her on the way home, will not keep her mind on the lesson however interesting it is.

If the content used to motivate children does not fall within their interest or their need, they cannot be motivated. So before trying to motivate children, the teacher has to find out what they need and what they are interested in.

Students who love football will measure the school playground with real enthusiasm when they are learning about length. The field and the game sit inside their interest, and knowing how to measure the field becomes their need.

Teaching methods and educational materials are among the most important things that motivate students in the classroom. If the materials do not suit the students' level and the nature of the lesson, the students cannot be motivated.

When the parts of a plant are taught with a real plant on the table, so that students can touch the root, stem, leaf and flower, they lean forward to look. Read the same lesson aloud from the book and many of them start yawning. In the same way, bright pictures and large letters suit the lower classes, while maps, charts and experiments suit the higher ones.

The goal is an important factor in motivation. If learners are not focused on a goal, motivation has no effect on them. Only students who are honest about a goal and committed to it can be motivated effectively. For a student with no goal at all, motivation is meaningless.

A girl who dreams of becoming a nurse does not need to be pushed to study the human body. A little encouragement and she works even harder. A student who keeps asking 'What is the point of studying?' may be shown any number of prizes, and the effect lasts only a moment.

Curiosity makes learning effective and also draws the learner towards learning. To begin a new task and to finish it, the learner has to be fully curious about it. If no curiosity about learning is awakened, motivation cannot influence the student.

Why does the lid of a pot rattle when the water boils? A teacher who opens the lesson with a question like this leaves students itching to know the answer, and that itch carries them through the whole lesson.

To make classroom teaching effective, motivation has to be used continuously, not on one day only, and it has to be used in the right way. Motivation used properly makes learning effective and successful, so a teacher who wants learning to succeed must use it properly. It is also what brings students to take an active part in teaching and learning activities.

No two students in a class are alike. Some understand quickly and some slowly; one enjoys pictures and another enjoys discussion. These differences between students are called individual differences. The learning process becomes effective only when the teacher finds out each student's individual differences and applies motivation step by step to suit them.

Motivation can be used in the classroom in these seven ways:

• Identify the needs of the students in the class, and motivate them according to those needs.
• Find out the students' real interests, and motivate them to match.
• Awaken the children's curiosity about learning and about the content they have to learn.
• Use motivation through cooperation, student with student and teacher with student, in classwork and in other tasks done in the classroom.
• Use motivation by explaining the value of the result the students will gain at the end of their learning.
• Use motivation by making students more active, so that their learning becomes wider.
• Put the emphasis on activities centred on goals and objectives.

Take Binod, a class 8 teacher, teaching a lesson on managing waste in the neighbourhood. This is how he used all seven measures within one lesson:

• Before the lesson he asked, 'What trouble does rubbish cause near your homes?' The answers told him what the students needed.
• He found that some students liked drawing and others liked counting, and he shared out the work to match.
• He woke their curiosity by asking how many years a plastic bag can lie in the soil without rotting.
• He put the students into groups to work together, and he sat with each group and worked alongside them.
• He told them that the plan for a clean neighbourhood they would finish at the end could be shown to the ward office, so they saw the value of the result.
• He widened the learning beyond the classroom by asking them to sort and count their household waste for one week.
• He kept every activity pointed at one clear goal: a cleaner neighbourhood.

Each measure grows out of a factor. Once a teacher knows which factor is blocking motivation, the matching measure is the one to use.