Motivation

The age old question, how to motivate a student who only wants to work on assignments and skills that interest them? How do you motivate the student that only wants to do the things that interest them? How do we as educators motivate students to buy into all aspects of your classroom?

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Permalink Reply by Nicholas Tee on May 9, 2012 at 8:21pm

Firstly you need to try and identify a way of relating the information that you want them to process, of having some relevance to and bearing upon those areas that do interest them. Simplistically, if they love fishing and you want them to study math, then you have to demonstrate that knowing some maths is going to be useful in weighing their fish and applying for a world record with the fish they caught.

Darren your question "How do we as educators motivate students to buy into all aspects of your classroom?" is close to asking the impossible. Every single one of those students sitting in that classroom is an individual with their own likes and dislikes, and more importantly, their own Learning Styles. One of the problems we have in education today is that we have those that sit in their ivory towers attempting to dictate to teachers how to factory process education, and if you fail to take into account the individuality of the student - and their individual level of ability, then you are pretty much inviting disinterest and boredom.

I think this is why significant numbers of teachers are now introducing the use of video in the classroom. It makes study more interesting and maintains the interest and attention of the child for longer. Video caters for a wider range of Learning Styles than relying solely on text and textbooks, and of course video enables each student to study at their own speed - and therefore allows them to achieve their greatest individual potential.