For my last post about motivation, I thought it would be beneficial to examine reasons why students are unmotivated at school. First off, about 40% of students are disengaged from school by high school. The lack of motivation begins early in elementary school when kids are NOT SUCCESSFUL in mastering the basic operations of arithmetic and are NOT fluent readers. Therefore, early intervention during elementary school is key. Elementary school teachers really have the task of paving the way how children will look at learning for the rest of their life (yelp!). Elementary school teachers need to watch out for these key reasons why students may be unmotivated.
1.The student is unmotivated because he or she cannot do the assigned work.
2. The student is unmotivated because the ‘response effort’ needed to complete the assigned work seems too great.
3. The student is unmotivated because classroom instruction does not engage.
4. The student is unmotivated because he or she fails to see an adequate pay-off to doing the assigned work.
5. The student is unmotivated because of low self efficacy—lack of confidence that he or she can do the assigned work.
6. The student is unmotivated because he or she lacks a positive relationship with the teacher.
(These 6 reasons were taken from http://www.fehb.org/CSE/CCSEConference2012/wright_CCSE_Conference_Breakout_Motiv_Students_15_Mar_2012.pdf )