Some main points from Ames’ article, Motivation: What Teachers Need to Know

Motivation plays a BIG part in our classrooms and in student learning.

Motivation and self-efficacy are linked. Fear of failure can paralyze students and prevent them from trying. Young children often have better self-efficacy than older ones (optimism!) and are more resilient after failure. Some students will choose to not try at all on a task, as trying and failing can be worse than simply not trying.

Effectiveness of strategies for helping students succeed depend on two things:1. Whether the student owns and understands how to apply the strategy. 2. Whether the student is willing to apply the necessary effort to try it out.

Teacher Ed programs don’t delve into motivation enough and thus don’t prepare teachers to make the theory-to-practice leap.

Over-praise or praise on easy tasks can give the child a sense that they lack ability and can undermine motivation.

Extrinsic rewards may have the unintended consequence of conditioning students to becoming more extrinsically controlled. See: Hidden Curriculum, Jackson.

Ames, C. A. (1990). Motivation: What Teachers Need to Know. Teachers College Record.  91:3, 409-421.