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How  to  Reach  the  Unmotivated  Student    
 

How to reach the
Unmotivated
Student
Sarah Cochran

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How  to  Reach  the  Unmotivated  Student    

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Abstract

Motivating students to succeed in school is becoming a constant battle
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These reasons may consist of; home life, culture, the student may feel that the
information is irrelevant, that they don’t have a choice, they feel out of place, the work
may be too hard, or too easy, lack of confidence and much more
...

This study describes the reasons why students have become unmotivated and investigates
the perceptions through interviewing students and surveying teacher’s views on the
problems that hinder these students classroom motivation
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Results also show that teachers complain of unmotivated students and not
having the resources needed to reach them
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While this has been a major problem in middle school and high
school it is also being seen as young as the elementary school grades
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These teachers are in a constant battle with
forever attempting to motivate their students
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However, what teachers
may not realize is that their behavior and attitude and the classroom environment has a lot
to do with their student’s motivational level, and these types of demands may make all of
the students motivation dissipate
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” They walk in with just a tiny
spark of internal motivation
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A first impression can consist of the teacher’s behavior,
classroom environment, the structure of the course, the nature of the assignments, and the
informal interaction with students (Krik 2013)
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There are two different types of motivation intrinsic and extrinsic
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The student may find self-fulfillment and enjoyment by mastering the subject
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“Research has demonstrated that students’ motivations tend to be stronger, more resilient,
and more easily sustained when they emerge from internally held goals rather than from
externally applied coercion (Toshalis 2012)
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These are the students that
work hard in school just to get the good grades, they may not fully understand the
material but they’ve memorized it enough to succeed
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However, according to Lev Vygotsky there
may be more of a connection between the two types of motivation than teachers are led to
believe
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Development of a student applies mainly to mental development, such as
thought, language, and reasoning process
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Therefor, the more a student is exposed to
a teacher’s thinking, the more that student’s thoughts are influenced
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The more deeply students can connect with people that provide positive external
motivators, the more likely it is that they gradually will internalize those motivators as
their own
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It is expected that as the student
puts increased effort into their academics and behavior that they will begin to experience
positive natural motivation such as improved grades, increased peer acceptance, greater
sense of self efficacy, and higher rates of teacher parent approval
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Here
are some important things to remember when using external motivation
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Also if you
spend a lot of time giving external reinforcement to those that are already motivated then
you will have nothing to use on those students if their internal motivation all of a sudden
begins to drop
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It is also
important that the teacher alters the rewards that are given to the student to match their
academic effort
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The teacher can tell if the external motivation is working by conducting
observations and interviews to see the progression in the students’ academics and
behavior (Wright 201l)
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These students are going to be the ones
with the “I don’t care” attitude
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This however, does not mean that these individuals are not

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smart; it’s often quit the opposite
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These particular students may fail to turn in their work, or if they do turn it in, it is done
with little care and thought
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The most important thing a teacher can do is take the time to understand what
they can about the social worlds their students come from and how those worlds
influence their efforts in the classroom
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Pre-motivated student understand school, meaning that they
have had some sort of interaction in the world that has let them know that school is
important and will someday benefit them
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When these
students enter their school building they feel safe in a welcoming environment (Toshalis
2012)
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Whether it is the
students race, linguistic heritage, immigration, the messages received from society often
tell the student that she is outside the mainstream
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They may step onto school grounds and
not be acknowledged by the principal or other school officials
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To be motivated
and succeed under these circumstances can be very challenging for the student (Toshalis
2012)
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A new pathway is

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formed every time a child learns something new, and the pathways that get used the most
and connects to the greatest number of related pathways become the guiding tendencies
in their ways of thinking, which can in turn shape their learning
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This is why it is important for teacher’s to
provide an environment that allows the student to exercise the pathways that are
necessary for internal motivation to develop (Toshalis 2012)
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Social pathways influence how we
receive and make meaning of information, which in turn shapes our decisions making in
response to different context
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These experiences usually consist of
someone they know outside of school that strongly enforces school in a positive manner
and a necessity for the future
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Then there are the students whose social pathways lead to frequent
experiences that alienate school
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These are the unmotivated students that the teacher needs to
become aware of
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These students are usually looking for a reason as to why they are in

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school and why it is important for their future
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All these motivated, unmotivated, neural pathways, and social pathways are
fantastic, until a teacher figures out that these are not all that matters
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This may take specialized teaching and differentiated
instruction in order for a student to be reached
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On the first day of school a teacher should enforce a behavior and reward plan
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These
behavioral goals may consist of paying attention in class, doing assigned work, and
complying with teacher requests
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The purpose of a reward program is to give students external incentives to
encourage positive behaviors
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As these positive effects occur the teacher
can slowly begin to back off with the reward program
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The definition
of the behavior should be posted somewhere in the classroom as a visual reminder for the
students
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This criterion may consist of time intervals, cumulative
frequency, and/or percentage of compliance
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The goal is to develop a reward/reinforce menu
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The teacher then needs to figure out how they are going to
keep track of the positive behaviors
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There are two ways in which a teacher can choose to deliver the rewards the
student can be given their earned rewards directly whenever they have been earned or the
student can be assigned points each time that they meet the teacher’s behavioral
expectations and then are allowed at some point to redeem these points from items from
the reward menu
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As much as a reward might be positive and rewarding for those
students that have little internal motivation, teachers also need to be concerned with the
potential negative impact it may have on the peers not receiving a reward
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The teacher can meet privately with the
student and deliver the reward, the teacher can have someone else in the school deliver
the reward, or the teacher can send the reward home and have the parent deliver the
reward (Wright 2011)
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A
student may feel that school is unimportant and does not relate to his or her life and
therefore they have no interest in learning (Kirk 2013)
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At the beginning of the year the teacher may begin by having

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the students fill out a form and tell what their favorite things to do outside of school are,
such as; hobbies, siblings, pets, favorite books, etc
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The teacher can
also teach using current events that the students might see in the news
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The
teacher can also use technology to provide motivational factors in the classroom
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If a teacher could use these
items in the classroom and allow the students to use them as well they may spark more of
an interest and desire to learn from those unmotivated students
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A sense of belonging is critical for children’s academic performance and success
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There are two ways a teacher can make a welcoming environment
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Students should feel as if they are a part of a classroom community
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Every student
should feel accepted and should be allowed to interact with other students
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Discussions should also be a big part of the classroom
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During discussions the
teacher should be the mediator not the “teacher”
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The purpose of discussions should be to allow
every student to speak their mind without any negative remarks from others
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The classroom environment should be neat and tidy
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The classroom should be
full of warmth and welcoming colors that brighten the room and the students that walk in
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The desks should be arranged in groups of four to six to allow for easy group work
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The actions and attitudes of the teacher can have a significant influence on
student’s learning experiences
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This is why it is important for teachers to
demonstrate warmth and openness and encourage students to participate, are enthusiastic,
friendly, and helpful
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The most important thing a teacher can do when asking
students a question is give them enough time to think about the answer
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Many unmotivated students feel as if they have no choice in what they are taught
or learning
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A
student is likely to have more motivation when they feel some sense of autonomy and
that motivation declines when the student has no voice
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Another major factor that causes students to become unmotivated is if the student
cannot do the assigned work
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Areas of deficit might include basic academic skills, cognitive
strategies, and academic-enabler skills
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Cognitive strategies
consist of tasks such as reading comprehension or writing
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Academic
enabling skills are skills that are not tied to specific academic knowledge but rather aid
student learning across a wide range of settings and tasks
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If the work is too difficult for the student, the student may begin to
believe that the teacher has not taken the time to really understand what level they are on
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Along the lines of work being too difficult for a student, work can also be too
easy, causing the student to become bored
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It is important that the teacher takes the time
to get to know the level of her students and then apply scaffolding to her teaching
meaning she will add instruction technique where the challenge level is gradually raised
as the students are capable of more complex tasks (Kirk 2013)
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If the teacher finds a student
that is struggling it is important to stop and reteach the material or to pull that student into
a small group for one-on-one time and extra practice
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Before helping them too much maybe give them
some suggestions on how to solve it and this may spark their memory
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It is also important that a teacher tries really hard to build on prior knowledge
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It can also help the student to feel like they already know a part of
the material; this can be a huge stress reliever for some students
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When a teacher keeps the students updated on all the work that is due, upcoming
work, and the grades in which each student has, the students are much less likely to fall
behind in their work and are more likely to try harder to bring their grades up or maintain

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their current grades
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The teacher can prepare a course
syllabus that has all of the course assignments, their descriptions, due dates, as well as
dates of quizzes and tests
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The syllabus
will also cover what the expectations of the students are, the penalties of absences and
late work
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These agendas can be handed out on
Mondays and have a list of everything the student is responsible for that week
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In these
meetings the teacher can review the students performance, inform them of any missing
work, check with the student about upcoming assignments, quizzes and tests
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Motivating students is about developing relationships in the classroom
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If a
student appears indifferent or even hostile towards the instructor they may end up lacking
motivation to follow the teachers requests or to do their work
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However, teachers sometimes do very
little to change this
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The teacher must keep their eye out for students that lack

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a positive relationship with them
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In order to fix this
issue the teacher can provide the student with increased doses of positive attention when
the student is engaging in appropriate behavior
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Ways in which the teacher can improve teacher-student relationship is by striving for a
high ration of positive interactions with students
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The instructor can also have a goal of
spending at least two minutes each day for ten consecutive days engaging the student
they have a negative interaction with by having a positive conversation about topics of
interest to that student
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Instead the teacher can state the terms in a positive manner
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The teacher needs to set a goal
of engaging in at least on positive verbal interaction with the student
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In every interaction the teacher has with the student, the teacher
must maintain a polite and respectful tone (Wright 2011)
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There are two different
types of role models that a teacher can use in the classroom; peers, and community
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Weins et al (2003) found
that female students were more likely to cite a positive influence with a teacher as a
factor of becoming interested in science
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It is important for a teacher to bring in guest speakers to spend time and talk with
the students about what they do and how they got to where they did
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This peer has to be someone that
the student gets along with and looks up too and may want to follow
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This may be someone that the student connects with on a level of gender,
ethnicity, social circles, interests, achievement level, clothing, and age
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Aim
As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the aim of the study is to find out the
views of the teachers and students on what hinders students’ intrinsic motivation in the
classroom and what can be done to increase it
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This study is being preformed throughout the fourth
grade level in both the ELA, Reading, Social studies and Math/Science classes
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We chose to interview the entire fourth grade student body, consisting of 76
students
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Semi-structured interviews were conducted individually and face-to-face
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The interviews asked open-ended questions so that the students had a chance to
fully explain themselves and their thoughts about school and why the like or dislike it
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We sent email semi-structure questionnaires consisting of four main questions to
the fourth grade teachers of the students mentioned above
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The research design is qualitative using mixed methods of questionnaires and
semi structured interviews
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Notes were also taken during regular class hours while the students were
being observed in their everyday school environment
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Ethical considerations were attended too
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Once the approval was granted, the data collection tools were prepared and
adjusted accordingly
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This also
helped diminish research bias
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Validity and reliability were met by using two different types of qualitative data,
responses and perceptions from the interview and the questionnaires
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It is important that teachers help students set goals that are personally
important to them
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“When teachers support goal achievement,
research indicates that they will positively affect student motivation and their sense of
self-efficacy” (Wiesman 2012)
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According
to Wiesman there are two different types of goals, performance goals and mastery goals
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Students with performance goals
want to be better than everyone else in the class
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Performance goals only work for those students that are competitive,

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all of the other students may develop the attitude that they cannot perform at the correct
level to attain their performance goals
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Mastery goals are created when students have an inherent
desire to achieve something
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If a child is unmotivated the
teacher can ask the student what they want to do with their future and then help them
figure out goals that they need to achieve in order to reach their desired future plans
(Wiesman 2012)
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It has been shown that
students will often set social goals on top of performance or mastery goals because they
want to gain the respect of others and to achieve a sense of belonging
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Peer relationships can have a huge affect on student
motivation, and their behavior
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If students get involved with
negative peer groups then this will more than likely have a negative affect on their
motivation and achievement
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Self-efficacy has been known to have a positive effect on students learning
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If a
student has a high sense of self-efficacy they will show higher levels of achievement,

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effort and persistence to complete the tasks at hand
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Like in many things teachers
can greatly affect a students positive self-efficacy
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Earlier in this paper we
talked about what happens when the work is too difficult for the student, they loose all
confidence in themselves and their motivation completely disappears
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Teachers can also promote self-efficacy in students by reinforcing effort and persistence,
and by providing different strategies the students can use in learning
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There are many factors that go into whether a student is going to be motivated or
not to learn
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Future Research
There are many reasons for a student to be unmotivated
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Future
research that will be done o this topic is “How do social goals affect academic

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motivation?,” “How do teachers ensure that they have identified all of their unmotivated
students?,” “How to teachers ensure they have reached all of their unmotivated students
and provided as many ways possible to increase their internal motivation?” Schooling is
becoming much more of a requirement for the future of young students
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Our continuation of research in this field of motivation is going to be critical
to our students success in the near future
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(2013)
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Retrieved from
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com/od/motivation/f/difference-between-extrinsic-andintrinsic-motivation
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Motivating Urban Youth: Honoring the Experiences of
Adolescents
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uhv
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(2003)
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Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
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, Vallerand, R
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(2012)
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Social Psychology Of Education,
15(1), 77-95
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ebscohost
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Herrell, A
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50 Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners
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Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc
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Jones & Associates, Inc
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On the Cutting Edge
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How  to  Reach  the  Unmotivated  Student    

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Kristinsdottir, S
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