In a perfect world every person you worked with would be enthusiastic and ready to learn. Their mind would be a sponge, prepared to soak up all the knowledge and expertise you have to share. There would be no cajoling. You wouldn’t need to leverage the threat of earning a bad grade to prompt them to show mastery of their knowledge. In fact, the relationship with this student might be more of a mentor/mentee relationship, where you, as the instructor, also learn through mutually exploratory conversations and research.

Sadly, you won’t always have that experience with students. Some students will be motivated to learn only to earn grades that please their parents and allow them certain privileges after their report card is sent home every quarter. When my son was in grade school, he had a classmate whose parents paid him money for his grades. Ten dollars for every A, five dollars for every B, and two for every C.

Other students you’ll encounter won’t have any motivation to learn at all. They find school to be a waste of time, and they simply attend because it is a mandate set forth by their parents. Some of those parents may also have such little value for education that only the threat of a visit from the truancy officer keeps the child in school.

So how can you know what motivates each student? Well, you can’t. At least not instantly. It takes time to build a personal relationship with your pupils. Learning what drives each person is just one of the many reasons the student-instructor relationship is so powerful. There can be any number of variables affecting motivation, but one of the primary ones is the fear of failure.

The fear of failure is something that you can find in students of any age. And it’s not something only shy students experience. Anytime a person stretches the limits of their knowledge and looks to undertake something new, there is a risk of failing. As an educator, it’s important to remember that while failure is not an option, it is a natural part of the learning process.

There is no doubt that Michael Jordan is one legendary NBA player. Even people who don’t follow the sport see a black and red Chicago Bulls basketball jersey with the number 23 and instantly think of Jordan and all his successes. But here, we have a sports idol telling us that if it weren’t for his failures, he never would have succeeded. If Michael Jordan had quit basketball the first time he missed a basket or lost a game or when he was cut from his sophomore team in high school, the world would have been robbed of his talent and its impact. Little boys and girls wouldn’t have idolized him and worked hard to achieve their own goals, and our world would have likely been poorer of their talent as well. In the 2017 playoff game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics, LeBron James surpassed Michael Jordan’s count of 5,987 post-season points.(xiv) In a post-game interview, James specifically cited Jordan as being the reason he began playing basketball and the inspiration that cemented his love for the game. This is important to acknowledge because it illustrates the ripples of impact one’s failures and achievements can have long down the road.

Failure and wrong answers aren’t to be shamed or used to make a learner doubt their ability. In fact, quite the opposite: both the educator and learner should view errors and mistakes as opportunities to grow and further develop the requisite knowledge and skills. As an educator, help your students see this. Be aware that instructors who belittle the student after a failure will stamp out the desire to learn faster than anything else in this world. If you tell a person he or she is inadequate and too stupid to ever learn something or make fun of a person for a simple error, don’t be surprised if that criticism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. No wonder bullying is such an issue these days.

We’ll discuss difficult students in a later chapter, but it’s important to reflect on your behavior to ensure it is not the source of the problem. Remember, students aren’t all cut from the same cloth. You might need to vary your teaching style to meet the needs of your learner. An example might be a personal trainer with two different clients. Client A may be motivated by an upcoming event, like a wedding, and prefer his or her trainer to really get into the exercises with them. So when the trainer yells, “Amy, keep going! You’re going to look great in that wedding dress,” that may work great for Client A—but it may be a huge problem for Client B, who doesn’t want any extra attention drawn to him. He is just working out with a trainer to lose the few pounds he gained during quarantine.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

In addition to a wide and varying range of motivations for students, there are also different sources for motivation. Extrinsic motivation flares up from an outside source, such as the need to eat and pay rent being the motivation for holding a steady job. On the other hand, intrinsic motivation comes from within.(xv) My intrinsic desire to breed and raise English Springer Spaniels, for example, is due to my undying love for the breed.

When we think about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in a learner/educator situation, the concepts apply differently to children versus adults. Often, the things children are compelled to learn are thrust upon them by schools, parents, and supervisors (for older children who work), and they get little choice in what they are taught and the methodology used. Much of the motivation here is extrinsic, and while lessons can be designed to be fun and not feel like a chore, the motivation to learn is still being pushed upon the child by an outside force.

Adults, however, get a lot more freedom in selecting what they learn and how. From higher education to personal hobbies, adults are given more control, and therefore more of the student’s motivation comes from an internal source. While nearly all four-year college degrees require a certain number of general education courses that are, presumably, meeting particular requirements across numerous university curricula, students often have the option to choose any two science, any two math, and any two language and composition courses. While one student may be satisfied with a basic Biology 101 type of course, some students may take a course specifically on bee biology, for example, simply because they find the subject matter interesting and fun.

As adults, we can choose to spend our money and time any way we wish. If we want to learn a new hobby, even one that is costly, like golf or learning a musical instrument, we can choose to do so with little input from others. Some children may get the option to choose their post-school interests. Others may be limited by their parents’ finances and values. When I was in primary school, my parents paid for me to take piano lessons in our small town. When I had been taking lessons for five or six years I no longer wanted to continue, but my parents insisted I stick with it. I did as they instructed but today, I could not likely play more than a few notes of any song, as I really had no passion for the instrument.

I find it important to keep the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in mind while teaching. When we want to spark interest toward our subject in a child who was clearly externally forced to attend our classes, we need to use empathy, first and foremost. To some it can mean a lot if we genuinely assure them that we know attending our class may feel like a chore. The kid will probably agree. The next step is to get to know this student a bit, get interested in what he likes. So just ask, “What would you like to do/ to learn instead?” After some—usually sweet—pouting, they the child will tell us what they actually like. This is the moment when we need to use our creativity skill—and we need to use it fast. How can we tie together our material with the interest of the child? Let’s say you teach English literature and grammar. If the student said they wanted to be wizards like Harry Potter, for example, you can tell them that the author of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, was able to write such a great story because she was very active in English literature and grammar class. While this won’t turn anyone into a wizard, words certainly hold some magic in them.

This “trick” works with every age group. Of course, you need to tailor your example to your student’s needs. If you need to engage a teenager, a contemporary “cool” reference can work well. In case of adults, bring up a role model who excels in the field you’re teaching about and tie it with the ultimate goal of the adult student.

Bottom line, try to tap into the intrinsic motivations of your students and connect them to the sometimes unavoidable and undesired extrinsic motivation they carry.

How to Encourage Intrinsic Motivation?

Think back to the beginning of this chapter, where we described our ideal student; someone driven to learn due to an unquenchable thirst for the knowledge you have to share. That is the student we all want to teach. But few of the students who come our way will actually be those magical unicorns we yearn to educate and develop into another person who is just as thrilled by learning to create a plasma from items around our home to sanitize N-95 masks in our microwave as we are.(xvi) Yes, you can actually do this, and yes, there will be a fire inside your microwave, but that’s supposed to happen. In any case, don’t try it at home on my account.

So how do we encourage and increase a learner’s intrinsic motivation?

Freedom of Choice aka Autonomy: (xvii,xviii) Giving someone a choice in what they learn can go a long way in tapping into their internal motivation reservoir. We’ve already explored this somewhat, but it can include more than just our subject material. Think about providing students with the freedom of choice in selecting which learning style fits them best. When students can choose between a visual, auditory, or tactile approach, they will instinctively select the style that is easiest for them to work with and understand. This can be especially helpful when working with those who have learning disabilities. They will gain confidence in themselves as students, and they will like your subject more and more as they become successful in a learning environment.

Give an A for Effort:(xix) With younger children, it’s important to acknowledge their willingness to put themselves out there with such enthusiasm and joy. Even if a child gets an answer wrong, praise them for putting in the effort it took to dare answering the question. Then review where they went wrong and correct their error to put them back on the right path. This can be done one on one, in small groups, or even in a larger group where respectful limitations are set.

Get Your Students’ Attention by Engaging Their Interest:(xx, xxi) Make the material you are delivering interesting to those you teach. One of my good friends and colleagues, William, is a professor of English history. I recall his joy when he discovered that one of his dry and rather boring lectures had a couple really active students in it. They asked questions, had good discussions, and the learning environment was exciting for William because the students weren’t just staring at him with glazed eyes and half asleep. Why were these students so interested in this course? William’s class focused on the Middle Ages and the movie Braveheart would often become a topic of discussion. The students followed William’s lectures along in the lineage of English rule up to Edward II, dispelled a few myths about the film and the legendary William Wallace, and continued right on through the Hundred Years War and the Black Prince.

Why Do I Need to Know This? (xxii) It’s important for students to understand, especially as they get older, why they are learning all this information you are sharing with them. You can teach a student how to calculate the degrees of each angle of an isosceles triangle, but is that something they really need to know? Will they ever use that in the real world? Well, yes, it could be that your students will use this information on a regular basis. Isosceles triangles are used in architecture, graphic design, in the study of cubic equations and celestial mechanics, and are even used as religious or mystical symbols. So, there are actually quite a few real-life applications, from anthropology to cultural studies, astronomy, algebra, and design and architecture, where this information is relevant and useful. If you can communicate that to your students, those who are interested in those areas will be much more likely to tune in and pay attention.

Experiential Education:(xxiii) The concept of Experiential Education comes from the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The primary premise behind the “flow” experience involves matching up a student’s skill level with a correlating activity and performance expectation. If the student is matched to a task that is too easy, such as asking a James Beard Award-winning chef to spend the day chopping vegetables, the student won’t be challenged and will subsequently disengage from learning due to disinterest. On the other hand, if the task is too difficult, such as conducting an elaborate and precise chemistry experiment for a student who has never stepped foot in a science lab, the student is likely to have anxiety and a decreased sense of self-worth. Those feelings can lead the student into a cycle of negative reinforcement that can have a lifelong impact on their desire and willingness to learn.

When the student and activity are harmoniously matched, it creates a positive feeling of engagement that, along with culturally aware teaching techniques, increases the student’s intrinsic motivation. When combined with the autonomy to engage in a variety of learning styles, which can help meet the needs of students who don’t learn well in traditional environments, the setting is ripe for encouraging individual motivation from within. Once the student experiences positive student-driven learning experiences, their internal motivation increases along with a desire to learn more.

In this recipe for learning success, we have our equipment: educators and learners. We’ve discussed what our ideal traits and qualities are in each of these groups, and we’ve identified some important factors related to understanding and encouraging student motivation, as well as understanding the mistakes we can make as educators that lead students to disengage from the learning process. Now we need some ingredients, and by far the most important one is communication. In our next chapter, we’ll delve into why teaching with clarity is so crucial to learning.