Dear Miss Wormwood,
After observing your classroom, and the apparent behavioral issues of your student, Calvin, we have some suggestions for how your class could be adapted to better follow the theories of motivation going forward.
Generally, the curriculum does not need to change too much. As a teacher, there are certain standards you are expected to achieve, and those standards are relatively immutable. You cannot choose what to teach or not teach on a whim, but you can change how you teach, which is more relevant to instruction. However, teachers can analyze student motivation in relation to the content being taught to inform instructional and curriculum decisions. From a Self-Determination Theory perspective, instruction can be adjusted to better support students’ needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness, which directly influences motivation and engagement. For example, a defiant student may have low self efficacy in a subject like math and may tell themselves, "I am just bad at math." This student could be described as experiencing amotivation and demonstrating performance avoidance because they lack both confidence and desire to complete the task. Encouraging a growth mindset can help rebuild the student’s sense of competence, which increases self efficacy and supports greater motivation and engagement with the curriculum.
Teachers can also motivate students who may not initially gain satisfaction from completing tasks by introducing rewards or incentives, helping move them toward external motivation, which is still preferable to amotivation. Self-Determination Theory suggests that external motivators can serve as a starting point that may later become internalized as students begin to experience success and confidence. Additionally, goal setting strategies with checkpoints allow students to clearly track their progress, reinforcing competence and persistence. Seeing measurable improvement, even through small steps, can be encouraging for students who struggle with motivation in difficult subjects. Goal setting sessions at the beginning of semesters or units, followed by weekly reflection, give students a sense of autonomy in how they pursue their goals while also strengthening relatedness through collaboration with the teacher. These reflections also allow teachers to evaluate student progress and adjust instructional strategies when necessary.
Something else that may contribute to developing student self efficacy without directly changing the curriculum is chunking, or breaking down large lessons into manageable steps. This approach supports motivation by allowing students to experience repeated success, which strengthens their sense of competence according to Self-Determination Theory. When students recognize that they can successfully complete smaller components of a task, they are more likely to believe they can achieve the larger learning objective. Teachers may also incorporate Interest Theory by connecting academic content to students’ personal interests. For example, if a student is motivated by and has a clear interest in football, word problems involving running yards or measuring a stadium can make learning feel more relevant. Interest Theory explains that personal relevance increases engagement and sustained attention, while Self-Determination Theory shows that these connections support relatedness and autonomy by helping students feel that learning connects to their identities and experiences. When students feel both capable of success and personally connected to the material, their motivation and willingness to engage with instruction increase.
Next, be on the lookout for how to motivate the students, and provide them with an example of what they should be doing, and how it could work, before letting the students have freedom to take it on their own. Breaking up assignments into smaller subgoals to help reach larger goals will help with this. Remind students their brains are like muscles; the more they work, the stronger it gets. This helps prevent feelings of failure. Alongside that, students need to have autonomy in the classroom! Each student is so unique in their own ways, and by knowing your students interest you can cater it into lesson's to allow for motivation. Doing this alongside engaging your students will allow for engagement and interaction from the students without it feeling forced, and will promote more of a growth mindset.
Please take these ideas and concepts into your ideology as a teacher, and let us know if you have any questions!
Assessing Calvin's learning does not always have to be a standard test/quiz. It could be a project, a reflection, or a presentation to reduce the pressure of a normal standardized assessment. Providing different outlets for Calvin to show his thinking in ways that makes sense to him will help his motivational issues. Allowing him to be creative and come up with scenarios to present his understanding would have a better outcome than placing a written response test in front of him.
The Interest Theory and the Self-Determination Theory suggest that students are more motivated when they are interested in a subject because they are intrinsically motivated. Adding Calvins interests to assessments and projects will help him feel more inclined to try his best, as well as help him see why the topics he is learning are important and connect to the real world. He is more likely to do research and exploration of a topic both in the classroom and at home if he enjoys what he is learning.
Calvin would be more inclined to try harder on assessments in your classroom if the environment of the classroom was more positive and understanding. Calvin has a Performance-Avoidance Orientation according to the Achievement Goal Theory, and in order to promote a Mastery Orientation, he needs to understand that it is okay to fail on a test or a project. Calvin's main issue is that his peers are not forgiving when he answers a question wrong and in turn, he does not try on tests. By making the classroom a more accepting place through his peers and their behavior, Calvin can change his motivational orientation into a Mastery Approach and focus on learning skills instead of getting questions on an assessment correct.
I hope these suggestions make your classroom a better place as well as help you with teaching Calvin!
Ms. Wormwood, respectfully, I am deeply concerned about the effects that your classroom management may effect your student's mentalities and self-conceptions. Specifically, I have noticed a strong proclivity towards reprimanding, and, if I may, an overly strong emphasis on student's outputs, over the student's themselves. By the reckoning of essentially every learning theory, but especially achievement goal theory, These kinds of environments can foster student that value results, but not actual learning, students for whom the two processes become disconnected, who see intelligence and knowledge as fixed qualities. These same kinds of students undervalue their own learning process and see little connection between their learning, and their performance/others perception of it, where they are taught to draw their value from. When these fixed mindset students encounter difficulty or failure, they will often assume that they have simply found their immutable limit, and will avoid pushing past or expanding it. Another hindrance I fear your students may face is a lack of regulatory skills needed to build competency even if they are focused on their learning. As described by SRL, there are several skills that students need to know to succeed, such as making plans, and revising them.
I would suggest creating a classroom environment that actively supports, rewards, and prioritizes student's thought processes and efforts, praising their mental efforts, reminding them whenever possible that these efforts would help them in the future and improve their "mental strength" making sure to provide students with time for, and potentially help with, creating plans, as well as some low stakes opportunities for students to demonstrate or practice their process such as group projects. Other ways to motivate students to enjoy or take part in the process of learning rather than the results can range from something small in personal interactions explicitly praising effort, to something larger like offering creative or group projects. Creative projects are an especially good way to get some students engaged because it allows them to bring their interests into the classroom, and combine them with the content, but this interest involvement does not have to be done thru creative projects specifically, something like asking a student about their interests and finding ways to relate it to the content can be enough to show a student that you care about their learning personally, as well as getting them engaged.
Sincerely, thank you for reading!
Building strong relationships with students is one of the most important things that a teacher can do to help a child be comfortable in the classroom according to every single motivational theory. Your students will not learn from you if they do not feel valued or respected. Currently, you and Calvin have a very closed off and adversarial relationship, which is directly influencing his behavior in class. You see him as a "problem", and he can infer those feelings through the way you interact with him. It would do you much more good to empathize with Calvin, and make his education match him instead of forcing him to fit education.
Getting to know Calvin and his interests, as well as supporting him through his growth is imperative. Building rapport, asking questions about himself, and talking about his life outside of school will allow you to knock out two birds with one stone; Calvin will be more wiling to listen to you, and you will discover how to cater your teaching to his interests and learning style. Welcome Calvin's thoughts, feelings, and interests, and use them to your benefit. According to interest theory, using intrinsic motivation allows for learning to become the reward for engaged and excited students.
Giving Calvin space for curiosity, exploration, and making mistakes is a surefire way to promote positive associations with learning. If you want Calvin to become self-determined, you must be patient and allow time for autonomous learning and self-paced activities. You can foster curiosity by asking open ended questions, and encouraging your students (including Calvin) to pursue their interests Calvin enjoys problem solving and creative experimentation outside of school, so bringing it into the classroom will make him more excited about learning. While his own desires to follow his passions will push him to persist through problems, it will also be beneficial to give him strategies for success. Guiding Calvin to record his plans and learning in a journal will give him the opportunity to quantify his learning for himself. This self evaluation will help him to attribute his successes to his own hard work, and will also help him to develop feelings of self-efficacy.
The specific ways that you praise and/or reprimand your students directly impacts their understanding of themselves and the way that the world works. For example, applauding a student's intelligence or bemoaning the lack thereof will lead to the student developing a fixed mindset. Fixed mindsets lead children to believe that their abilities are innate and stagnant, which can then transition into a sense of learned helplessness wherein a child refuses to try anything or take responsibility for their own learning. Instead, you should reward effort rather than results, and praise should be aimed at a student's strategies according to interest theory, the expectation theories, achievement theory, self-determination theory, and self-regulated learning theory. Talking to you should never feel like a punishment for your students. Give Calvin and your other students room to make mistakes without being overly critical or publicly humiliating them; students that are afraid to make mistakes or experiencing guilt are unlikely to be interested in learning at all. If Calvin must be talked to about a problem behavior, do it in private and be sure to avoid condescension.
Sincerely,
Group 1