What Motivates Individual Students And Engages Them

Determining what motivates individual students and engages them in a classroom, is as essential as it is challenging. In a classroom setting, faculty must know how to use motivation and engagement together to enhance students’ learning outcomes (Woolfolk Margetts, 2007). Although student engagement is seen as a necessary element for learning, it needs the support of motivation to serve as a prerequisite. Furthermore, motivation sets the foundation for implementing learner-centered approaches to learning. Unfortunately today’s teachers are confronted by larger class sizes, fast-paced academic calendars, and standardized assessments that force them to lump all students together (Toshalis Michael, 2012). When students feel engaged both†¦show more content†¦3. Separating unmotivated students from motived ones does more harm than good; this approach is most likely to exacerbate existing motivational dispositions and intellectual capacities. 4. When students are presented with opportunities to make choices and to have some say so about the situation, they are more likely to be more motivated and engaged in an activity. 5. Not all students are engaged even when they are motived. They need to be taught self-regulation skills to stay on task, set goals, monitor their learning, and feel free to change their strategies when needed. 6. Technologies has many benefits; however, there can be a distraction to productivity and cognitive complexity in learning. Students need to realize that they need to â€Å"unplug†, and how to focus on one activity at a time. Student Engagement Student engagement is considered a predictor of student achievement (Laven Burgess, 2011; Price Baker, 2012; Reyes et al., 2012). Student engagement is generally viewed as the degree in which a student is involved, or feels connected in a variety of educationally purposeful activities (Axelson Fick, 2010). To facilitate engagement, institutions are finding that they must create resources to address students who are academically inadequate, lack social skills, lack an educational plan, or clear goals, unfamiliarity with the institution, and other outside responsibilities (Clounch,