Motivation & learning

When talking about student-centered learning, for many teachers, motivation seems to be a key issue that determines whether or not students can fully engage in their learning processes. In this page, we will introduce 2 blogs with the intention to illustrate the link between motivation and learning. This blog offers some strategies for stimulating motivation to learn. 

Science of Motivation

By Kou Murayama

If you are motivated, you learn better and remember more of what you learned. This sounds like an obvious fact, but our lab showed that the reality is more nuanced. The critical fact is that not all motivations are created equal… Continue reading.

MOTIVATION FOR LEARNING: IS THERE A POINT?

By Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen 

Motivation, engagement, commitment, drive, grit … Some people seem to be obsessed with these concepts. For them, they’re like magic wands that can solve almost all of the problems in education or learning in general and/or are primary objectives for education and learning. In this blog, the authors argued that it’s not really very useful to choose a learning approach in which learners are very engaged, where they possibly learn something along the way, but are spending a lot of – often wasted time – to get there. Studying / learning that way is not only inefficient, but it can also be very demotivating in the end. Even if learners are engaged at first and are enjoying the learning experience but not really getting anywhere, after a while they’ll probably think “Why am I doing this?” “What the heck am I doing?”, “What’s in it for me?” 

The initial motivation will only be maintained if it goes hand in hand with positive results (positive reinforcement; remember that?). Without positive result, demotivation or amotivation follows, or, worst case scenario, the learner will feel helpless and stop… Continue reading