Chapter 1IntroductionIn today’s student-centric view of teaching the participation of student in the learning process is given great importance. If the student is unwilling to learn, all the efforts of teacher will result in failure. Today Teachers have to exert efforts in order to make the students willing to learn and participate in their learning process.
Teachers, students and researchers all agree that motivation is necessary to energizing student behavior to learn. A well-trained teacher is fully aware of the motivational strategies that can make his/her job easier. Tanaka (2005) believes that teachers are greatly responsible for student motivation. It can be said that the teacher, his teaching style and his behavior ahs the tendency to positively or negatively affect the motivational quality of students. This study aims at finding the strategies used by secondary school teachers to motivate their students, targeting secondary schools in Lahore. In addition, the researcher wants to find out the views of teachers regarding the usefulness of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation at secondary level. Motivation is the drive to do something.
Guay (2010) defines motivation as “the reasons causing a behaviour”. Broussard and Garrison (2004) view motivation as “the attribute that moves us to do or not to do something.” Passer ; Smith, (2001) defines motivation as behavior directed by a certain goal. It the force or spur to do something where there was no or little attraction to do it before. According to Crookes (1991), motivation in classroom setting means to take the learning process seriously, expecting highest achievements from students, displaying caring and accepting behavior. Also creating a supportive and pleasant classroom environment, encouraging risk taking and accepting mistakes as part of learning process.
Motivation is either intrinsic or extrinsic. A student, who is extrinsically motivated, does the work for the reward or praise whereas an intrinsically motivated student finds the pleasure in task itself rather than the benefit he/she can get from the completion of the task. Deci (1999) describes extrinsic motivation as an outside force; however, he believes that intrinsic motivation stem from pleasure, interest, or personal enjoyment. In his view, intrinsic motivation is taking pleasure in an activity whereas extrinsic motivation takes place with an anticipation of external rewards like money, threats of punishment and grades. There are various methods of motivation used by teachers in their classrooms. They use Praise, feedback, trips, rewards, grading, competitions, cooperation, and A-V aids to get their students excited about learning in their class. Motivation for learning is induced with positive and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is the use a favorable condition to strengthen a behavior whereas negative reinforcement is the removal of an unfavorable stimulus to enhance a behavior.
Praise is a good example of positive reinforcement used by teachers; students love getting complements from their instructors on completion of their work. (Burnett, 2001). Teachers often use positive or negative reinforcements to motivate their students. Positive reinforcement includes grades, group activities, and praise; however, in negative reinforcement an undesired behavior is avoided or stopped due to elimination of a certain stimulus after the behavior is shown.
(Slavin, 1998). The researcher will study the motivational strategies used by secondary school teachers to ensure student engagement in classroom activities. The findings of this research will help educators in improving the academic performance of students by ensuring their engagement in educational activities. This research also aims at finding the most useful motivational strategy among extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Statement of the problemThere are many researches available regarding motivations but few researchers have worked on the secondary school teacher’s insight on motivational strategies that work best in engaging students in classroom activities.
The available literature on motivation clarify more about what motivation is and how it can affect teaching and learning but not many researchers have looked into the strategies that teachers use to motivate students (Junio, 2009; Robert, 2004). In addition, the researcher want to study which form of motivation is best suited to educational process at secondary level. ObjectivesObjectives of the study were;• To asses the strategies that secondary school teachers use to create and maintain motivation in their classrooms.• To examine the effects of motivational strategies on student engagement in classroom activities.• To find out the effectiveness of motivational strategies used by secondary school teachers.Research Questions1. How do secondary school teachers create motivation in their classrooms?2. What kind of motivational techniques do the secondary school teachers use to motivate their students towards studies?3.
Are motivational strategies effective in creating and maintaining student engagement in classroom activities? 4. Which motivational strategy is most effective in view of teachers?HypothesesResearcher has suggested the following hypotheses; Ho: There is no major effect of motivation on student’s engagement at secondary level.H1: There is major effect of motivation on student’s engagement at secondary level.
Significance of the Study Educators are always seeking ways to improve educational practices and for this purpose they need solid research based information on various aspects of education. The findings of this study can help teachers and educationists to look into effectiveness of motivational strategies that can bring improvement in student’s performance. This study provides insight into the validity of various motivational techniques used by secondary school teachers that can help teacher and educationists all over the country in understanding the psychology of secondary students and what can work best to get them interested in learning. This study is also useful for researchers they can use the findings of this study for their research aimed at finding better environment for improved academic performance of secondary students.
