Motivation in Elementary School Classrooms

In recent years, educators have increasingly acknowledged the significance of the role of motivation in enhancing students' academic performance. Essentially, students who derive tremendous pleasure in the learning of any subject demonstrate a strong motivation to learn. Concomitantly, how educators are able to utilize appropriate instructional strategies and create an ideal learning environment to increase motivation has also become a popular subject among researchers. At the same time, this emerging acknowledgement of the importance of motivation is accompanied by two disturbing educational trends that undermine student motivation. First, research studies have verified the findings of national reports, which showed a decrease in students' interest in subjects such as reading and writing with increasing grade levels. Second, the instructional approaches adopted by elementary school teachers, which are characterized by "low-level uniform assignments, normative standards, and high teacher control" have contributed to the decline in student motivation (Miller & Meece, 1997, p. 286).

The investigation of the role of motivation in elementary school classrooms and their implications for educators has covered a wide range of factors. To begin with, researchers have highlighted three types of motivational goalsùtask mastery goals, ego-social goals and work-avoidant goals--that aff

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ovative than the traditional P&P tests. What this study indicated that fifth graders, who were highly preoccupied with grades could be extrinsically motivated to learn their subjects, without needing to feel engaged in their learning. Stefanou and Parkes (2003) thus concluded that a combined instructional approach should be used to expose students to both the P&P test and the PA since the latter would help them cultivate an intrinsic interest in science. Apart from the type of curriculum or assessments, the classroom environment could also affect student motivation. In their study, Self-Brown and Mathews (2003) examined the effects of classroom structure on the motivational goal orientation of two fifth-grade classes and one fourth-grade class. The three classes were allocated to three different conditions. Under the token economy condition, students were offered a contract that enabled them to earn tokens. The tokens could be exchanged for various extrinsic rewards for their fulfillment of learning goals for mathematics. They had a goals chart to help them to list their weekly goals. Students in the contingency contract condition were also a goal chart for listing their goals and a contract in which their fulfillment o
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Approximate Word count = 2864
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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