How Can Achievement Motivation Be Enhanced?
Teachers can emphasize learning goals and positive or empowering attributions. Students with learning goals see the purpose of school as gaining knowledge and competence; these students tend to have higher motivation to learn than do students with the performance goals of positive judgments and good grades. Teachers can use special programs such as attribution training to help students out of learned helplessness, in which students feel that they are doomed to fail despite their actions. Teachers’ expectations significantly affect students’ motivation and achievement. Teachers can communicate positive expectations that students can learn and can take steps to reduce anxiety. How Can Teachers Increase Students’ Motivation to Learn? An incentive is a reinforcer that people can expect to receive if they perform a specific behavior. Intrinsic incentives are aspects of certain tasks that in themselves have enough value to motivate students to do the tasks on their own. Extrinsic incentives
