The Need for Student’s Motivation for Academic Excellence – The most common issue that teachers and parents face as the new school year begins is a lack of student motivation. Motivation can come from within the student (intrinsic) or from without (extrinsic) (extrinsic). A child who is intrinsically motivated does something because he or she enjoys learning new things. An externally motivated child is one who performs well in school in order to gain parental approval, grades, or rewards. While research indicates that children who are internally motivated are more likely to succeed, teachers and parents frequently observe that many children seek external reinforcers.
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Parents who ask follow-up questions for their children are more successful in developing intrinsic motivation. A parent who gives a child a special toy as a “reward” for reading a lesson about how an airplane works and completing the related homework that requires answers to questions about the parts of an airplane, for example, will stimulate less motivation than a parent who helps a child discover how planes work by building a balsam plane and allowing the child to practice flying it. This parent can inquire as to what causes the plane’s flight pattern to change. After that, the child can experiment, discover, and generate new questions and discoveries.
As parents and teachers are well aware, motivation varies depending on the situation, the people involved, the task, and the setting. A child with a learning disability may be a reluctant reader who resists reading a science assignment or writing a homework assignment but eagerly absorbs everything the teacher shows about water vaporization in a science class. Finding what motivates each learner is critical.
Lack of motivation cripples the innate capacity of students, as much as the student must motivate himself, parents and teachers should equally do better in motivating them.
