This article offers a synthetic overview of the theory of motivation and the possible measures applied within the classroom to increase the level of students’ motivation, starting from the identification of the types of motivation, according to Jeremy Harmer, up to today’s classrooms students, who come to school with a variety of abilities, learning styles and multiple intelligences. The article examines the fact that it has become an immense challenge for teachers to meet every student’s need in today’s mixed ability classrooms. Therefore, teachers need to embrace the differences in students and use them as an opportunity to differentiate instruction. We argue that it is vitally important for schools to provide extracurricular opportunities for all students, related to their abilities and needs in order to face the challenges in mixed ability classrooms. It has been proved that extracurricular activities create growth in academic achievement, attendance, social skills, leadership skills, and future mindset.
What is motivation?
Types of motivation
According to Jeremy Harmer, motivation is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something. Marion Williams and Robert Burden argue that motivation provokes a decision to act, as a result of which there is an intellectual and/or physical effort so that the person can achieve some previously set goal.
Therefore, the motivation depends on how much value the individual places on the outcome he or she wishes to achieve. Adults may have clearly defined or vague goals, children’s goals are often more complex and less easy to describe, but they can still be very powerful.
There is a distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, that is motivation that comes from outside and from inside. Extrinsic motivation is the result of any number of outside factors, for example the need to pass an exam, while intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual, thus a person might be motivated by the enjoyment of the learning process itself or by a desire to make themselves feel better.
Even where the original reason for taking up a language course, for example, is extrinsic, the chances of success will be greatly enhanced if the students come to love the learning process.
The motivation that brings students to the task of learning English can be affected and influenced by the attitude of a number of people. It is worth considering what and who these are, since they form part of the environment from which the student engages with the learning process: the goal, the society we live in, the people around us, curiosity. But, on the solid base of the extrinsic motivation, the teacher needs to build The Angel of North, which provides us with a satisfying metaphor to deal with the greatest difficulty teachers face in terms of motivation. Students may lose their motivation in time, but, at the same time, we have the ability to create motivation in students where, initially, there is none. But within this process, students need to play their part, too.
The motivation angel is built on the base of: affect (students’ feelings), achievement (the real sense of success, according to the students’ appropriate level of challenge, involving students in tasks they can succeed in, guide them towards success etc.), attitude (gain students’ confidence by managing our job very well), activities (meaningful and engaging activities), agency (things done by the students, involving them in decision making and taking responsibility for their learning).
In today’s classrooms, students come to school with a variety of abilities, learning styles, and multiple intelligences. It has become an immense challenge for teachers to meet every student’s need in today’s mixed ability classrooms. When students are not taught at their interest levels, frustration and boredom increase causing a lack of motivation. Today’s schools are an abundance of mixed ability classrooms. So, teachers must meet the immediate needs of all learners so they can progress successfully.
Students need to feel a sense of belonging and have teachers see them as individuals with individual needs. When this happens, and the curriculum is based on interest, teachers will increase motivation, productivity and achievement while meeting students’ needs.
Our main objective, as teachers, is to increase student motivation by reducing their boredom and frustration in the classroom. Many times, we noticed talking during work time, off-task behaviors, and students not being able to self-select free time activities, which led us to believe that students had a lack of motivation.
According to J. Harmer, in a differentiated classroom, there is a variety of learning options, different abilities and interests. We may, for example, give different students different tasks, different things to read or listen to, we could respond to them differently and group them according to their different abilities, or we can choose to teach the group as a whole, based on the activity and our roles as teachers. Nevertheless, it is clearly desirable to respond to the needs of the individual even though they are part of a group.
One way of working with students with different needs and levels is to provide them with different material, tailoring what we give them to their individual needs.
Another one is to offer them a range of vocabulary or grammar exercises and they can choose which one to do.
These activities represent only one way to differentiate between them and it can be really difficult in terms of feedback and they involve a lot of time of preparation.
But if we cannot offer students different materials, we can, instead, get them to do different things in response to the content they are all looking at or listening to:
- Give students different tasks: all students look at the same text, but make a difference in terms of the tasks we ask them to do in response to that text (Group A might have to interpret the information by reproducing it in a graphic form, while group B might answer a series of open-ended questions, group C might be offered a series of multiple-choice questions – 2 options);
- Give students different roles: in a role-play activity, we can help one student by telling him/her what questions to ask and the other student might answer on his own;
- Reward early finishers: reward early finishers with extension tasks in order to challenge them further;
- Encourage different students’ responses: we can give students the same materials and tasks, but expect different responses to them (flexible tasks);
- Identify students’ strengths: include tasks which do not demand linguistic brilliance but instead allow students to show off their talents.
What the teacher does:
- Respond to students: during lessons, we frequently have to respond to students, giving them feedback about how they are doing, or acting as a resource or tutor; however, some students are more sensitive than others and so we will correct them with more care, some students need to see things in order to be able to respond to them and some students need to have them explained orally. When students are working in groups or in pairs and we are monitoring their progress, we will react to them depending on how well they are getting on.
- Be inclusive: draw all the students into the lesson, by setting a task with the whole group, asking questions all the students can understand;
- Flexible groupings: sometimes we can put students in different groups so that each group can do different tasks, or we can put students at different levels in the same group because we believe that the weaker students will benefit from working with students at a higher linguistic level and because, at the same time, we believe that higher-level students will improve their skills by having explained things to their colleagues.
It is worth pointing out that learner training and encouraging learner autonomy is the ultimate achievement of differentiation. If we can get individual students to take responsibility for their own learning, they are acting as autonomous individuals and differentiation has thus been achieved.
Grouping students
One way to discuss pairwork and groupwork is to do a group activity with students and then, when it is over, ask them to write or say how they felt about it. Once we have decided to have students working in pairs or groups, we need to consider how we are going to put them into those pairs and groups, based on the following principles:
- Friendship: we should leave it to the students and ask them to get into pairs or groups with whoever they want to work with.
- Streaming: pairs and groups should have a mixture of weaker and stronger students, the weaker students will benefit from the help they get – cooperative work – all students helping each other regardless of level. As students from weaker groups may become demoralized, the best choice is to get a mixture of abilities and establish the group cohesion. This type of activity supports self-trust, involvement and collaborative work, improves skills and brings people together in order to gain more confidence and knowledge.
Chance;
The task;
Changing groups;
Gender and status;
Mixing and moving students around as a course progresses is good for a classroom atmosphere and for individual engagement.
Learner autonomy
Learner autonomy is when students take control and responsibility for their own learning, both in terms of what they learn and how they learn it. It takes as its starting point the idea that students are capable of self-direction and are able to develop an independent, proactive approach to their studies.
At the heart of autonomous learning is the student’s perception of their own role as a learner. Classroom discussion and one-to-one conversations with the teacher can help students to understand the essential part that they play in their own success in English. Establish that autonomous, dynamic students have the potential to learn far more than passive, reactive learners. Self-reliant students can address their own individual needs and make ongoing progress.
Autonomy involves students having a range of learning strategies which they are able to apply flexibly in different contexts. Teachers can help students to develop learning strategies through learner training in the classroom and this can take many forms. One important practical step is awareness-raising on how to use self-reference tools such as English-English dictionaries and grammar books.
Lack of motivation in mixed ability classrooms
Lack of motivation in mixed ability classrooms is an important problem in education today. Teachers are expected to reach all learners ranging from special education all the way to gifted, but teachers feel overwhelmed and unprepared to reach all their needs. Thus, students become bored with the curriculum and frustrated because their interests are not met. Often when students are bored, they do not view education as beneficial. Learners often steer clear of participating in activities in which they are unsuccessful and it has been proved that behavior issues are most likely to occur when a student expends much energy and fails. Even though teachers cannot control having a mixed-ability classroom, they can control the factors that influence the students in those classrooms.
Differentiated Instruction will help teachers face classroom challenges because it is a proactive approach to improve learning for all students and it is not a strategy, but a way of life in a classroom that uses a mix of various teaching methods. Differentiated Instruction benefits students with a wide range of levels, learning styles, and allows students to work at different speeds and abilities.
Implementing Differentiated Instruction exposes students to a variety of learning strategies and experiences, which helps them to be successful in our democratic society. Some teaching strategies that should be kept in mind when first using this technique are that differentiation should be done a little at a time and begin with a single subject or curricular element. As the school year moves forward, the teacher can gradually increase the class or content.
Differentiated Instruction requires the teacher to restructure their curriculum by adjusting content, creating whole group lessons, open-ended lessons, and varying student responses. When this restructuring happens, the level of student engagement increases because students are working at their ability and interest levels. Teachers also need to make sure that students clearly understand their learning process through setting clear objectives and standards before they differentiate instruction. Finally, Differentiated Instruction benefits all students by creating a mutual relationship between the content, teacher, and student. When this relationship is established, students will feel a higher engagement with the curriculum.
Embracing student differences and challenging each student at their level can be difficult. Through Differentiated Instruction, each student will be able to master critical skills while also gaining an education that challenges them. Differentiated Instruction allows for different learning rates and structuring tasks at different complexities. Each child has a Zone of Proximal Development, which is the zone where students feel comfortable doing challenging work with support. Differentiated Instruction uses the Zone of Proximal Development to structure its activities so every student succeeds. Learning expands when the work is a little too hard but there is support to help students feel successful. Students need to learn at their interest and ability levels to achieve high levels of academic success and expansion. Challenging the gifted can be especially difficult for the classroom teacher, but differentiated activities allow for higher-leveled and open-ended questions. Differentiated Instruction works best for all learners when teachers and students partake in a curriculum that is both challenging and also allows students to take responsibility for their own learning well beyond the classroom.
By giving students various choices and ways that they can work to learn together, all students will become engaged and take responsibility in the classroom, according to their preferences and abilities, and this type of activity is meant to increase their self-efficacy, self-trust and engagement. Along with increasing engagement, student motivation can also be improved through Differentiated Instruction by giving students choices.
Learners will invest in education if it interests them in content and skill.
Differentiated Instruction gives students a chance to take a variety of paths that will ultimately lead to the same learning outcome. Giving students power to be involved in decision making allows them to participate in their preferred style of learning and increases on-task behavior. Therefore, through the option of choice activities, boredom and frustration will become reduced. When teachers start Differentiated Instruction they need to make sure that students have enough choices in the curriculum and are not repeating old material in class so that students do not become bored or frustrated. Allowing students to choose activities in the classroom creates a higher level of student thinking and gives students the opportunity to reinforce skills they may need to improve on. The choices during free time give students choices based upon their learning preferences. Students will also have the opportunity to select their own projects and be given a variety of question types on assessments. Choices will provide empowerment and students will go towards the level that is best for them. Therefore, the student is provided with choices that help each individual learn as deeply and quickly as possible. Learners will put forth greater effort and produce better work when given choices and variety. Hopefully, when given choices, students will take more responsibility for their learning. Many teachers, parents, and students believe that it is the sole responsibility of the teacher to make sure students learn, but the students also need to be held accountable. When students are held responsible for their own learning, their pride and motivation in school rises.
Differentiated Instruction, when implemented effectively, can be a solution to managing mixed-ability classrooms, reducing boredom, increasing motivation, improving behavior, and can close educational gaps. Differentiated Instruction is a lot of work, but the students love it, frustration levels are lowered, and deeper understanding occurs. Teachers need to embrace the differences in students and use them as an opportunity to differentiate instruction. This way of life in a classroom is an ongoing process and one that takes collaboration and dedication.
Motivating students in mixed abilities classrooms through extracurricular activities
It is vitally important that schools provide extracurricular opportunities for all students, related to their abilities and needs. However, in the current climate, districts are cutting essential extracurricular activities in the name of budget constraints, academic focus, and additional attention needed in academics. What many do not realize is that there are more motivational and learning opportunities created within extracurricular activities than in most academic classrooms. Extracurricular activities create growth in academic achievement, attendance, social skills, leadership skills, and future mindset. Therefore, it is critically important for schools to offer and maintain extracurricular activities.
Nowadays extracurricular activities prove to be an essential part of the educational and instructional process both for school children and university students. Various methods and techniques such as discussions, role-playing and dramatizing, creative projects, video watching contribute to the growth of communicative skills and stimulate the development of learners’ creative abilities. In this respect, clubs, projects (online or offline) for English learners play a crucial role in creating a student-friendly educational environment and help them overcome psychological limits and differences.
The extracurricular format and absence of traditional types of classroom tests and evaluation, as well as easily modified structure of a meeting, help students to reveal their potential to improve communication skills and generate their interest in Literature and Art in English-speaking countries.
In order to support our students and to answer their needs, our school is currently implementing projects with European funding and extra-budgetary support, meant to motivate our students according to their needs and steer their interest in learning and improving their English skills, reduce early school leaving and create a dynamic and interactive study environment. These projects mix formal teaching methods with non-formal/informal education, in order to accomplish the objectives according to our students’ different needs.
It is worth mentioning here the eTwinning Erasmus+ mobility in Malta: Diverse & Creative Learning Environments (April 2022).
Participants were encouraged throughout the seminar to find partners from different countries and plan projects together – projects related to the theme of the seminar. On the last day educators shared good practices and tips in showing how eTwinning can be a tool, a pedagogy to share, connect and collaborate. It was a good learning opportunity to see how eTwinning can be integrated in our teaching and learning and to motivate our students.
Why We Should Learn and Teach Empathy?
➢ To develop a positive leadership
Positive leadership draws on scientific evidence to help leaders and teachers to grow their productivity and activity, promote school well-being and help students to thrive.
Positive psychology itself is the study of flourishing. In the workplace it focuses on productivity, motivation, engagement, resilience, team dynamics and, in particular, strengths. A positive leader leverages the strengths of individuals and teams to put them and the organisation on the path to flourishing.
What Positive Psychology has to offer to Leadership
Strengths: how to apply strengths to realise the potential of individuals and teams.
Building psychological capital: Hope, Efficacy, Resilience & Optimism (HERO) are a resource in the classroom.
Meaning & motivation: how to craft work for greater meaning and increase motivation.
High-quality connections: how to foster positive relationships at work.
How positive emotions in the classroom fuel creativity and productivity.
Resilience – how to stay strong and deal positively with setbacks.
Growth Mindset – how to adopt the mindset for success.
Appreciative Inquiry: positive change management.
Conclusions
- Motivation is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something and it will depend on how much value the individual places on the outcome he or she wishes to achieve.
- Extrinsic motivation is the result of any number of outside factors, for example the need to pass an exam, while intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual, thus a person might be motivated by the enjoyment of the learning process itself or by a desire to make themselves feel better.
- In today’s classrooms, students come to school with a variety of abilities, learning styles, and multiple intelligences. It has become an immense challenge for teachers to meet every student’s need in today’s mixed ability classrooms. When students are not taught at their interest levels, frustration and boredom increase, causing lack of motivation.
- It is worth pointing out that learner training and encouraging learner autonomy is the ultimate achievement of differentiation. If we can get individual students to take responsibility for their own learning, they are acting as autonomous individuals and differentiation has thus been achieved.
- Autonomy involves students having a range of learning strategies which they are able to apply flexibly in different contexts; teachers can help students to develop learning strategies through learner training in the classroom and this can take many forms.
- Implementing Differentiated Instruction exposes students to a variety of learning strategies and experiences, which helps them to be successful in our democratic society. Some teaching strategies that should be kept in mind when first using this technique are that differentiation should be done a little at a time and begin with a single subject or curricular element.
- By giving students various choices and ways that they can work to learn together, all students will become engaged and take responsibility in the classroom, according to their preferences and abilities, and this type of activity is meant to increase their self-efficacy, self-trust and engagement. Along with increasing engagement, student motivation can also be improved through Differentiated Instruction by giving students choices.
- Teachers need to embrace the differences in students and use them as an opportunity to differentiate instruction. This way of life in a classroom is an ongoing process and one that takes collaboration and dedication.
- It is vitally important that schools provide extracurricular opportunities for all students, related to their abilities and needs.
- Extracurricular activities create growth in academic achievement, attendance, social skills, leadership skills, and future mindset.
- The extracurricular format and absence of traditional types of classroom tests and evaluation, as well as easily modified structure of a meeting, help students to reveal their potential to improve communication skills and generate their interest in Literature and Art in English-speaking countries.
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