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Motivating students
Citation
Wong, J. Y. Y., & Corbett, S. (1995). Motivating students. Teaching and Learning, 15(2), 3-9.
Author
Wong, Jessie Yuk Yong
•
Corbett, Paul Scott
Abstract
When one of us visited a school last month, the principal came and said, "I have a student who takes two hours to write three sentences. How can you motivate him?" To this question, we have no straight forward answer. Few topics in psychology have received as much attention in empirical research as motivation. However, motivation is thought of in the Singaporean culture in simple ways: motivation comes from reward or punishment; motivation comes from within the person; some people are born without it and these people cannot be motivated at all, they are therefore weak and unable to succeed. These different notions about motivation make us wonder how our teachers should tackle the problem of unmotivated students. There is no doubt that all teachers should be concerned about their disinterested students in the class and help them to learn. And no teacher will deny that motivated students are easier to teach and that those who are interested in learning, do in fact learn more. What does this mean to the teachers? And what does motivation consist of? What are the possible ways to motivate our students? These are the concerns of this article.
Date Issued
1995
Publisher
Institute of Education (Singapore)