What Underachieving Middle School Students Believe Motivates them to Learn

Chapter 1: The Challenge to Educate Everyone Chapter 2: A Review of Literature Chapter 3: Methods Chapter 4: The Results Chapter 5: Discussion      An Emerging Theory      A Gap in Schools      Getting in the Way?          Perceptions          A Need for Models         Legitimacy Issues      A Final Thought References Appendixes Biography

What’s Getting in the Way? The teachers in this study know the jargon of motivating students: make it interesting, relate it to their lives, give them choices, and don’t always lecture. Why aren’t they more thorough, then, in implementing motivating teaching? Nolen and Nicholls (1994) also report that teachers in their study had beliefs about motivating students that closely matched those advocated by researchers, but they weren’t implementing those practices in their classrooms. What gets in the way of teachers motivating students? Is it the pace teachers think they need to keep? The perception of a need to cover material? Do teachers not want to bother? Or do they simply not know how? Further research is needed to really understand the roadblocks facing teachers’ motivating students. The results of these two studies suggest at least three factors which interfere: a difference of perceptions between teachers and students, teachers not having models for motivating teaching, and some effective models not being perceived as legitimate by teachers.

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Mike Muir Assistant Professor of Education University of Maine at Farmington 104 Main Street Farmington, ME 04938 207.778.7179 wilder@somtel.com http://violet.umf.maine.edu/~mmuir