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      Transferability      Transcript Quotes      Participants        Smith Middle School        Maple Middle School      What Motivates? Chapter 5: Discussion References Appendixes Biography

The Schools, Teams, and Student Participants As stated in the last chapter, Smith Middle School and Maple Middle School share many similarities. They are regional middle schools serving 500-550 seventh and eighth grade students. Those students are divided into five interdisciplinary teams, each with a math teacher, social studies teacher, language arts teacher, and science teacher. The four classrooms of each team are located in the same general proximity and, other than for lunch, physical education, and allied arts classes, students remain in that one general part of the school building for the entire day. What follows is a description of each school and the teachers and students who participated in this study. Descriptions of the school, individual classrooms, and anecdotes come primarily from informal site visits, classroom observations, and the field notes. Participants’ words, thoughts, and perceptions come mostly from informal conversations, and interviews. Although this section does not share everything each student said about motivation, special attention is given to the motivational themes that emerged for each student. To aid the reader, below is a chart summarizing what each student participant believes motivates him or her to learn. Table 4.1: Summary of What Motivates the Participants Ben Teachers with a positive personality Fun Teaching activities which simulate real world activities. Doris   Teachers who push her a little Clear expectations Repetition Lockstep teaching is too slow and too boring Eric Teachers who are positive and nice (grumpy teachers are a downer) Learning subject matter he perceives is useful Active, hands-on learning He likes teachers who review, clarify, and model Cathy Fun Having a good relationship with the teacher Doing things (bookwork is boring) Thinks she learns best auditorily

	Web site created by Mike Muir Send questions or comments to wilder@somtel.com Last updated April 25, 2001	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