The Role of Motivation in Academic Success
Every year, children all over the United States are testing in schools and striving to do their best. Some strive to do better than others and others struggle to do better and work harder, the dramatic difference is that some children and teenagers are motivated for success more than others and that greatly plays into academic success.
Motivational forces are forces acting either on or within a person to initiate behavior (Petri & Cofer, 2019). Motivation is very important in success. It is what pushes someone to strive to do their best. Without motivation acting on a person to initiate their behavior people don’t have a cause to be doing something successfully.
Classrooms are the very core of academic success. It is the center of students’ learning and social behaviors. Classrooms often rely on a reward or punishment system. As Bob Sullo points out in his book titled, The Motivated Student, some students do very well with this type of system. Some students though, on the other hand, have a very hard time with this sort of system (Sullo, 2009).
Students that come from a very motivational centered household are often more motivated toward the reward or punishment system. Students to come from a family home that is more lenient and less strict often have more troubles with this type of system. The students do not care if they get rewarded or punished in most cases (Sullo, 2009). This is very concerning, as many educators use the reward or punishment system.
So many students are left behind as a result of the reward or punishment system. Some students that deal with an IEP are learning with other students that learn much faster. It’s not that these students are not motivated, it’s that they are placed with students that do not have the same learning abilities as them. Sometimes these students feel that they maybe should let others answer because they feel that they might not be correct, or are just overall not confident in their answers (Petri, 2019). When this is the case, these students should not have to feel that type of way. They should be motivated and coached that they are capable of so much more than they think they are. That in turn, would boost their internal motivation, making them want to maybe jump out of their comfort zone, and participate in group projects.
Schools that are taking notice of this are reflecting this in their state testing (Petri, 2019). Students show better scores when they are motivated to do their best, and when they are motivated to do their best for their academic success.
As Tara García Mathewson is quick to point out, once the reward of that the teacher offers goes away, or doesn’t seem like it is good enough, so does the student’s motivation for whatever they are doing. (Mathewson, 2019). Incentive motivation is most closely related to the reward or punishment system (Feldman, 2017)
In order for all students to have academic success, they need to have a good motivational type of behavior in their lives. Internal motivation is very important for any student that wants to achieve academic success (Petri & Cofer, 2019). Internal motivation is an individual’s inner reason for doing something for themselves, rather than doing it for someone else (Mathewson, 2019).
Many students have issues trying to achieve internal motivation. For many, having academic success is solely based on having grades that are good enough to participate in extracurricular activities. Students that purely do their work, simply because they want to, are rarer to find in today’s society (Mathewson, 2019). Extracurricular activities ares great in so many ways, they teach responsibly and teamwork, even time management. While these extracurricular activities do so much good for students, sometimes they can do harm. Students may just be focused on skipping by and doing the bare minimum to be able to participate (Mathewson, 2019)
Students in this day and age need to have a better drive, that comes with having the inner internal motivation and having motivation from others outside of themselves (Petri & Cofer, 2019).
Having teachers and others outside of the classroom that really care about a student’s academic success has a massive positive effect on a student (Mathewson, 2019). It makes the student feel that what they are doing really matters to others, and makes them feel that it is worthwhile. This motivation leads to the student striving to make a positive effect on their grades and overall academic success. It also leads to them getting out and doing more and taking on a greater responsibility for that success.
Every year, students all over the United States are testing in schools and striving to do their best. Those that are receiving motivation from all sorts of figures outside of the classroom show that they are doing better in their classroom work. They are motivated by not only their teachers but family and even peers.
Motivation has, without a single doubt, a huge impact on motivational success. Though some strive to do better than others, and others struggle to do better and work harder, if a student has good internal motivation and enough motivation from external forces, they should feel as though they should strive harder to their best for their own academic success.
Academic success is so important. It leads to so many levels of education. Motivation will lead students through high school, college, and into the working atmosphere that they choose. It will always be making an impact on them, they just have to choose whether they want it or not.
