Importance of Motivation in Teaching
Jaimie F. Castillo
All teachers want their students to excel in life; motivation in the classroom is one of the important ways to help achieve this goal. Motivation attracts the pupils to listen eagerly in the discussion. Motivation can be defined as the willingness to act or the internal mechanism that stimulates goal-oriented behavior. It tries to get the attention of the pupils by the preliminary activities that are presented by the teacher.
According to Oudeyer and Kaplan (2007), intrinsic motivation centrally involved in spontaneous exploration and curiosity, is a crucial concept in developmental psychology. It is a concept described by psychologists as the motivation that comes from within a person to accomplish a task or goal. The motivation is present because the person enjoys a certain task or behavior, feels a sense of satisfaction working on it or feels pleasure upon completing it. Extrinsic motivation is rooted in external sources; it comes from the individual’s environment. A person who is extrinsically motivated might work on a task even if he or she has no interest in it, solely for the purpose of receiving the anticipated reward or avoiding punishment.
Mostly, the motivational activities given in the class are hands-on activities wherein the pupils do some experiments. They will observe, records and discuss the data that they gather. Through that kind of motivational activity, the pupils will be able to have an idea of the day’s lesson and they will be enthusiastic to listen and elaborate the lesson.
To utilize the desire of the pupils to learn, teachers see to it that their pupils are prepared and ready to listen. They should show willingness and interest to learn. Teachers also make use of the curiosity of their pupils. They make them think critically to come up with the possible answer or solution to the questions. They make them wonder for them to know the significance of various things. The participation of the pupils is a great factor for teachers to convey the concepts in class simultaneously. If most of their pupils participate in the discussion, it would be a good sign that they are learning and interested to the lesson. It means that the class is active because there is an exchange of ideas. Interaction is evident so teaching and learning is easy.
Some of the motivational techniques used by teachers are: experiments, describing what is shown in the picture, asking questions which require higher order thinking skill, letting the class visualize concepts and letting pupils draw some concepts. Through these motivational activities, learners have hints on their lesson. They became inquisitive and interested to learn new concepts and ideas.
The author is Teacher
--oOo-
III at Angeles Elementary School