Student motivation: Perspectives from mathematics teachers

Abstract: One goal of education is to create students who become life-long learners. If this goal is to be achieved, educators need to enhance students’ intrinsic motivation and help develop students who want to learn for the sake of learning. The teacher can have a major impact on student motivation and their beliefs about learning. The current study presents the results of an investigation that asked participants in a Teacher Quality Grant to rate the importance of motivation on student learning and the methods they employed in their classroom to address student motivation and to identify motivational methods they used in their mathematics classrooms. The results indicated that for this sample (a) novice teachers were not identifying teaching methods as a motivational tool, (b) some teachers were utilizing tangible rewards despite the negative consequences identified by research, and (c) teacher preparation and professional development programs need to focus more attention on educat