Article Review: Motivational Strategies to Enhance Effective Learning in

Teaching Struggling Students

Motivational Strategies to enhance effective learning in teaching struggling students

John Christian M. Genoguin

ITC Universitas Pelita Harapan

Article Review: Motivational Strategies to Enhance Effective Learning in
Teaching Struggling Students
Summary:

This is an article by Jessica Wery and Margareta Maria Thomson, who focuses primarily

on the theoretical perspective from two major motivational theories, Achievement Theory

[describes about motivation as patterns of beliefs and feelings about success, effort, ability,

errors, feedbacks, and standards of evaluation (Elliot and Dweck, 2005)] and Expectancy-Value

Theory [describes motivation as being influenced by the relative value of a task along with the

probability of success in completing that task (Eccles et al., 1983)] and on how to apply these

motivational theories into a classroom with struggling students. It is all about how to motivate

students in engaging the subject matter and changing the way they think how they are unable to

learn which results to misbehaving in class or avoiding academic situations, making them

reluctant learners. Also, 15 specific and practical suggestions and applications on how to

practice motivational teaching in your classroom can be seen here. These are (1) believing that

your students can learn, (2) modeling enthusiasm and intrinsic motivation, (3) creating a learning

environment that is encouraging and challenging, (4) acknowledging the difficulty of tasks, (5)

connecting learnings to life, (6) setting goals, (7) involving students in the learning process, (8)

allowing independence, (9) giving or using projects, (10) evaluating the task and not the student,

(11) promoting mastery learning, (12) immunizing against the negative effects of extrinsic

motivation, (13) using priming words, (14) responding in a positive way, and lastly (15) praising

students. These are all ways on how to enhance effecting learning in teaching struggling

students, motivating them on the best that the teacher can do for the sake of learning and helping

the students see a new perspective when it comes to education.

Article Review: Motivational Strategies to Enhance Effective Learning in
Teaching Struggling Students
Reflection:

I agree with the claim of this article that teachers have to do something that will motivate

students to study, participate, and be engaged in the learning process. The spirit of motivation is

very important to somehow push the students from what they think that they are unable to do

to I can do it- kind of attitude. I will have to acknowledge that motivating students, especially

the ones who struggle, is a very difficult task to be a part of. But by the concepts presented in this

article, we already have a foundation, intrinsic and extrinsic way of motivating students.

Motivation is the key in which students will realize that they can be more than what they think

they are. In my experience when I was teaching a few months way back in my country, I see very

lazy students of mine, who just needed someone to motivate them for them to get to work. I

really believe that being motivation drives us to do something new, or might as well makes a lazy

person productive in a single word of pure motivation. I believe that motivating students through

concepts presented in this article is a helpful learning strategy that should be applied by teachers

in their classrooms.