The Science of Motivating Students

Don Berg brought a new perspective to the podcast, and we are so grateful for his time and this episode. We broke the script with educator guests and talked with a psychologist.  We dive deep into student motivation and how we can best foster that learning environment for students.  The harsh reality is, we cannot motivate a person.  We need to create opportunities for students to create their own motivation.

• Don Berg is a psychological researcher and has focused on student motivation.
• Dive into the science of motivation and engagement in classrooms.
• The harsh reality is that students only learn what they want. If they don’t want to, they won’t.
• You cannot motivate someone; they can only motivate themselves. We can create opportunities to tap into the three necessary components of motivation:
  Autonomy
  Relatedness
  Competency
• It’s not just about the relationships between one student to the teacher, but students as a whole.  Those relationships across the classroom are key to supporting successful learning.
• Collective illusions are a disparity between the individual opinion and the perceived opinion of society as a whole. There is a notion that our society demands results from standardized tests, yet everyone on a personal level agrees people do not value standardized tests.
• Creating classroom autonomy is key and cannot just be based on giving choices.