Students' valuing of academic content impacts their engagement in learning and plays a pivotal role in shaping their future academic and career choices. Fortunately, practicing educators can integrate many readily applicable strategies into teaching to enhance students' valuing of academic content. Drawing from expectancy-value theory, Eric M.…

Several major theories have been established in research on motivation in education to describe, explain, and predict the direction, initiation, intensity, and persistence of learning behaviors. The most commonly cited theories of academic motivation include expectancy-value theory, social cognitive theory, self-determination theory, interest…

An issue devoted to foundational skills and adolescents might center the cognitive skills and practices most needed to accelerate learning. While an understanding of these--whether multisyllabic decoding, fostering comprehension through discussion, or argumentative writing--is important, in this article, we advocate for the importance of attending…

With rapid globalization, it is an urgent task for universities in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context to provide practical English education. Particularly, one that enables students to participate in the global society as well as the global business market. The challenge for these universities is to achieve this goal with limited class…

Largely because of its behaviorist roots and despite several progressive education movements, external control has been the primary motivation technique used by educators since the dawn of formal schooling in the United States. Decades of recent research, however, has led to a paradigm shift of sorts, suggesting that by challenging their mental…

Highly successful athletes must learn how to optimize factors that facilitate flow and effectively manage factors that inhibit flow. This article explains what coaches can do to push the flow button and motivate athletes to have peak experiences and improved performance.

The study of classroom processes that shape students' motivational beliefs, although fruitful, has suffered from a lack of conceptual clarity in terminology, definitions, distinctions, and roles of these important processes. Synthesizing extant research and major theoretical perspectives on achievement motivation, I propose Motivational Climate…

This study delves into the integration of collaborative and active learning methodologies as a means to enhance both academic achievement and self-motivation among students in the realm of vocational education. Collaborative learning, with its emphasis on teamwork, problem-solving, and social responsibility, complements the active learning…

Associative learning is the passive learning of a predictive relationship between two previously unrelated cues or events. This article explains how associative learning is currently employed in the sport domain and how it can be used to increase motivation and focus when working with athletes. The article describes associative learning techniques…

Gamification possesses a great potential to shape human behaviors and performance. However, the mixed results in gamification research suggest the need to develop a thorough understanding of the mechanistic underpinnings of gamification. Although self-determination theory (SDT) provides a solid theoretical framework to achieve such purposes, it…

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an established, research-based intervention that focuses on building intrinsic motivation to promote lasting, healthy changes in a variety of situations. In school settings, MI has been used to improve student motivation, attendance, punctuality, confidence in schoolwork, and self-determination as well as increase…

A motivating and engaging school environment has been associated with several positive student outcomes. Consequently, schools have an opportunity and responsibility to promote a culture that supports students in developing and maintaining their motivation, engagement, and self-improvement. Efforts to promote such a culture can be embedded within…

In this "Distance Learning" Special Issue, Errol Craig Sull introduces the "Try This" series of articles to assist with Becoming a Better Distance Learning Instructor. Sull notes, in this article, what the distance learning educator does in the first few days in a course can go a long way in setting the tone for the entire…

Decades of motivation research have yielded a set of Motivation Design Principles (MDPs) that can be leveraged to support the development of student motivation and engagement in the classroom. This article addresses the translation of these guiding principles to teacher professional learning and subsequently, classroom practice. Drawing from…

The signs that faculty are suffering, disengaging, and even leaving the profession surround us. We contend that we have to consider carefully what motivates faculty members to be faculty so faculty developers can be better positioned to help faculty re-engage. Integrating data from a preliminary survey we conducted, we offer five steps that…