Does motivation breed success, or does success result in motivation? It’s an important question, because the answer can dictate how a teacher approaches everything from behaviour management to academic support.

Will a reward sticker be more effective in creating long-term behaviour change than tangible progress in paying attention or not calling out? Will incremental achievements in science motivate a pupil to greater success, as opposed to trying to pitch science in a way that aligns with a child’s interests?

The debate is essentially one of extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation, and there is a lot of research to help guide us as to which might work best in education. Katharina Kriegbaum, an educational psychology PhD student at Heidelberg University in south-west Germany, has read more of that than most: she has conducted a large meta-analysis of research into classroom motivation.

“There are a lot of constructs covered by the umbrella term ‘motivation’,” she explains. “One model that is very prominent is called the ‘expectancy value theory’, which relates to an individual’s perception of their own competence in a specific domain and to subjective values that an individual ascribes for a specific task, such as importance, utility, interest and costs.”

This perception of their own ability in a subject is thought to directly impact how motivated a pupil might feel, she says. “If a student, let’s call her Mary, thinks, ‘I’m really good at maths,’ or, ‘I do maths very well,’ then she will be intrinsically motivated. This intrinsic motivation relates to engaging in something for its own sake, for enjoyment.”

Extrinsic motivation, meanwhile, can be more difficult to foster, since it is not innate. It refers to external goals - such as getting a good job or passing an important exam - as the source of motivation.

General motivation research suggests that while intrinsic motivation can result in more thorough learning and improved performance, results relating to extrinsic motivation are more inconsistent.

A 2014 University of Nottingham survey of about 900 prospective students and 1,000 current students at two large UK universities demonstrated the difference between the two. Participants were asked to rate the extent to which they had chosen their degree subject because they enjoyed the topic (intrinsic motivation) or because they were motivated by more extrinsic factors, such as career prospects.

Perhaps understandably, arts and humanities scholars were more likely to state that they were intrinsically motivated to study the subject, without being too concerned about future work. Current and future engineering students, meanwhile, were far less concerned about enjoying their study than they were about the career prospects that it would bring them.

What, though, for pupils earlier on in their school career? Kriegbaum’s meta-analysis looked at 74 studies, which included more than 80,000 students in total, all of them in school, rather than higher education, settings.

“We found that intelligence was a strong predictor of school achievement, as assessed by their school grades and also performance in the standardised tests that are also used in Pisa [Programme for International Student Assessment] studies,” she says. “So intelligence was very important, but we also found that motivation was a moderate predictor of school achievement, too.”

In short, if two equally intelligent pupils take the same test, then the one who is more motivated by the subject matter will, on average, perform better. This finding was consistent, regardless of gender, school year or the type of school the pupils attended.

“We looked at a few longitudinal studies in the research, and we found a significant relationship between motivation and achievement, which … suggests that motivation and school achievement are influencing each other,” says Kriegbaum.

But which came first?

“The studies found reciprocal effect, so achievement creates motivation, but also motivation can create achievement,” she explains.

Does that mean teachers have to focus on both? Essentially, yes, according to Kriegbaum’s research. “Motivation can be fostered through feedback, learning context and also situational factors, and teachers should definitely be aware of their power to motivate their students towards higher achievement,” she says.

The key to this is effectively building students’ “self-efficacy”, which is the belief they have in their own innate abilities, and their ability to overcome obstacles that obstruct their learning goals. “Students [need to develop] positive expectancies for success in their future assignments and exams,” Kriegbaum continues, “and teachers can support their pupils by, for example, varying the difficulty of tasks, setting short-term goals and by providing clear, specific and informative feedback.”

One aspect of this process is connecting those tasks to the world outside the classroom, she says. This can be especially important in the adolescent school years, as studies have suggested that during the teenage years, motivation in young people can decline - sometimes sharply.

A 2016 study found this could be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that traditional school environments “insufficiently satisfy three basic psychological needs of youths during maturation, namely the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness”.

Kriegbaum says that teachers can help keep students motivated by offering them some degree of choice in the tasks they undertake (autonomy), and ensuring that they can relate what they are learning to their own futures.

“It’s important for teachers to tell the students why the work they’re doing at school, also the specific topics they are studying, [is] so important and why they will be useful for students in their life,” she says.

She adds: “Second, it is good to make the progress that they are making visible.”

Research suggests that if students can see clearly the progress that they have made with regard to a given topic, motivation follows.

“For instance, students could do this by keeping a learning diary,” Kriegbaum says. “Every Friday, after one full week, they write down what they learned during the week to see what their learning progress was.”

This focus on learning progress is not about targets, or about progress towards a specific grade, she stresses. Kriegbaum is concerned that too much of the time children spend at school today is geared towards passing examinations. While some young people react well to high-stakes testing, and find the acquisition of high grades extrinsically motivating, others do not. And that can be very damaging for those learners.

“In a lot of schools these days, there are so many tests and so many exams that if you’re motivated by tests and you’re good at tests, you will remain highly motivated,” Kriegbaum says. “But it’s easy to forget those students who will find it very demotivating, and might need different approaches.”

Ultimately, there is no magic bullet for motivation. But research has shown that students who are motivated - either intrinsically by their love of a subject, or extrinsically because they see how they might benefit from success - regularly perform better than those who are not, even when their levels of intelligence are equally high.

Chris Parr is a journalist and education writer

This article originally appeared in the 22 March 2019 issue under the headline “Tes focus on...Motivation”