Motivating Teens to Work Harder in School

This week's article summary is What Would Motivate Teens to Work Harder in School.

Although Trinity is an elementary school, I like to read articles about teenagers, as obviously our young students will eventually be high schoolers and, as such,  we have an opportunity to shape needed habits and attitudes while they’re young and impressionable.

What would help teens by motivated to work harder in school?

Topping the list for teens is the opportunity to re-do assignments, which I’m guessing includes re-taking tests or other assessments.

Rounding out the top five is helping teens see the relevance of what they’re studying, injecting more humor and fun in the classroom, offering more hands-on opportunities, and providing more detailed formative feedback prior to any summative assessment.

Equally interesting to me were the lower selections by teens: they’re okay with stricter classroom rules and they don’t want teachers to grade more leniently. 

The list is interesting to me because I see in teens the same things we adults want in the workplace. We don’t want zero-sum evaluations; if we make a mistake, we want a re-do and a chance to fix it. We don’t want an overly stuffy, formal office; we want to be able to have a good time, including humor and levity. We want to see the meaning and purpose of our jobs and its responsibilities.

Teens often get a bad rap in the media: is there ever a movie or tv series about teens that doesn’t use the ‘Lord of the Flies’ theme?

This survey shows how mature, honest, and attuned to their needs teens are. I know re-doing assignments makes life much harder for teachers, but it would actually be closer to how teens will be treated years later as adults.

Joe

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If you thought being enthusiastic and personable were the best ways to motivate teenagers to work hard in school, then think again. It turns out what many teens say will motivate them the most is the opportunity to redo assignments if they get a low grade.

It’s not the most exciting solution, but there you have it.

Out of more than 20 options given to a nationally representative sample of 1,011 students, ages 13-19, the chance to redo assignments was the most selected, with 35 percent saying that is what would motivate them the most to do well in school. These are among the findings of surveys of teenagers and educators conducted by the EdWeek Research Center on student motivation and engagement.

Incorporating more humor and fun into class, providing more feedback, offering more hands-on experiences, and assigning more schoolwork on topics that are relevant and interesting to students rounded out the top five answers:

• Give Me a Chance to Redo Assignments if I get a Low Grade: 35%
• Let me do assignments on topics that interest me if they are relevant to what we are learning: 30%
• Incorporate more humor, fun, and games into class: 30%
• Offer more hand-on experiences including field trips, lab experiments, and internships: 30%
• Provide more feedback so I know what to improve before we get our grades: 30%
• Show me how I can use what I can use in my future career: 28%
• Use teaching methods others than lecturing to the class: 25%
• Offer choices of different ways I can demonstrate I have learned something: 25%
• Take more time to get to know me as a person: 25%
• Stop requiring assignments that feel like busywork: 25%
• Be more available for extra help outside of class: 22%
• Be more enthusiastic about the subject matter: 22%
• Give me the benefit of the doubt if I miss class/deadlines/get a low grade: 21%
• Stop playing favorites: 18%
• Do a better job of controlling the class: 16%
• Let us get to know your as a real person: 14%
• Make the class a little easier: 11%
• Let students help decide classroom rules: 11%
• Make class more challenging: 9%
• Be less strict with discipline: 6%

But ask educators what they think they could do to better motivate students, and you’ll get very different answers than what you hear from students.

The most-cited solution among educators surveyed separately by the EdWeek Research Center to motivate students was offering more hands-on learning experiences. Fifty-four percent of educators said providing more field trips, lab experiments, and internships was what they or teachers in their district or school could do to help students feel more motivated to do their best.

The second-most selected response, from 45 percent of educators, was showing students how they can use what they learn in future careers. Rounding out the top three was “offer a choice of different ways students can demonstrate they have learned something,” which was selected by 44 percent of educators.

The EdWeek Research Center survey identified other discrepancies between educators and students. For instance, both groups rated students’ motivation in school very differently.

Eighty-six percent of students said they feel motivated to do their best in school right now, but only 67 percent of educators said their students were motivated.

While only 38 percent of students said that as of 2023, the pandemic has made them less motivated to do their best in school, 80 percent of teachers said that the pandemic has made students less motivate.

However, there was one area of agreement: when asked to rate educators’ level of motivation, around 80 percent of both students and educators said that teachers in their school or district were motivated to do their best to teach students.