Strengthening Student Engagement: What Do Students Want
(and what really motivates them)?

Based on article from:Educational LeadershipSeptember 1995 | Volume 53 | Number 1 Strengthening Student Engagement Pages 8-12 Richard Strong, Harvey F. Silver and Amy Robinsonhttp://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept95/vol53/num01/toc.aspx

Goals and Needs: The SCORE

People who are engaged in their work are driven by essential goals, each of which satisfies a particular human need:

Success (the need for mastery),

Curiosity (the need for understanding),

Originality (the need for self-expression),

Relationships (the need for involvement with others),

Energy (the drive toward completion).

Does/could your inquiry deal with one of these aspects of student engagement?

Three conditions for Success

clearly articulating criteria for success & providing clear, immediate, and constructive feedback;

showing students the skills they need are within their grasp by clearly and systematically modeling these skills;

helping them see success as a valuable aspect of their personalities.

Arousing Curiosity

Providing fragmentary or contradictory info:

It is precisely the lack of organisation of a body of information that compels us to understand it further. This may explain why textbooks, which are highly organised, rarely arouse student interest.

Relating the topic to students' personal lives.

Encouraging Originality

Connect creative projects to students' personal ideas and concerns;

Expand what counts as an audience;

Consider giving students more choice;

Use the abstracting strategy to help students fully understand a genre and to maintain high standards.

Fostering Peer Relations

Complementary assignments;

Structured cooperative learning (eg jigsaw activities.

Maintaining Energy

the motivation that is essential for students to deal constructively with complexity, confusion, repetition, & ambiguities...

...can be fostered with the right classroom conditions at the right level for each student.