Michael Dell success story (founder of the Dell empire)

The young child that you want to make crawl must first be physically able and his body ready for the process.

Then curiosity will push him towards the outside world and he will approach and discover distant objects.

And when he finds someone to bring to him these things of interest without any effort on his own, he will make no effort to learn to crawl or walk to reach them.

Therefore, it is sometimes healthy to put a (stimulator) for the child that draws his attention away from him to make him approach him and make an effort to do so.

Measure into this process whatever learning process you want children to learn, from the alphabet and multiplication tables to calculus, philosophy, and chemistry.

All these educational processes unite one thing, which is the (motivation to learn).

What is the motivation?

There have been many studies, research, and educational experiences that have tried to understand the way students learn.

Cognitive and behavioral psychology tried to explain the way of interaction in the educational process between teacher and student and the information itself.

Even neuroscience is involved in some stages to find an explanation for how students understand and how nerve impulses work while receiving new information and during the process of arousing curiosity and motivation towards what the student sees and draws his attention from the curriculum.

The school entered into a fierce competition with television, YouTube, social media, advertisements, and electronic games to arouse children's attention and motivate them to learn.

Hence, it has become more important to understand how motivation is formed and how we induce the desire to learn.

Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation

What makes some people accept television or sit for long hours on the phone, following the accounts of people they do not know, and watching many videos that interest them and do not interest them?

As he does not accept staying for an hour straight while studying a subject for university or reading a book?

While many people come to study and spend many hours reading?

This difference has long intrigued psychologists and sociologists.

While some students enthusiastically accept to go to school, others refuse to do so completely.

And many theories and hypotheses emerged about this, as the American psychologist Howard Gardner talked about the types of intelligence.

It came from the development of hypotheses for the types of learning (visual, auditory, and sensory learning).

Psychologists talked about the teacher's treatment of students and other reasons why the student does not want to go to school.

Here the terms intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation were coined.

While the source of extrinsic motivation is outside the student's person, represented by the teacher or parents, or even information that arouses the student's curiosity to push him to desire to learn.

The source of intrinsic motivation lies in the student himself who learns because he achieves something he knows for himself, excellence and a sense of success, knowledge.. avoiding troubles or obtaining results and rewards.

How do stimulate the internal motivation of students?

Giving the student space for self-determination

The importance of awards and reinforcements comes in enhancing and generating intrinsic motivation in students.

It can be induced by the need for a sense of competence and self-determination.

The latter means having the ability to make a choice of something from as many possible situations as possible.

This encourages the student's sense of competence and makes him more motivated to get the information.

Also, the presence of multiple options in front of the student in assignments and research gives him the motivation to do the work he chose to the fullest.

The student's view of himself and his idea of intelligence

Some studies have shown that students who believe that intelligence can be developed and increased can improve their academic level more than those who believe that intelligence is static and not subject to change and development.

This hinders the internal motivation of the student.

If he believes that he is less intelligent than others because of hints or statements from parents and teachers and the constant comparison with his peers from his classmates and relatives, this will make him become frustrated and not study hard because the result as he sees it, in any case, will not be good.

Raising the level of goals

This is a process that must be studied by teachers and curriculum developers.

Setting achievable but hard-to-achieve exercises and goals that require some effort creates a sense of challenge and strong motivation for the student to achieve them.

On the other hand, setting unachievable goals just because the student is incapable and the teacher proves that he is more knowledgeable than him.

This makes the student become frustrated and does not think or make an effort to solve or memorize them.

This can be clearly seen in video games, where you find the stages difficult, but they can be achieved, apart from mentioning examples of people who won and surpassed them, which enhances the player's confidence that he can overcome them and makes him repeat them over and over again until he overcomes them.

Causal returns

The way the student interprets his success or failure greatly affects the process of motivating him and activating the motivation within him.

He can attribute the result to internal causes or external causes such as intelligence, efforts, and energy of his are all internal causes.

But the teacher, the way he explained it, the circumstances of the exam, and his questions are external causes, and the student often resorts to returning his failure to external causes because he is unable to change them.

While whoever attributes his success or failure to internal causes, this helps him to change them and develop a vision to control them as much as possible.

The above can be summarized by saying that an inwardly motivated student is more aware of his own self-efficacy, which affects:

• Causal returns: Those who have a high sense of self-efficacy attribute the reasons for the results, whatever they may be, to their efforts and issues related to them and work to develop them.
• Goals and aspirations: They have high goals and aspirations and believe in their ability to succeed and obtain the highest results.

The teacher’s role in motivating students

For the student, the teacher is an emotional reference, not just a scientific one.

The child is waiting to read the looks of contentment and acceptance in what he is doing, for knowledge for him is a desire for mastery and a desire for acceptance.

Therefore, the teacher's enthusiasm for what the child learns and achieves, and his view of the child as a creative, intelligent person plays an important role in the child's view of himself and thus his motivation towards learning.

Also, the lack of motivation of the teacher can completely kill the motivation of the students.

How can you raise the level of motivation of the student while the teacher yawns throughout the lesson or looks at his watch or sits down and gives the students an assignment to write during the class instead of participating in the educational process or when he shouts at them and makes them feel that they are a heavy burden on him?!

There is another important axis in the process of motivating the student, which is carried out by the teacher by explaining the lessons and giving meaning to each topic or chapter they study.

Mathematics, for example, is a rigid science that most students hate, but adding talk about the origin of these sciences will make it more lively and attractive to students.

Many do not know that the science of geometry originated among Egyptian scientists to study the floods of the Nile and to draw plots of fertile land after the floods, which are constantly changing.

The role of students among themselves in the motivation process

The learning process revolves around several axes, of which the students are one and an important part.

If we talk about classroom learning or group learning, competition is a must within the classroom.

And sometimes this competition between students has a positive role in boosting their motivation, each of them wants to prove that he is the best, that he is the smartest, and that he can achieve good results.

Which enhances their desire to learn and get higher grades, and this is good if the teacher can control it within the limits that make motivation effective among students.

However, if the matter goes beyond its limits, or if the teacher uses competition as a means to distinguish between students, this will reflect negatively on many of them.

Because, as we mentioned, it will make some believe that he is unable to reach the degree of his colleague or that he is less intelligent than him.

Some may think that motivation is only a matter of the student himself.

But the truth is that it is a mixture of several components that we tried to summarize in the article.

It is a complex and complex matter because it is primarily related to the human psyche, which is still not fully understood.