Boost Your Child's Learning Motivation!
- communegroupgrow
- Feb 19, 2023
- 1 min read
"Ahh, he just don't seem to have the interest in reading."
"Whenever I ask her to read, she will whine."
"I just can't get him down to practise writing."
What Expert Says?
When it comes to motivation, the Self-Determination Theory (SDT)[1] has been a widely used theory to understand human's motivation. Having intrinsic motivation means doing an activity because it is fun and interesting to one. The SDT posited that to have intrinsic motivation, which is the form that generally leads to the most positive outcomes, one needs to fulfil three types of psychological needs:
Need for autonomy: Being in control of what and when one does an activity
Need for competence: Feeling capable at an activity
Need for relatedness: Feeling connected to others
To put this into an example: I am intrinsically motivated to go for workout classes at a gym studio because:
I choose to participate in this activity to begin with and I am in control of which classes to attend (a stretching pilates session v.s a high-intensity boxing class) = Need for autonomy
The exercises are sufficiently challenging and satisfying for me = Need for competence
I enjoy attending the sessions together with my sister and my gym friends = Need for relatedness
With my three psychological needs supported, I do not dread attending workouts. In fact, I look forward to them - I am intrinsically motivated to exercise!
Motivation in learning has always been a concern for parents and educators. This occurs because after early childhood, there are social pressures for children to do activities that are not interesting (we are told what to learn instead of learning what we are interested / curious about) and to take on new responsibilities. The academic stress further reduces children's intrinsic motivation to learn (meaning, being interested to learn).
Studying can be "boring" and difficult: Learning to read words, finding patterns and understanding mathematics or remembering historical facts. It can be difficult when children do not find relevance between what they learn in school and real-life events, such as understanding fractions (Recall the times when you were studying: "Why are we even learning this?! What for?")
If we can support children by helping them understand why learning fractions is important, such as to inculcate fairness (e.g. dividing a pizza equally for 5 people) and being able to measure accurately (e.g. to buy a pipe that fits perfectly in our kitchen), they will find interest in learning this concept. This is supporting their need for autonomy.
As parents and educators, we are children's primary socialising agents and hence, we can directly support children's psychological needs. This can then enable them to be intrinsically motivated in anything that they do in life, from learning to playing and to working!
Supporting our children's psychological needs is related to our parenting style (refer to our previous post on parenting style!). Jamalludin (2017) found, in a study involving 360 students in Singapore, that when students see their parents enjoying parenting, they have greater intrinsic motivation in their academic learning! This suggests that when parents enjoy parenting activities (from having lesser external stress factors such as not needing children to do well academically to reflect success), they will adopt autonomy-supportive parenting styles which will give children more positive academic experiences.
In addition, this paper also suggests that in order for parents to meet children's needs, their own needs need to be met! The reason why parents engage in a certain parenting style can be possibly due to them enjoying them and feeling autonomous (in control) and competent while being a parent. Thus when parents enjoy being a parent, their positive experiences will support their need of relatedness (better relationships with their children!) With the three needs met, parents will more likely enjoy parenting (intrinsically motivated to parent their children). Therefore, do remember that you are important too! If your needs are not met, you might not be able to support your children as adequately as you may like to.
Despite parents being influential in supporting children's psychological needs, there seemed to be little research conducted in Singapore on this aspect.
Tips To Consider
You might ask, how can I support my child's psychological needs to help them like/enjoy learning? We have prepared some tips for you to practise and divided them out to support each one of them:
Need for autonomy
An important note is that providing choices does not equate to being permissive towards your child. We can be involved in children's learning either in an autonomy-supportive manner or in a controlling manner (refer to our post on Parenting Styles!). Autonomy can be supported by providing choices on how the task is completed.
For example, practising for tomorrow's spelling quiz is today's task. Providing autonomy can happen by giving options on when your child would like to work on it: "We have to practise spelling for tomorrow's class. Would you like to do it before dinner or after dinner?" Let your child understand what needs to be done and the pros and cons of his/her choices. "If you practise spelling before dinner, you will have some time to play before bed!" In addition, you can also provide choices on where to practise spelling: On the dining table or play table? Essentially, providing autonomy can help children feel that they choose to practise spelling and would then do so willingly, instead of feeling 'forced' to practise and end up disliking spelling entirely.
Need for competence
This psychological need is to feel capable in an activity. Learning is a lifelong path and it is challenging because of its enrichment in our knowledge and skills. We can support this by letting children do what they have not done before. Helping in the kitchen is a good example and having a child-friendly knife can help you feel safer in letting them help! Being able to 'contribute' and 'help mummy/daddy' is a BIG thing - it makes them feel capable and trusted!
Avoid rushing to help when you see your child struggling with something. Give them time to explore on their own - you may find them solving the puzzle or entangling themselves from between the shelves on their own after awhile. They may get frustrated in the process but this is part of growth. We struggle and find our own ways out. Let them know that you are there when they need and choose to get help!
Commend them on putting in effort to focus on the process and not the outcomes. More often in life, we may not be the First but the process helps us grow. Encouraging and praising their efforts will help children know to place importance in the progress - to keep trying when we fail and when we try, we can get to the end!
Need for relatedness
This can be supported by giving your child love unconditionally. This means that you will love your child the same if he/she does not perform (well) at school. In Singapore, academic performance is often one of the measurements for success in life. Thus wanting our children to do well academically is unavoidable. We would say so but this may not reflect in our actions - we may lash out at them for playing and not studying harder, or 'punishing' them by taking away their gadgets when they do not do well in school.
We can show that we love our children the same by:
First talking to them about their grades - how do they feel about it (Was it good or not so good?), what resulted in this grade (Was it their hard work that is paying off? Was it insufficient practise? Was it careless mistakes?), what do they think they should do moving forward (Continue working hard? To practise more?). This process guides them into thinking of their actions and its consequences and what they can do to be better!
Next, instead of blaming them on what they did not do well, help them find what they did well (You are now better in fractions! You have lesser careless mistakes!). This helps them see the good in their actions instead of feeling incompetent. We know this. When we feel incompetent at something, say Mathematics, we would find all ways to avoid it. Seeing small aspects of us being capable can contribute to our willingness to work on something that we dislike!
Encourage them and share that regardless of their grades, you still love them the same!
It is our reaction that reflect our feelings and we can show love by expressing them as it is! Our Asian culture tends to make us show our love in a very different form from how we would like to receive - scolding and nagging because we love and want our children to do better (to have a better life later) but, do we enjoy being scolded? We most likely prefer being told nicely what to do, more than being commanded on what to do.
Our choice of words and tonality in talking to our children (and our spouses / family / friends) can affect our relationships and connectedness too!
Remember, children start doing activities that they do not enjoy (e.g. doing homework) because they were prompted by their significant others (e.g. you!). Hence, supporting their need for relatedness is centrally important to help them understand the value of the activity and begin doing it on their own and eventually liking it.
You'd be surprised that the three needs above are interlinked and becomes a cycle to support each other! Thus, start small from one need and you will later find yourself supporting another need of your child :D
We Say....
We have gone through much of intrinsic motivation in this discussion. But other than intrinsic motivation, there is also extrinsic motivation that we may see more in human behaviour. Extrinsic motivation comes in different forms - not just for rewards or avoiding punishments.
It is not always a bad thing to be extrinsically motivated, because SDT recognises that extrinsically motivated actions can also become self-determined when one identifies with and fully assimilate their regulation (this means valuing the task and seeing the importance of it rather than the rewards). Therefore, people can be extrinsically motivated while being committed and authentic![2]
We will be leaving this (and more on motivation) for the next time, but if you are too excited or curious about this topic, talk to us and we love to share more!!