Autumn week 2

Induction tutor materials

Training session - developing pupils' intrinsic motivation

Duration: 90 minutes.

Session objectives

By the end of the session early career teachers (ECTs) will have:

• identified what impacts pupils’ motivation 
• identified strategies for helping all pupils to journey from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation in a specific subject 
• identified 2 strategies they’ll implement to help increase pupil’s motivation
• reflected on their own practice and areas for development

Session structure

Introduction (10 minutes)

Explain the purpose of the training session, session outcomes and the related early career framework (ECF) statements.

As this is the first training session of the year, ask teachers to introduce themselves by sharing their:

• name
• where they’re working
• the school or area they’re working in
• the subject or year group they’re teaching

Why is motivation important? (10 minutes)

1. Explore the link between motivation and academic achievement.
2. Identify the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
3. Activity: Ask ECTs to reflect on some common strategies they use to motivate pupils in their class. Identify whether they’re supporting the development of intrinsic or extrinsic motivation.

Developing motivation (10 minutes)

1. Identify the challenges of developing motivation.
2. Use the Self Determination Theory framework by Deci and Ryan (as discussed in the Great Teaching Toolkit Evidence Review (Coe, 2020) to explore the influences of autonomy (sense of choice), competence (perceptions of success and failure), and relatedness (feeling connected and supported by others) on motivation.
3. Activity: Ask ECTs to reflect on a time they lacked motivation to complete a task, and what influenced this.

Developing pupils’ competency (50 minutes)

1. Explain how supporting pupils to be successful in their learning can help increase motivation.
2. Explore how 2 of the following strategies can support pupils to be successful in their learning, and therefore feel more motivated:
   • teaching in small steps
   • planning effective explanations and tasks
   • using mnemonics to support evaluation
   • using concrete representation of abstract ideas
3. Provide a quick recap on the strategy from Year 1.
4. Exemplify the strategy through a subject-specific example. This could be done by providing an example and non-example of how this would be done effectively.
5. Activity: Get ECTs to analyse the example discussing what makes it effective or how it could be improved. Or, give ECTs a new example and ask them to exemplify the strategy using their learning from the session.

Next steps and close (10 minutes)

Ask ECTs to reflect on the learning from the session and record their actions and next steps related to their classroom practice. Options include re-visiting certain areas of the course, talking with their mentor, watching another teacher, planning to adapt their practice, and more.

Related ECF strands

High expectations

• 1.1 Teachers have the ability to affect and improve the wellbeing, motivation and behaviour of their pupils.

Adaptive teaching

• 5f. Balancing input of new content so that pupils master important concepts.

Managing behaviour

• 7.4 Teachers can influence pupils’ resilience and beliefs about their ability to succeed, by ensuring all pupils have the opportunity to experience meaningful success.
• 7.7 Pupils’ investment in learning is also driven by their prior experiences and perceptions of success and failure.
• 7.8 Helping pupils to journey from needing extrinsic motivation to being motivated to work intrinsically.