• What measures can be taken to motivate students?

The best form of motivation is self-motivation. Pupils need to connect with the teachers. Teachers can motivate their pupils by meeting their needs for the three ‘As’: affiliation, agency and autonomy. They do this through the energisers that create a motivating learning climate; the flip side of the energisers is the drainers – things that teachers need to avoid doing. The energisers provide the ingredients of the classroom climate that are needed to whet pupils’ appetites for learning. The energisers effectively engage most pupils and are accessible to most teachers:
Engagement – how teachers show they are interested in and value pupils.
Structure – provides clear pathways towards the learning goals and boundaries that let pupils know what is expected of them.
Stimulation – comes from a curriculum that highlights the relevance of activities and sets achievable goals.
Feedback – provides information that lets pupils know how they are doing, guiding them from where they are to where they need to be.
Drainers expose pupils to painful and unpleasant experiences that they will want to avoid:
Engagement – showing they are disinterested in their pupils by embarrassing them, threatening them or voicing comparisons between them.
Structure – dictating the agenda and denying pupil participation by, for example, setting too many rules and refusing any choice.
Stimulation – leaving pupils confused as to the purpose and relevance of activities, setting goals that are too easy or too difficult and generally failing to create enthusiasm.
Feedback – undermining confidence through personalised blame, judgemental criticism and feedback that is generally highly evaluative and emotion-laden.

Teachers need to understand their pupils as much as possible. The pupil drivers integrate the latest thinking on emotional intelligence, self-esteem and positive psychology into an account of what motivates students. Learner needs are at the core of the pupil driver model. Personality influences, in particular, how we think and feel about ourselves, our self-emotions. When our needs have been met we enjoy self-energising emotions. When they are blocked we experience self-draining emotions. Teachers don’t need to develop different motivational strategies for each individual: pupils have more similarities than they have differences. To engage all of their pupils, teachers need to adapt the energisers to pupils’ learning stances.

There are seven learning stances that reflect how students feel about themselves as learners. The learning stances describe the fit between the learner and the learning climate. Each of the stances illustrates how learners with similar attitudes engage with the learning climate. The learning stances framework offers teachers and pupils a language with which they can discuss and make sense of motivation. It helps teachers get to know their pupils better and find ways to engage them. Motivation to learn gradually evolves into an enduring disposition. For pupils it is shaped by and reflected in the learning stances they adopt towards a specific context or activity.