Motivating Student in Learning

Motivation is really needed in our daily life. Activities that we have done, we do, and we are going to do, have a motivation as the foundation of our activities. Motivation in Latin is movere which means move. Everyone have motivation in work and study. Motivation is energy of moving, directing, and building attitude (Thomas L. Good and Jere B. Brophy, 1986). There is also similar description about motivation according to Wlodkowski, “motivation is condition that creates certain behavior and giving direction into that behavior”. There is a motivation when someone wanted to do an action. This motivation becomes a plan and makes people intend to do something to get their expectations. There is also a theory about motivation from Abraham Maslow, “Human beings have wants and desires which influence their behavior. Only unsatisfied needs influence behavior, satisfied needs do not”. According to that statement, someone is motivated to get something that he/she has not gotten yet. He/she has a strong desire to achieve his/her expectation in order to get satisfaction. For they who have not gotten their satisfaction, they will keep trying to get satisfaction by changing their plan or method. Motivation in work and study is a big deal to get the best result. In work, motivation should be had by workers or be given to the workers to get excellent result for the company and a better salary for the workers themselves. It is not different in study. Students need motivation from themselves (from their mind) that we usually call as intrinsic motivation and motivation from other things (family, neighborhood, school, and society) that usually we called as extrinsic motivation. In a teaching program, beside the students’ responsibility in motivating themselves, it is also the teacher’s responsibility to give motivation and support to the students in study. The case is, how the teacher can give motivation to the students by analyzing from the problems that students have, how to solve it, and the challenges in motivating students.

            Basically, motivation is divided into intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation can be described as a motivation that is driven by interest and enjoyment in the task itself, and it is relay on the personal attitude. In a simple word, it is motivation that comes from people mind to achieve his/her personal goal and expectation. In the learning process, students should have motivation to be able to understand the lesson. Professor Steven Reiss has proposed a theory about desires in the aspect of intrinsic motivation and one of them is curiosity. In the learning process, curiosity here means that the students have a strong desire in learning. The students need to learn in order to fulfill their purpose. As the curiosity is increasing, students will not feel satisfied in learning. They will keep learning because as the students who have a big curiosity, they will always want to learn and try a new thing. In learning process, sometimes there are unmotivated students who need extrinsic motivation from their family. In the learning process it is teacher’s responsibility to give motivation to the students.

            As the opposite of intrinsic motivation, it is extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is motivation that comes from outside of the individual. Sometimes people get extrinsic motivation when they are unmotivated. People also get extrinsic motivation in order to get prestige. Extrinsic motivation is also described as a will to get a goal that will give external rewards such as money, grades, coercion and threat of punishment. Teacher gives motivation to unmotivated students so that they get more effort in studying. External motivation also must be given to students by their family. In a simple illustration, the teacher gives a task to students and will give objective grade for the result. By doing this, students will be more motivated in doing the task well. There is also Self-Determination Theory which gives a fact that extrinsic motivation can be internalized by the individual if the task fits with their value and beliefs, so that it can be intrinsic motivation that helps people to fulfill their basic need. For example: when students are given motivation to study hard, they can get a good grade. During the learning process they will consider about another purpose in study. They will find that study is not only aiming to get a good grade, but also for their knowledge improvement.

            In the learning process, there are several cases that make students need to be given a motivation. That is not only the cases about unmotivated students, but also the cases about students who get negative motivation and need to be given the positive one. The basic problem is when students think that they study because of their parents force. This is a kind of negative motivation. Motivation in studying can be seen through the attitude of the students about their will, attention, and concentration in study (Anderson, C.R and Faust, G.W, 1979) Students who get this negative motivation will seem so lazy in class. They do not pay attention to the lesson that is presented by the teacher. They will lay their head in the table, sleep, keep chatting with other friends and hope that the lesson will be over soon. These students will not get the idea of the lesson and in particular ways, they will disturb the others who want to study quietly. The students who are forced to study will use school as a place for hang out, not a place for study. In some cases, students also use school to create a gang. If the group is used as a media to share experience and create a good relationship between the members. But it will be worse when the gang is growth with anarchy. It is like the fight that happened in some cities. The gang of one school becomes the enemy of the gang of other schools. They fight just because of a simple problem, like when one of them accidentally touches the gang member. Sometimes students who are not belonging to a gang of their school are attacked by another gang which is the rival of the gang in their school. This fight between school gang sometimes gives disadvantages to people around the fight. People around the fight feel afraid because the gangs who fight bring weapon with them. The gangs usually smash and break public facilities. Of course no one in society wants something like this is happened.

            The other problem is self-confidence. Actually this is not only a problem for students, but also people in the world. They sometimes think that they are not able to do something well. When this thing happened, it will affect people’s attitude. From their thought, they have gotten a negative motivation that they will not be able to do something well. Then it influences their work in achieving something. Considered to the fact in daily life, students who study to head for exam think that the exam must be hard and they think that they will not be able to do the exam well. It will affect their attitude in studying and working the exam. At the exam day, they will get nervous and this condition will make them unable to get concentration. As this nervous and less concentration, an easy question can be a hard question to answer and make the possibility of mistake and wrong answer is more than in regular situation. Furthermore, when students feel that they have failed in the exam, they will get depressed. Under depression, students feel that they will not be able to do the other exam better because they have studied but they still failed. It makes students do not have intention to study harder because their thought that they will not pass the final exam. They do not know that although they fail in an exam, they can still do another exam better by study harder. It is true what they say that fail in do something do not mean you are failure person.

            And for the most common problem is organizing the schedule between playing, studying, and resting. For youngsters, play time is the most important. When they have reached the teenager phase, it is their time to study and plan for their bright future. And in the elderly phase, it is time for them to rest and enjoy their achievement in life. Those three things are what everyone wants. In fact, life is not just as easy as that, especially when in teenager phase. It is the phase where teenagers as students have to maintain their schedule. It is good if students always study hard, but it will be not good if they forget about other works. In 24 hours, it can be divided into three. Eight hours is used for study, eight hours for resting and the rest is for playing. Keep study until midnight is not suggested because our body needs rest and our mind needs relaxation. For instance: students who keep studying till midnight will get sleepy in the next day because they do not have enough time to sleep. Studying all day without having time for relaxation can give headaches. Students need to find an activity after they study to relax their mind. Maintaining a schedule is not as easy as people thing, especially for students. Sometimes they need someone else to help them maintain the schedule. Some students who are unmotivated in study usually have more time to play and take a rest rather than having time to study. More often they play, lazier they are in study. Although there are smart students with high level of IQ (Intelligence Quotient), they still need study to improve their knowledge and sharpen their memory of lesson that they have gotten.

            The problems that happen in studying about the unmotivated students have made learning process being interrupted. That is why the teachers and students need to understand how to give motivation and be motivated by someone else. As the main thing, students have to motivate themselves first. They need to maintain their mindset that studying is not responsibility, but it is one of their needs. Education is needed by students as a path to reach their goals. Although sometimes there are people who uneducated in formal school can reach their prosperity, that is because they have skill and knowledge about their job. They learn from others who have succeeded. It makes an argument that formal and informal schools are different in way of reaching people’s goals. In fact, they are just a place to find knowledge and learning activity. So, it is not about students must study in formal school as their responsibility, but they have to study from everywhere, anytime, and from any source or by learning from others achievement because they need it to reach their goals.

            After students have reset their mindset about study, the next thing they need to do is manage their time between study, play, and take a rest. Considering to the statement before, that in 24 hours students have to divide it into three phase and they are: 8 hours to study, 8 hours to play in order to refresh their mind, and the last 8 hours to take a rest in order to refresh their body. These 8 hours can also be managed again. Playing in entire 8 hours seems little bit inappropriate for students. They can manage it into 4 hours to play games that have educative value and the rest for fully relaxing. Beside managing time in a day, students also need to arrange their plans. They have to decide which task that must be done first by considering which one is urgent and which one is important. Usually, something that people have been planed is not going like what they want. Not every plan that has been arranged well can reach their goals. When they fail to reach the goal, they get depressed. This kind of thing also happens in students’ life. Students will get depressed or at least shocked when they get a bad grade or do not pass the exam. If this depression keep happens for a long time, students’ confidence will be gone. In this situation, the existence of parents and teachers is needed. Teacher and parents must give motivation to students that students can make their grade better. Failure does not mean that the students have no ability in doing the exam, but they have not ready to get the better grade because of some reasons. Teachers then explain about the reasons which are the fact that they have not study hard enough, they have not understood the lesson and do not want to ask someone who know more. In other way, the students can also follow a course in order to get additional time for study.

            Other way that teacher can do to motivate students in school is giving tasks and fair grades. A task or homework will ask the students to study. Their need of getting a good grade makes them study to do the task or the homework well. For some students, they do not know that the teachers give them tasks because the teachers want them to have more study and evaluating what they have learn in school. So, they just copy their friends’ work then submit it. In this case, the teacher needs to give a fair grade for the students work. The teacher must analyze whether the student do the task by himself/herself or he/she just copy it from their friends’ work. After correcting the students’ work, then teacher gives scores on it and gives suggestions in that worksheet. The teacher must tell students what the mistake in their work is. So, the students know how to avoid that mistake again in the next task. For the students who cheat in working the task, it is allright if the teacher gives punishment to them. But this punishment must be refered to educational punishment. Teacher gives a similar task to the students who cheat is the case in point.

            Motivating students in the learning process is challenging. One of the challenge is the case in giving reward and punishment. Inappropriate punishment just gives students more unmotivated feeling. The more they feel enforced by the teacher, more they hate the teacher and it will influence the affection of the students in the lesson. The punishment that is given to the students must refer to educational punishment and it is not interrupting learning process in class. For example: the teacher can give additional homework to the student. Besides that, not all of motivation that is given by the teacher can be received by the students easily. Students also have their own thought about the motivation that is given. In an illustration, students who have been given motivation like getting reward when do the job well, not always really need the reward. The reward that is promised can be interesting for several students, but not all of them. In this case, the teachers should look for the kind of reward that their students need. It is easy to give rewards for elementary school students, but when teaching high school student, teachers have to think again about the reward that will be given for the students. The reward that is wanted by the students will motivate them, but the reward that is not wanted by the students will do nothing in motivating them. The other challenge in motivating students is support from the family. From the explanation before, motivating students is not only the responsibility of the teachers, but also the responsibility of the parents. Motivations which come from the teacher not always saved in students mind and it is easy to fade away. They use that motivation only when they are at school. That is why support from the parents is needed to remind them about the right motivation in study.

Giving the wrong motivation (negative motivation) to students will give them difficulties in understanding the lesson. Furthermore, it is not really important to get a good or bad grade. The important thing is how far and how the students can understand the point of the lesson. It is still a big challenge to change this mindset of students in study.

            In summary, motivating students is important to develop education in every nation. Although giving motivation is not easy because of the different needs, the way to motivate, and the challenge in motivating students. It still can be done by the cooperation between students, teachers, parents, and society. From several subjects that have been explained before, the purpose and function of motivating students can be understood. Several of them are developing education, changing the mindset of study, and helping to achieve students’ goals. To achieve these purposes, students must have motivated themselves to study hard and get motivation from teachers, parents, and society to study harder. For teachers, to be able to motivating their students, there are several steps to do. First, teachers should understand what problems that are headed by the students. Second, teachers solve those problems using educational methods. Third, teachers give motivation consider to what that students need and cooperative work with students, parents, and society. By doing these several steps, the students will be more motivated to study in a positive way.

Moehamat Hendrik Setiawan