Motivation
Sometimes no matter how much inspiration, engagement, or motivation we have...a few students lose interest. However, we must connect with them on a personal level as well. Often times it is not because we are not good instructors. It is easy and common for life to bring us down. These students often rely on us as mentors as well as instructors. Therefore, our roles become increasingly important. Remaining proactive about education and showing genuine care often promotes a healthy relationship.
Regards,
Amber Cochran
Noel,
Good comments and questions. Your questions are to me complex in nature due to the fact there are so many variables that impact the interest levels of adult students. Their personal lives, previous experiences and personal motivation all blend together to impact their dedication to the learning process. I try to find as much as I can about my students so I can determine how I can support them and their learning efforts. For the majority success follows but there seem to be a few that do not want to break the cycle of failure and will not put forth the effort to be successful. I work with them and try to encourage them the best I can because I want to be able to say I did all I could to help them move toward their career goals, but in the end it is up to them to make progress happen.
Gary
Dr. Gary Meers
I esteem greatly your thoughts posted on this forum; it made me ponder on a thought as well...a scenario where a seemingly low interest level of a student (or a few students) may be attributed to the instructor, alluding to a possible shortcoming in terms of his/her motivation techniques. A given instructor may render his best efforts, based on his teaching knowledge and experience, to inspire an entire set of students in a class, but not all students in that class may react positively to expectations by the instructor; students will always have different notions of that insturctor's level of motivation. In effect, they will all behave differently. I can forsee that a greater number of them will be inspired, but there will always be a remaining few who may not show a reciprocative reaction. I believe that the instructor's effort of sincere empathy and a real concern for the student's personal interests and wellbeing is easily and quickly sensed and percieved by the students in different levels. Because each student is a different person, there will surely be variations of interest levels still surfacing. I say a genuine 'by-heart' instructor will never allow an instance of one or a few students, showing 'low' levels of interest after all the instructor's efforts have been offered, dishearten that instructor's focus and objective of pursuing motivation.. as this is one of those never ending tasks of an instrutor. Going back to that thought scenario I mentioned earlier.. a question arises in my mind: Is it fair to surmise that the low level interest manifested by students is a direct effect by a possible shortcoming of an instructor's motivation approach and technique? And another question is: To what definitive cause can we attribute a low level of interest by a few percentage of students in a classroom? Thank you.
