Chapter 3: How Energy Flows In Groups: Motivational Dynamics in the Classroom

Chapters on motivation in educational psychology texts often open with vignettes about students who illustrate different motivational states. The explication of concepts such as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, mastery and performance goals, values and expectancies is then connected back to the challenges posed by “Hopeless Geraldo,” “Defensive Damond,” or “Safe Sumet” (Woolfolk, 2019, p. 462). The focus on individual students reflects the psychological literature on motivation, which takes the individual as the prototypical unit of analysis.

A functioning classroom, however, is not a collection of individuals. Practically speaking, the kind of help teachers might seek from the motivational literature depends not just on the motivational state of a single student, but also on the motivational state of their classroom as a whole. If most students are already engaged and excited about learning—in short, highly motivated—then the teacher’s job is to facilitate the flow of energy, provide suitable resources and assignments, and head off any disruptions that might interrupt learning. What about classrooms with no apparent motivational pulse? To illustrate the concept of “amotivation,” when people are apathetic, alienated, and unresponsive, Ryan and Deci (2000b) describe students who “stare blankly from the back of their classrooms” (p. 68). How should a teacher proceed if students are all staring blankly (if they look at the teacher at all), from back, middle and front, unresponsive to teacher questions and requests? What if the classroom is a chaotic, uncontrolled maelstrom of students playing pranks on the teacher or gossiping or fighting amongst themselves, with a few quieter individuals who are busy texting, painting their nails, or systematically shredding a worksheet into bits? There’s lots of motivated activity here, all of it off track. If teachers frustrated by a persistently unresponsive classroom or exhausted by the struggle to contain the chaos seek advice from the motivational literature, what guidance does it offer?