AVReading February 2026 Situational versus Individual Motivation

  

I know of a history teacher in a nearby school who is perhaps the most popular teacher in her building.  Her specialty is European history, and students of all abilities enjoy her class.  It is quite the production.  She uses a rich combination of storytelling, movie clips, visuals, and scaffolded notetaking that requires students to both copy down dates and names and draw pictures.  While students find her class extremely entertaining, there are some teachers who are a little more critical, pointing out that she focuses on the conspiracies of history, the graphic and gruesome deaths and battles, that she is largely asking students to consume her content rather than engage with it, and that the interest she generates in her classes does not seem to transfer over to other history classes.

                  This is where it is important to delineate between two types of motivation, each with an important role to play.  Situational motivation-- which is in part the driving force in the example of the history teacher-- is unique to a given event or time period.  Sometimes, we use  situational motivation when we introduce a new activity or technology, which will energize and engage students for a given circumstance.  Individual motivation is when that interest and engagement persists over time and people transfer that momentum beyond the original situation into a more long term, sustained, deep interest.  Imagine the situational motivation of students when an astronaut comes to visit their class for a day.  And then imagine the individual motivation when that experience inspires someone to pursue aeronautics as a career. 

                  We need them both!  And part of understanding the distinction between the two helps us to avoid the pitfalls of over relying on one at the expense of the other.  Perhaps most importantly, over reliance on situational motivation mirrors the consumption of high calorie fast foods-- they are quite enjoyable in the moment, but over the course of the long run leave you unsatisfied.  If I have to resort to a magic trick or sleight of hand or major theatrical productions to get students to buy what I am selling, I might actually be doing them a disservice, as they walk away believing that the core content of what I taught must be pretty useless and boring if I had to stand on my head to make it palatable. 

                  On the flip side, I can’t assume that just because I love Shakespeare or grammar students should naturally want to become scholars of the bard or giddy with excitement over diagramming a sentence. To use a phrase popularized by Scott McLeod, in doing so we become “dangerously irrelevant”. 

                  Activities for building situational motivation.

                                    Field Trips.  This is a privilege that not everyone will be able to afford. However, it can be a tremendous game changer.  I typically shy away from them because they take a considerable amount of set-up, they can be expensive, and they require a sense of trust with students.  But, they also make me think outside of the box.  Some of my most memorable teaching moments have happened on these trips.  I recall a field trip to a dance recital during an inquiry unit on dance, a trip to the movie theatre for R.L. Stines’ Goosebumps, during an inquiry unit on paranormal activity.  Or even a trip to a local theatre company performing Romeo and Juliet.  I have also made use of our close proximity to an elementary school, by taking a trip up the block to have my students read to kindergartners.

                                    In School Field Trips.  When I do not have the resources to take students somewhere beyond the school, I will look for trips right within our building.  One time we invited a traveling Shakespeare company to do an all 9th grade performance.  I’ve also taken my students to see civil rights activists from the 60s speak in our theatre.  We’ve had two traveling displays visit our school: one on Native American history (which is now permanently housed at the state capitol) and one on immigrant voices.  But I also make use of our outdoor classroom, once in the fall and once in the spring.  Sometimes, students welcome a change of scenery!  On those occasions, they grab their independent reading book, and I give them walk-n-talk prompts for the trip out and the trip back.  At the outdoor classroom, we share out the findings of the walk-n-talk and then take a solid 20-25 minutes to read along the banks of our school pond!  Sometimes, I will also take them to the school’s open common area, which is the spacious open air environment that is remarkably quiet during class periods.

                                    Beneath the Chair.  I have this terminology rich activity where I’ve printed off about 20 terms on thick stock paper. Before class, I tape the terms to the bottom of various chairs.  Then, during class, I have them reach down and look for the hidden word or phrase. Then we do a class “group sort” as they bring them up to affix the term on the board in various categories.  It is a fun, novel way to jazz up an otherwise standard lecture. 

 

McLeod, Scott. “Dangerously Irrelevant: @Mcleod.” Dangerously Irrelevant | @Mcleod, 2019, dangerouslyirrelevant.org/.

 

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