What almost 150 studies say about how to motivate students is a new article at The Hechinger Report that summarizes a study that finds what everybody else has found – extrinsic motivation pales in comparison to intrinsic motivation in getting students to want to learn.

It does provide one new piece of interesting information.  Most researchers have identified the key elements needed to create the conditions that encourage intrinsic motivation.  This study, though, attempts to rank them and concludes that students feeling a sense of competence – that they have the ability and skills to successfully complete the task at hand – as the most effective.

Katie Hull and I did a series of videos for Ed Week on the key elements of student motivation (you can see them all at A Look Back: Here Are Our Four Ed Week Videos On Student Motivation!).  I’ve embedded below the one on competence.

You can find more practical resources at A Collection Of My Best Resources On Student Motivation.

I also guess it’s time for me to get working on the fourth volume of my student motivation series. It will be titled Building Intrinsic Motivation in the Classroom: A Practical Guide.