Instructional Practices that Support Adaptive Motivation, Engagement, and Learning

Supporting students’ motivation constitutes a critical challenge in most classrooms. However, research suggests that motivation and engagement are activated, enhanced, and sustained when the classroom context is designed to foster and support them. This chapter provides an overview of classroom practices that can be integrated into instruction in order to support students’ adaptive motivation, emotion, and engagement, and, in turn, their learning and achievement. We focus on five major forms of adaptive motivation and the corresponding evidence-based strategies that support each. Specifically, we discuss support for (a) perceived competence; (b) autonomy and autonomous (vs. controlled) motivation; (c) interest and value; (d) growth (vs. fixed) mindsets, adaptive causal attributions, and mastery (vs. performance) goals; and (e) feelings of relatedness and belonging. As part of our discussion, we briefly introduce relevant theories for understanding the function of these critical forms of motivation and highlight factors (e.g., student characteristics, context, variations in the practice) and areas of caution to consider in order to maximize effectiveness. We end this chapter by noting several themes and issues for education researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers to consider.