How to Motivate and Engage Your Students

Every teacher knows what it’s like to ask their class an interesting, thought-provoking question, only to be met with silence, blank stares, and hands firmly down.

When you’re busy balancing lesson planning, marking and managing classroom behaviour, it’s easy to feel like motivating and engaging students is yet another impossible task.

Fortunately, you don’t need to overhaul your entire teaching practice to get more out of your students. Small, evidence-based changes can make a huge difference.

This guide combines the science of motivation with practical, actionable steps you can take to motivate and engage students across any key stage.

Key Takeaways

• Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation matter when it comes to engaging your students

• Understanding the common causes of student disengagement can help you to implement the right fixes

• Building a strong relationship with your students is one of the most powerful ways to motivate them

What's the Difference Between Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation?

The table below summarises the key differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (opens in a new tab):

Research indicates that intrinsic motivation fosters better learning (opens in a new tab) long-term than extrinsic motivation, leading to stronger academic outcomes. 

That said, extrinsic motivation can be better suited to more difficult or mundane tasks, such as memorising dates in History. So while it would be ideal for every student to be consistently intrinsically motivated, sometimes it’s more practical to factor in extrinsic motivation too.

Common Causes of Student Disengagement

Boredom

While repetition is essential for learning and retention (opens in a new tab), having the same type of lesson over and over can lead to boredom and apathy. The lesson content itself, as well as how you deliver it, can have a huge impact on engagement.

Inappropriate Difficulty Level

This works both ways: lack of challenge (opens in a new tab) can cause a student to switch off or rush their work, but if you set a task that’s too difficult, this will likely lead to frustration, confusion, and giving up. That’s why establishing each student’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) (opens in a new tab) is key.

Low Self-Confidence

Students who doubt their abilities are less likely to engage fully in learning. This often manifests as avoidance – of raising their hand, starting tasks, or completing them.

Low self-confidence is often connected to a fear of failure. The fact that 85% of students experience exam anxiety shows just how widespread this issue is.

Unmet Needs

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (opens in a new tab) illustrates how meeting lower-level needs is crucial for high-level needs to become motivators. For instance, if a student has unmet physiological needs – perhaps the result of having a bad night’s sleep – it’s unrealistic to expect them to reach their full academic potential.

Unclear Expectations

If students don’t know what’s expected of them, whether that’s for behaviour, classwork or homework, they’ll find it very hard to focus. If targets don’t exist, students can’t be expected to hit them.

Strategies to Motivate and Engage Students

Build Strong Teacher-Student Relationships

Research shows that students who have a good relationship with their teachers tend to exhibit higher levels of academic interest, (opens in a new tab) dedication, achievement, self-efficacy and – crucially – motivation.

While you should maintain professional boundaries, appropriate levels of warmth, consistency and genuine care go a long way towards building rapport and trust:

• Learn your students’ names quickly and use them often

• Show genuine interest in students' lives outside the classroom

• Greet students at the door and check in with them individually

For instance, if you ask your student if they have any nice plans for the weekend, follow up with them when you next see them. They’ll appreciate you asking about how their football match went, or whether they enjoyed the restaurant they visited.

Set Clear Expectations and Routines

The Education Endowment Foundation (opens in a new tab) highlights the need for clarity and consistency to improve behaviour, foster safety, and focus on learning.

Helping your students know what to expect will allow them to direct their energy towards learning:

• Display learning objectives clearly at the start of each lesson

• Be consistent with rules and consequences for classroom behaviour

• Show students what success looks like with model answers and exemplary work

For instance, my Year 9 RS teacher established a clear rule for all her students right from the beginning: ‘solutions, not problems’. We even had to write it down in our books. This rule trained us to be proactive (also a great life skill), and if any of us ever forgot to follow it, she’d ask us to refer back to our books. We respected her for practising what she preached!

Offer Student Choice and Voice

When teachers limit student participation, students can feel undervalued and become resistant to learning.

Giving students some control over their learning increases buy-in and ownership:

Ways to incorporate choice:

• Offer students different options for a homework assignment

• Let students choose which questions to answer from a selection of past paper questions

• Allocate topics for students to research and present their findings on

For instance, my A Level History teacher split the class into small groups and asked each one to make a PowerPoint presentation on a different topic. This was a great way of encouraging peer-to-peer learning (opens in a new tab), breaking down the syllabus, and getting us to learn content in one of the most effective ways: by teaching it ourselves. My group ended up changing the lyrics of Calvin Harris’ ‘Acceptable in the 80s’ to ‘it was acceptable in the 20s’. I still, to this day, can’t think of a better way to learn 1920s US history!

Make Learning Relevant and Purposeful

When learning is too abstract, it can feel pointless and lacking in real-world application.

Show your students that what they’re learning is useful and relatable:

• Connect the syllabus to current events and popular culture

• Where possible, incorporate students’ interests into lessons

• Show how the skills your students are learning are used in real careers

For instance, My GCSE RS teacher had this amazing talent for finding a relevant song for almost every topic we had to learn. When we were learning the Genesis story of how God created the world in 6 days before resting on day 7, she played ‘7 Days’ by Craig David!

Celebrate Effort, Not Just Achievement

Instead of only focusing on outcomes, praise students and offer feedback on the processes they follow. This will enable them to make progress more effectively.

Show your students that effort leads to improvement:

• Acknowledge specific strategies your students use, such as a new essay structure

• Recognise when a student persists with a difficult task

• Allow students to reflect on their own growth by asking them to write about what went well and where they could improve

For instance, if you’re a primary school teacher, you might notice that your pupil tried really hard on their maths homework. Even if they didn’t quite achieve the ideal result, rewarding them with a sticker saying ‘A for effort’ will encourage a growth mindset.

Supporting Motivation Through Classroom Environment

Elements of your classroom space are important. Here are some ways to create a positive, low-stress, psychologically safe environment that encourages risk-taking and genuine engagement:

• Change the layout

  • Make sure all students can see and hear you clearly

  • Arrange furniture so that you have both collaborative spaces for group work and quiet corners for independent study

• Put together engaging displays

  • Showcase exemplary student work on the walls

  • Hang up subject-specific posters to make your display both decorative and practical

• Create a culture of safety

  • Value mistakes as learning opportunities

  • Maintain a calm, positive approach, even when dealing with behavioural difficulties

• Consider sensory elements

  • Make sure there is adequate lighting, a comfortable temperature, and reasonable noise levels

  • Check in with students who are particularly sensitive to their physical environment

Linking Motivation to Cognitive Science

The table below summarises some of the most effective, evidence-backed techniques of increasing student motivation and success:

Frequently Asked Questions

What motivates students the most in a classroom?

Positive teacher-student relationships, along with students' perception that their learning has purpose and relevance, are generally considered the most powerful ways to boost motivation.

How do I engage students who seem apathetic or withdrawn?

Start by building a relationship. Have one-to-one conversations to understand what might be causing the disengagement. Show empathy, celebrate small wins (like a student handing their homework in on time), and be patient and consistent.

Is student motivation more important than behaviour management?

They're equally important and interconnected. For instance, when you address behaviour, using positive language (such as “please raise your hand if you want to make a point” instead of “stop talking”) will motivate students to behave better.

How can I motivate students without using rewards?

Foster intrinsic motivation over extrinsic motivation. While rewards can be effective sources of extrinsic motivation, some teachers prefer to go without them (opens in a new tab) so that students can become more self-reliant.

Final Thoughts

Motivating students is an ongoing process, not a quick fix. By starting small, empathising with your students, and consistently employing research-based strategies, you’ll gradually find that you can better reach your students – even the ones you thought you never could.

References

• 85% of UK Students Experience Exam Anxiety

• The CPD Certification Service: Importance of Repetition in Learning (opens in a new tab)

• Create a Spaced Repetition Schedule to Boost Memory

• Education Endowment Foundation: improving behaviour in schools (opens in a new tab)

• ‘Exploring positive teacher-student relationships: the synergy of teacher mindfulness and emotional intelligence’ (opens in a new tab)

• Flashcards

• Interleaving Study Method: A Guide for Students

• The Learning Dispatch: Interleaving (opens in a new tab)

• Mission.io (opens in a new tab): Intrinsic Motivation in the Classroom (opens in a new tab)

• Oxford Learning: Is Your Child Being Challenged Enough in School? (opens in a new tab)

• Responsive Classroom: Teaching Without Using Rewards (opens in a new tab)

• TES: The 30-second briefing: what is the zone of proximal development? (opens in a new tab)

• TES: What is retrieval practice? (opens in a new tab)

• Verywell Mind: How Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Explains Human Motivation (opens in a new tab)

• Verywell Mind: Intrinsic Motivation vs Extrinsic Motivation (opens in a new tab)

• Whatfix: What is Peer-to-Peer Learning? (opens in a new tab)

• What is Retrieval Practice?: A Guide for Teachers