Cultivating Students Learning Motivation Through Mathematics Lessons in a Lower Primary School of Seychelles

Abstract

Every child is born with the potential to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. It is the teachers’ role to develop and nurture this competence in a holistic way. Eccles and Roeser believed that in doing so, teachers need to apply motivational activities within a conducive environment. The link between students’ learning motivation and constructive learning effects has been established by researchers like Ryan and Deci. However, even though motivation is known to be a major influence on students learning, it is a demanding task for teachers to cultivate learning motivation among young students. Therefore, this study aims at exploring teachers’ understanding of students’ learning motivation and the motivational strategies used to teach Mathematics in a lower primary school. A qualitative case study was conducted in a lower primary state school in Seychelles with the objective of finding out the teachers’ understanding of students’ learning motivation; exploring the motivation strategies used by them, and examining the influence of motivation on students’ learning. The study hopes to explore the strategies that Mathematics teachers used to cultivate motivation in Seychelles’s Mathematics classroom and identify the influence of motivation on students’ learning. The participants of this study comprised four lower primary Mathematics teachers and sixty-six students aged between five and a half to seven and a half years old. The study was conducted between March and May of 2021. The results showed that at the beginning of the school year, the teachers found that most students lack motivation in class. However, the level of students’ interest and motivation increased when they learned the topics in Mathematics that are related to their everyday life. The students also showed pleasure in learning when teachers included learning strategies like educational play, inquiry-based learning as well as the use of information, communication and technology (ICT) in the classroom as they reduce Mathematics negativity, which is a stressor for students. The study found that the more students experienced learning that interests them in Mathematics classes, the higher the level of their motivational drive, and this, in turn, helps them to display learning behavior that impacts positively on their Mathematics learning.