This was an informal lit review completed through searching google scholar using key words such as “ADHD”, “academics”, “students”, and “motivation.
Summary:
- There is an overall trend that children and youth with ADHD have lower motivation in academics than their typically developing peers
- There’s a mix of evidence to describe what works best, but many scholars suggest a mix of external motivation to get started and fostering a sense of internal motivation
- External motivation is very behavioral and uses tools such as reward charts, getting to engaged in a preferred activity after completing a task, and grades to foster a sense of motivation
- Fostering internal motivation is about creating an interest in learning for the sense of learning and becomes more essential as students age
- “Mastery Orientation” is a term used in the literature that explores strategies to develop internal motivation such as:
- Providing choices
- Model a ‘mastery approach’ which is essentially telling students about when you failed and how you coped
- Emphasize learning from mistakes
- Give feedback based on improvement rather than focusing on errors
- Emphasize comparing to yourself and not others
- “Self-determination theory” is another frequently referenced topic in developing internal motivation and extremely short and incomplete description of it includes the following areas:
- Your basic needs must be met
- Autonomy – choice rather than being told what to do
- Competence – having the skills to complete the task and getting positive feedback when you try
- Relatedness – those around you caring and feeling excited about your attempts and progress
Sources:
- There is an overall trend that children and youth with ADHD have lower motivation in academics than their typically developing peers
- There’s a mix of evidence to describe what works best, but many scholars suggest a mix of external motivation to get started and fostering a sense of internal motivation
- External motivation is very behavioral and uses tools such as reward charts, getting to engaged in a preferred activity after completing a task, and grades to foster a sense of motivation
- Fostering internal motivation is about creating an interest in learning for the sense of learning and becomes more essential as students age
- “Mastery Orientation” is a term used in the literature that explores strategies to develop internal motivation such as
- “Self-determination theory” is another frequently referenced topic in developing internal motivation and extremely short and incomplete description of it includes the following areas: