Motivation and classroom teaching in geography

Abstract

Several factors influence the teaching and learning of geography in the classroom situation. Prominent among these factors is motivation. Motivation may be described as a state of arousal in which an individual wishes to achieve a specific goal and exerts effort to do so. In the classroom, efficient learning would be impossible if motivation was absent. But this appears to be the situation in many geography classes. There are classroom situations in which student motivation is at a minimum and in which learning is correspondingly slow. In such unmotivated classes, there are geography teachers who leave their students with half formed and hazy concepts; teachers who make no attempt to select teaching procedures that will be interesting to students; teachers who criticize students negatively rather than constructively; such classes are also characterized by strained personal relationships between students and their teachers. To address these worrying concerns in the geography classroom, this article is devoted to the discussion of principles, practices and specific suggestions aimed at enabling the geography teacher to make more effective use of motivation in classroom situations.