It's not just about skills: Adopting a motivation-informed approach to instruction with adolescents

Abstract

An issue devoted to foundational skills and adolescents might center the cognitive skills and practices most needed to accelerate learning. While an understanding of these—whether multisyllabic decoding, fostering comprehension through discussion, or argumentative writing—is important, in this article, we advocate for the importance of attending to principles of motivation. After defining motivation within the context of adolescent literacy instruction, we summarize representative research on the topic. We then present four guiding principles for teachers, each accompanied by practical examples for classroom application.