Motivation or achievement - which comes first? It’s a question that tends to polarise people quickly: some claim that education needs to be made “more fun” or “more motivating”, others counter that you “just” have to make sure students do better; in other words, that better achievement leads to more motivation.

Intuitively, I would say that both sets of people are right, as the relationship between motivation and achievement goes both ways. If we like to do something, we often do better; if we do better, we often like it more.

But if we look at the whole body of research, what does it say?

Firstly, it is important to be clear what we are talking about. “Motivation”, as a construct, can be quite nebulous. If you look closely at the existing research, you will see it defined as “self-concept” (which is more about the beliefs one holds about oneself and the responses of others), confidence and external or intrinsic motivation.

As Steinmayr and colleagues (2019) explain, this is to be expected: “Achievement motivation is not a single construct but rather subsumes a variety of different constructs like ability, self-concepts, task values, goals and achievement motives.”

With that clear, the body of literature on this topic shows evidence for both directions of the achievement-motivation relationship.

For example, a review by Tze, Daniels and Klassen (2016) concluded that boredom has a negative association with achievement. But note that this works both ways: more boring tasks lead to worse outcomes, but it could also mean that constantly doing great at a task makes it less boring.

Pekrun, Lichtenfield, Marsh, Murayama and Goetz (2017) broadened “motivation” to negative emotions like anger, anxiety, shame, and boredom, which all negatively predicted achievement - while achievement negatively predicted these emotions. And Kriegbaum, Becker and Spinath (2018) contended that “both intelligence and motivation contribute substantial, unique shares to the prediction of school achievement”.

It is true that some articles provide solid evidence for the direction from achievement to intrinsic motivation, for example the work by Garon-Carrier and colleagues (2015). We don’t have to dismiss them but rather, like all articles, scrutinise their study contexts. The contexts are just as important to teachers as the findings themselves.

If we take all these studies together, I think the approach for teachers can be simple: balance both achievement and motivation. It is fine to plan smaller steps so that all students can experience success, but with time pressures and a curriculum to finish - and students with differing prior knowledge - it does not seem very realistic that all students will be motivated. Be attentive to those students at risk of detaching; successes are one way to prevent that, but there are more tricks in the toolbox.

Dr Christian Bokhove is a lecturer in maths education at the University of Southampton and a specialist in research methodologies

Find full references for this article at tes.com

This article originally appeared in the 3 January 2020 issue under the headline “Balance success and motivation to achieve the best results”