Encouragement as a Motivating Force

Students' learning achievement is related to their self-concept and expectations. Through the use of encouragement, teachers can help students overcome the fear of failure by combating their negative expectations. According to Don Dinkmeyer and Lewis E. Losoncy, authors of The Encouragement Book, encouragement is the process of facilitating the development of a person's inner resources and courage toward positive movement.

Positive Ways for Teachers to Encourage

PLS has identified three teacher responses that effectively encourage students.

• Nonjudgmental Approval
  The kind of approval that feels best to students is approval that is sincere, and believable. The safest kind of approval takes the "I" and the "you" out of the sentence and includes a "what" — what the student did, what the student values, or what the student is working on. For example, instead of simply giving praise, "You are so organized," give nonjudgmental approval: "Your essay showed great organization. Each idea was clearly developed." With approval, teachers provide students with opportunities to feel a sense of success and satisfaction.
• Encouragement Response
  There are many times when encouragement from a teacher can make the difference between whether a student continues on task or gives up. Students benefit from encouragement when they are frustrated, unable to move on, working at peak effort, taking on a risk, or feeling limited in some way. The first step of the encouragement response is to focus on what the student needs to do, such as get more information, solve a problem, or make an attempt. The second step has two parts: (1) asking questions that show concern, interest, and teacher involvement, and (2) reinforcing attempt. Helpful questions include: "What do you need to do next?" "How is it going?" "How can this be done differently?" Statements that reinforce attempt include: "That¯s the way!" "Your hard work is showing." "You're ready for the next one."
• Feedforward
  Feedback is given after a student finishes a task; feedforward is a verbal skill to use when we want to give students information about the task on which they are engaged. Feedforward is present- or future-focused; feedback is focused on past performance. Both the student who is successful and the student who is struggling benefit from feedforward statements. Feedforward gets an individual student or the entire class unstuck. It includes specific information rather than advice and can come in the form of a hint, clue, reminder, or a missing piece of information. Examples of feed-forward statements: "A capital letter lets the reader know you are beginning a new sentence." "An example is written on the board." "When the bibliography is included, your report will be complete."