Eric.ed.gov – Intensive Intervention Practice Guide: Motivation Training

The National Center for Leadership in Intensive Intervention (NCLII), a consortium funded by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), prepares special education leaders to become experts in research on intensive intervention for students with disabilities who have persistent and severe academic (e.g., reading and math) and behavioral difficulties. By the end of the first year of their program, scholars in each cohort work in cross-institutional collaborative groups to create an Intensive Intervention Practice Guide. In each guide, scholars identify an approach to intensive intervention for a select population of students with disabilities, describe the existing evidence base behind it, and discuss the next steps in research needed to improve the understanding of designing and delivering the intervention. The “Intensive Intervention Practice Guides” are created for practitioners as well as faculty engaged in instructing pre- and in-service teachers. The purpose of this research brief is to explore motivation training as a potential intervention component that could be added to existing academic or behavior intervention frameworks to intensify instruction for students exhibiting weaknesses in this domain or in isolation with close monitoring of dosage and frequency. Motivation training is theorized to influence the way students perceive themselves and provides students with effective means to explain their achievement through intrinsic motivation. Researchers have examined the effects of motivation training on measures of academic achievement, behavioral outcomes, self-esteem, motivation, and attribution. The results of these studies speak to the potential effect of motivation training not only on student motivation and attribution style, but also academic outcomes above and beyond an academic intervention on its own. This suggests a potential mechanism of change, whereby motivational training improves measures of motivation and self-concept, which in turn make an intervention more salient and effective for the student. It also underscores the importance of school-based implementation of motivation training as an intensifier of intervention, particularly for students with the most persistent needs or those with inadequate responses to previous intervention attempts. This guide provides a list of resources that can provide information on motivation and cognitive training.