If an elementary school student is unmotivated in class, the problem doesn’t necessarily originate in the classroom. If a child’s support system at home is not quite up to par, this can have an adverse effect on the child’s motivation levels at school. Many children need a consistent academic support system in the form of active interest and encouragement from family members. GreatSchools, Inc. suggests that students who are used to plenty of questions and curiosity from their parents regarding their schoolwork/homework, develop a general belief that learning is a worthwhile endeavor. Without such support, children might ultimately lose faith that doing well in school is worth all that hard work.
Elementary school students can’t always be expected to appreciate the long-term benefits of scholastic achievement. Sometimes the argument that good grades in school eventually leads to good job opportunities falls on indifferent ears. Without the promise of smaller, short-term rewards, children can sometimes fail to glean a reason to put any real effort into their learning. Intervention Central suggests that external rewards such as praise can eventually lead a student toward more natural goals, such as greater peer-acceptance and the satisfaction of good grades. These natural rewards can ultimately eliminate the need for the external, short-term rewards.
Students sometimes have low self-efficacy in certain school subjects like mathematics or reading, and this can subconsciously prevent them from putting forth their best effort. If a student convinces herself that she is naturally inefficient in a particular subject, her effort and results will reflect her self-doubt. Blanket statements like “I’m just not good in math” are a clear indicator of low self-efficacy. Intervention Central holds that students can "sabotage" their own self esteem by constantly thinking back to times when they'd performed poorly in a given subject.
A poor relationship with the teacher can sometimes cause a child to underperform in school. If a student, for whatever reason, dislikes her teacher -- or perceives that her teacher dislikes her -- she may become less likely to follow the teacher’s requests and/or complete assignments. As motivation and class work suffers, a student’s general behavior may follow suit, possibly leading to time spent in the principal’s office. Intervention Central refers to this as “negative reinforcement,” because the student “wins” by temporarily achieving a break from the demands of the classroom and is therefore likely to repeat the behavior in the future.