Motivation is a Four-Letter Word

The third edition of my 2002 book Essential Motivation in the Classroom is about to be published by Routledge.

It's a book that is 'more important and more relevant than ever' according to Geoff Barton in his review of the new edition.

Each of the seven chapters explores one of seven keys to developing internal motivation in learners.

And, for 2025, I have written a new introduction for each chapter entitled 'Notes From the Future'.

It allows me to comment on what I wrote back then and how it is still relevant.

Maybe more so.

With the new edition coming out next month, I thought I'd share this extract from chapter seven, 'Motivation is a Four-Letter Word'.

It's on the subject of hope.

Something we all need to focus on more than ever these days...

Chapter 7: Motivation is a Four-Letter Word

Notes From the Future

It’s the ‘thing with feathers’, according to the poet Emily Dickinson.

It’s a ‘waking dream’ according to Aristotle

It’s ‘patience with the lamp lit’ according to Tertullian, the ‘father of Western theology’.

It’s something to be ‘maintained’ cautions Seamus Heaney, even if the ones you started out with ‘are dashed’.

It’s ‘everywhere’, according to Greta Thunberg, but only ‘once we start to act’.

Hope – it’s better than the alternative.

Hope Theory

The father of ‘hope theory’, as it has been labelled, was the psychologist C. R. Snyder working out of Kansas University.

He suggested that hope is made up of two elements – ‘pathways thinking’ and ‘agency thinking’

In the former, we are ‘constantly thinking about how to get from Point A to Point B’.

Hopeful people not only identify a principal route to take and apply themselves accordingly, but they are also better than low-hope people at ‘finding alternative routes’ when necessary.

‘There should always be a Plan B,’ as the comedian once said, ‘especially when there is no Plan A.’

The latter is where our motivation lies. It’s the confidence we have in our own abilities to achieve the goal before us, even when things get tough.

It is this two-pronged understanding that is found in the best definition I have come up with for hope:

Things can get better, and I can do something about it.

When a student is hopeful, things change in a positive way both in the short term and the longer term, and not just academically.

The Science of Hope

According to the 2023 paper, The Science of Hope, published by the Human Flourishing Lab, hope has benefits in areas including happiness, life satisfaction, relationships and belonging, dealing with loss, trauma, chronic illness, social isolation and recovery from mental illness.

From an academic perspective, students with higher levels of hope outperform peers with lower levels of hope, and those levels of hopefulness predict grade outcomes ‘months and years in the future’.

What’s more, ‘Even students labeled “at risk” were less likely to drop out if they had high levels of hope.'

It’s a precious commodity then, with so many benefits now and into the future.

So, what are the hope levels like in our young people in this turbulent world?

The most recent findings of the UK’s Office for National Statistics identified that the average score for how hopeful we feel about the future on a scale between 0 and 10 is 6.6.

Teaching Hope

It was slightly lower for men than for women, and for people aged 16 to 29 it was lower still at 6.2.

While there are studies showing resiliently high levels of hope in young people, such as the #BeeWell project in Manchester, they do caution that ‘inequalities persist across gender, sexual orientation and other demographics’ with the LGBTQ+ community faring particularly badly.

The good thing is that hope can be taught.

C. R. Snyder’s research spawned what is known as ‘hope therapy’ with proven benefits in a range of settings including mental health support, dealing with chronic illness and even marriage guidance.

The main structure of such work involves looking at personal goals (pathways thinking) and then the attitudes and beliefs that are holding the individual back and the ones that will help develop a sense of self-efficacy (agency thinking).

Even just a 90-minute hope therapy session paid dividends with first-year college students ‘feeling more hopeful and … more confident in their ability to succeed in college immediately and one month after the workshop’.

What’s more, such hopefulness translated into higher grades in the term following the hope workshop.

How Hopeful Do You Feel?

The question used by the Office of National Statistics to evaluate the nation’s levels of hope was a simple one.

On an 11-point scale from 0 to 10, ‘Overall, how hopeful do you feel about your future?’

I think it’s a fair question for a school to use to assess levels of hope across the children, young people and the wider community. 

If our levels of hopefulness – or otherwise – are right at the heart of our well-being, our academic achievement, both now and into the future, our sense of who we are and what we are capable of, of where we are going and our motivation to get ourselves there, that’s some valuable data, don’t you think?

And if that school then sets out, in its bid to improve ‘standards’, to increase those levels of hope through the many means at its disposal, then surely that’s some good work, don’t you think?

Just saying.

You know me, ever hopeful.

A Molecule of Hope

It’s what I christened the little second-hand sailing dinghy I bought many years ago (Dignity was taken) and it’s the name of my favourite place in the world, a beach I walk across in my mind to forget what the dentist is doing in my mouth.

It’s what that deputy head told me she asked one of her daughter’s teachers for ‘a molecule of’ following a particularly disheartening parents’ evening.

‘It’s what my daughter’s name means in Sanskrit – Asha’, the delegate told me at a conference.

It’s the thing ‘that never stops at all’ as Emily Dickinson once wrote.

The new edition of Essential Motivation in the Classroom published by Routledge is due out in October 2025.

We'll let you know when. [ITL]

Ian Gilbert in action