Last Updated: 9/19/26
By Amy Schlueter
Sometimes the child isn’t unmotivated. Sometimes the child is overwhelmed.
We love to talk about a student’s lack of motivation. “He just doesn’t want to read.” “She isn’t trying.” “He could do it if he would just apply himself.” “She’s capable. She just isn’t motivated.”
I’ve said some version of those things myself. But lately, I’ve been thinking about the word motivated a little differently. Because sometimes what looks like a motivation problem is actually a self-efficacy problem. Sometimes the child isn’t thinking, I don’t want to read. He’s thinking, What’s the point? I’m going to mess up anyway. And those are two VERY different problems.
Meet Alan.
Alan isn’t his real name, but his story is real. Last Friday, I asked Alan to read his fluency passage. We compared his results to his previous reading. He improved in three out of four areas. He read more total words, and more correct words. And his fluency rating improved.
Sounds like a win, right? But Alan didn’t see it that way. He noticed that his number of errors had increased. And that was the only number that mattered to him. His entire demeanor changed. His head went down and his shoulders slumped. He moped. For nearly half the period. I couldn’t understand why he was so down. I’ve been working with him since he was a 5th grader and I’ve seen his improvement. I said, “Come on! You did GREAT!” And his classmate Bryan said, “Yeah! What are you upset about? You got way better on that one.” But our observations missed what was really happening.
Alan couldn’t see his progress as a success because he was looking for perfection. And he’s not alone- many of my students react this way and it’s a challenging problem to address.
Then there was Bryan.
Bryan isn’t his real name either. Alan and Bryan and I were playing a game. The very SAME period when Alan slumped into his sullen mood. As it turned out, Bryan got stuck on the word imprison. He couldn’t decode it. He did the same thing. Mood change. Shoulder slump. Instead of celebrating the fact that he was actually winning—Bryan became consumed by the fact that he couldn’t read that one word. Just one word derailed him. The game continued. But Bryan couldn’t snap out of his funk. His brain was still back there. I couldn’t read imprison.
And that tells me something. These kids aren’t simply making decisions about whether they feel like reading. They’re developing beliefs about who they are as readers. And eventually, those beliefs can become beliefs about who they are as students. And, honestly, who they are as people.
The Motivation Myth
Research supports something that I think is incredibly important for those of us who work with struggling readers: Reading difficulty and motivation can influence one another.
A large meta-analysis by Toste and colleagues examined 132 studies involving more than 690,000 students. They found a moderate relationship between motivation and reading achievement. But the longitudinal findings were especially interesting: earlier reading achievement appeared to be a stronger predictor of later motivation than motivation was of later reading achievement.
Read that again.
Sometimes we are trying desperately to increase motivation so that the child will read better. But the research suggests another possibility: Maybe helping the child read better can help rebuild motivation. That’s a pretty important shift. Because it changes the question from: “How do I motivate this child?” to: “How do I help this child experience enough success to believe that trying is worthwhile?”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Small Wins Are Not Small
This is where self-efficacy enters the picture. Self-efficacy is essentially a person’s belief that they can successfully perform a particular task. And according to Bandura’s work, the most powerful source of self-efficacy is mastery experience—actually experiencing yourself succeeding. Not hearing that you’re good at something. Not being told you’re smart. Not receiving a prize. Actually doing the thing. Successfully.
That’s why small wins matter so much. For a struggling reader, a small win might look like:
- decoding a word independently
- recognizing more sight words
- increasing correct words per minute
- remembering a previously taught strategy
- noticing an error and fixing it
- reading a passage with improved expression
- successfully reading a word that was impossible two weeks ago
To us, that might look tiny. To a child who has spent years experiencing failure? That might be evidence. Evidence that says: Wait. Maybe I can do this. And we need to pay attention to those moments.
Because a child cannot build a new identity as a successful reader just from our words. Eventually, they are going to need receipts.
“You’re really getting this!” Isn’t Always Enough
This is one of the places where I think we sometimes get motivation backward. We want children to believe in themselves, so we tell them: “You’re doing great!” “You’re so smart!” “I know you can do this!” And I absolutely believe in encouragement. But encouragement without evidence can bounce right off a child who has already decided that the evidence says otherwise. Imagine Alan’s internal conversation:
Teacher: “You did better!”
Alan’s brain: “No I didn’t. I made more mistakes.”
Teacher: “But look! You read 15 more words!”
Alan’s brain: “That doesn’t matter. I messed up.”
That’s not a child who needs another compliment. That’s a child who needs us to rebuild the evidence. And that takes time.
The Wound Goes Deeper Than Reading
This is the part that concerns me the most. Repeated reading failure doesn’t stay neatly contained in the reading block.
Research has found a meaningful relationship between reading ability and students’ reading/academic self-concept. A systematic review and meta-analysis found that the relationship is particularly evident in self-perceptions connected specifically to reading, writing, spelling, and academics.
Another longitudinal study found a reciprocal relationship between reading self-concept and reading fluency: students’ reading skills influenced their self-concept, while their self-concept also influenced subsequent fluency growth.
Why does it matter? Because eventually the child may stop thinking: I am having trouble with this word. And start thinking: I am bad at reading. Then: I’m bad at school. Then: I don’t belong here…school’s not for me. Then: Why should I even try?
That is no longer simply a reading problem. It is an identity problem.
Why “Just Try Harder” Can Backfire
Think about what happens when we repeatedly put a child in situations where the task is significantly harder than her current skill level. She struggles. She fails. She watches classmates succeed. She compares herself to them. She receives more corrections. She works at something that still feels impossible. Eventually, protecting herself from that feeling may become more important than succeeding at the task. So she avoids it. She shuts down. She may become the class clown. Or avoid work. She says she doesn’t care. She puts her head down.
And we call it lack of motivation. But maybe the behavior is actually communicating: “I don’t want to experience another failure.” That is a very different message.
So What to Do?
First, we teach the skill. Seriously. I’m not suggesting that struggling readers need a motivational pep rally instead of explicit reading instruction. They need excellent reading instruction. They need systematic, explicit instruction in the skills they haven’t mastered. They need practice at the right level. They need opportunities to apply those skills successfully. And they need enough success that their brains begin collecting a new kind of evidence. Changing the story they tell themselves is the first step towards making real progress and I’ve found that the best way to do that is to make the progress visible.
Sometimes students genuinely cannot see how they’ve improved. So show them. Or voice record their reading so they can hear their improvement. Don’t just say, “You did better.” Put real numbers in front of him. “Look, Alan, you read 15 more words today.” “Hey, you fixed that up without my help.” “Nice job chunking that big word into parts.” The goal isn’t empty praise. The goal is specific, accurate attribution. This happened because you did something. That matters.
Change What Counts as a Win
This is something I’ve started thinking about more and more. For some students, the win cannot always be: “I got every word right.” Sometimes the win is: “I didn’t give up when I got stuck.” or “I tried the strategy before asking for help.” Sometimes “I came back and tried again” is the most valuable skill we’re teaching them. And by no means are we lowering expectations. We’re teaching students to recognize the behaviors that actually lead to improvement. Grit, perseverance, and seeing that small changes over time lead to big results. Review data with your students regularly and they’ll begin to believe what you’ve been telling them.
About Those Jolly Ranchers…
I’m still a fan. You know I am. 😂 But a Jolly Rancher can’t heal a wounded reading identity. Neither can an “atta boy.” Or a sticker. Or a trip to the prize box.
External rewards can have a place, especially when we’re helping students establish new habits or experience an initial sense of success. But if the deeper problem is: “I don’t believe I’m a capable reader,” then the solution has to go deeper too. The child needs targeted instruction, appropriate challenges, and repeated opportunities for success. The child needs feedback that points to what they did rather than simply telling them they are “good.”
And, perhaps most importantly, the child needs adults who refuse to let one bad reading become a definition of who that child is.
Final Thoughts
I’ve spent enough years at the small-group table to know that motivation is rarely as simple as wanting to or not wanting to. Sometimes the kid who looks lazy is exhausted. Seriously. I see Bryan and Alan 8th period. Bryan shared that he has Reading class 7th, Reading Resource 8th (with me) and Language Arts 9th period. This poor kid’s brain is about to explode AND it’s the end of a long day. Sometimes that kid who looks defiant is actually embarrassed. Sometimes the one who says, “I hate reading,” has simply had enough experiences that taught him reading hates him. And sometimes the kid who looks completely defeated needs something more powerful than encouragement. He needs a win. Not a fake win. Not a participation trophy. A real, earned, measurable, observable success.
Because that’s how self-efficacy grows. And that’s why I want us to be careful when we label a child “unmotivated.” So before we can even ask, How do I motivate him? Let’s ask: Does he believe he can succeed? Has he experienced enough success to believe that? Is the task actually within his instructional reach? Can he see the progress we see? And what does he believe his reading ability says about him?
Those questions can lead us somewhere much more useful than another reward. Because sometimes motivation isn’t the problem. Sometimes the child has simply stopped believing that success is possible. And our job is to help him experience enough success that he starts believing again.
🤓 The Nerd Corner
📖 Toste et al. (2020) — A Meta-Analytic Review of the Relations Between Motivation and Reading Achievement for K–12 Students
This is the big one I’d hand to anyone who wants to understand the motivation/reading relationship.
The researchers examined 132 articles, 185 independent samples, and more than 690,000 students. They found a moderate relationship between motivation and reading achievement and evidence for a bidirectional relationship over time. The finding that really grabbed me: longitudinal evidence suggested that earlier reading achievement was a stronger predictor of later motivation than motivation was of later reading achievement.
Read the open-access research article
📖 Morgan & Fuchs (2007) — Is There a Reciprocal Relationship Between Children’s Reading Skills and Reading Motivation?
This work is particularly helpful when we’re thinking about struggling readers. Researchers have argued that low motivation can be both a consequence of limited reading skill and a contributor to later reading difficulty. That feels very different from simply saying, “He isn’t motivated.” It suggests we may be looking at a cycle.
Difficulty → frustration → lower self-belief → avoidance → less practice → continued difficulty.
Think about that for a second. A child struggles to read. Reading feels hard. The child doesn’t feel particularly good at it. So…why would they want to do more of it? And when they avoid reading or practice less, they get fewer opportunities to build those very skills. That’s the cycle.
Their findings give us a pretty important reason to stop treating reading skill and motivation as completely separate problems. And this is where I think we sometimes miss the boat in intervention.
If a student says, “I hate reading,” our first question shouldn’t be, “How do we make reading more fun?” A better question might be “How can we help this child experience what it feels like to be successful at reading?” Because competence helps build confidence. And sometimes that little taste of success is exactly what gets a child willing to try again.
📖 Self-Concept in Poor Readers: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
This one is worth bookmarking.
The review found a statistically significant association between poor reading and poorer self-concept, particularly in reading-, writing-, spelling-, and academic-related self-perceptions. The authors are careful to point out that association does not establish causation—but it does make self-concept something we should pay attention to.
📖 McBreen & Savage (2021) — The Impact of Motivational Reading Instruction on the Reading Achievement and Motivation of Students
This systematic review and meta-analysis looked specifically at motivational reading interventions.
Across 49 studies, motivational reading interventions were associated with improvements in both reading achievement and reading motivation, although the authors also noted evidence of publication bias for reading achievement outcomes. I appreciate this study because it keeps us from swinging too far in the other direction.
Motivation does matter. We just need to understand what we’re actually trying to change.
Read the open-access version through UCL Discovery
⭐ Amy’s Top Pick
If I could put just one article on the staff-room table, it would be Toste et al. (2020). Not because it gives us a magical motivation strategy. Because it makes us rethink the entire question. Maybe we shouldn’t begin with: “How do I get this kid motivated?” Maybe we begin with: “How do I create the conditions where this kid can experience genuine success?”
That is a much more actionable question. And for a reading specialist? Well… That’s where we live. We don’t just hand kids reasons to try. We teach them how to succeed. Then we help them notice that they did. And then we do it again. And again. And again. Until one day the kid who used to put his head down looks up and says: “Wait. I got it.” That’s the win I’m after. Not the improved numbers or prosody. The belief that they can.
I’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave a comment or feel free to email me. Until next time…..