Can teachers motivate students to learn?

Research on motivation has mainly concentrated on the role of goal orientation and self‐evaluation in conducting learning activities. In this paper, we examine the relative importance of teachers’ teaching and their efficacy beliefs to explain variation in student motivation. Questionnaires were used to measure the well‐being, academic self‐efficacy, mastery goal orientation, performance avoidance, intrinsic motivation and school investment of students (n = 3462) and the teaching practices and teachers’ sense of self‐efficacy (n = 194) in primary schools. Results of the multi‐level analyses show that connection to the students’ world and cooperative learning methods had a positive effect on students’ motivation, while process‐oriented instruction by the teacher had a negative effect on motivational behaviour and motivational factors of students. Finally, the results lend credence to the argument that teachers’ sense of self‐efficacy has an impact on both teachers’ teaching and students’ motivation to learn.