Unlocking Students Motivation : The Role of School Environment

By : Mr Angga

Education is one of the important roles in shaping the future of our children. They will find out about their true capability through exploring and learning in the school environment. A good school environment will affect the students’ motivation in learning and how far they will improve their knowledge and capability. 

Motivation can be defined as the repetitive action of doing something that affects and shapes the person's behaviour in pursuing their dreams, whether its internal or external factors (Ndruru, 2024). Those internal or external factors will help the person to set a goal about their life and act as the stepping stone to pursue their dreams. The role of the school environment is to develop and shape the students’ knowledge. The school environment, such as students’ interaction, classroom atmosphere and the use of teaching media may affect their motivation in learning at school. This will also affect and help shape the students and contribute to preparing them for their future.

The students’ interaction becomes the first factor in unlocking their motivation at school. A positive interaction will lead to a positive encouragement for the students in learning (Firman & S, 2024). They will start to give positive support to other students. This will lead to good interaction and help maintain the students’ motivation in learning at school. The teacher's supportive words and actions will also push the students to motivate themselves in learning. The students will experience a positive environment and feel safe at school. This can lead to a better performance in academic and nonacademic learning as they can fully unlock their ability and capability in learning. 

A positive classroom atmosphere will significantly help the students to learn. They can freely express their thoughts and ideas about something, without thinking about others’ opinion or judgment whenever they make mistakes. A comfortable space in sharing their knowledge will gradually help them to boost their confidence in peer or collaborative learning (Kurniawan et al., 2023). This could aid the students to gain a better understanding of the topic they are learning as they can focus on learning without the fear of committing mistakes. The more positive the classroom atmosphere or environment, the better performance the students could achieve in the class. 

The use of interactive teaching media could boost the students’ motivation in learning (Petriani et al., 2025). Most of the students prefer learning while using visual teaching media rather than just listening to the teachers explanations most of the time (traditional teaching method). The visual elements when using modern teaching media such as videos, comics, pictograms, and or real-life experiments could aid the students to visualize the topic and contribute to easier learning. This also could enhance the students’ motivation and participation in the learning process. 

The external motivations especially in the school environment become the key in enhancing the students’ participation and drive to learn. The positive interactions between students with students or teacher with students also could help the students to learn better without considering any barrier in delivering the information or opinion. They will experience a supportive and safe environment in the school while learning about new things. Using an interactive teaching medium also motivates the students to learn more. They could easily understand the information with a visual example. Moreover, the students will gradually increase their participation and learning results with a cooperative and supportive learning environment.   

Reference :

Firman, E., & S, K. D. S. (2024). The Effect of the Learning Environment on Students’ Motivation in Learning. Jurnal Ilmiah Mandala Education, 10(4), 1047. https://doi.org/10.58258/jime.v10i4.7614

Kurniawan, F., Yeni Erita, Didi Syahrir, & Vani Qhairum Nisa Utami. (2023). The influence of students’ environment on students’ learning motivation. JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LEARNING AND DISTANCE EDUCATION, 1(8), 297–305. https://doi.org/10.56778/jdlde.v1i8.58

Ndruru, I. S. (2024). STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN LEARNING ENGLISH SPEAKING AT THE EIGHTH GRADE OF SMP NEGERI 3 DHARMA CARAKA. Research on English Language Education, 6(2), 51–65. https://doi.org/10.57094/relation.v6i2.2308

Petriani, P., Maulina, M., & Nasrullah, R. (2025). THE ROLE OF CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT IN DRIVING STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION TO LEARN ENGLISH. KLASIKAL : JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, LANGUAGE TEACHING AND SCIENCE, 7(2), 651–667. https://doi.org/10.52208/klasikal.v7i2.1280