Cheryl Moertel, NBCT, Author at NBPTS | Shaping the profession that shapes America's future. - NBPTS | Shaping the profession that shapes America's future.

Cheryl Moertel is a National Board Certified Teacher in Adolescent and Young Adult Science since 2000. She holds a bachelor’s degree (St. Olaf College) with majors in both biology and chemistry, a master’s degree in Molecular biology (Mayo Graduate School), a master’s degree in Education (Winona State University) and a Doctoral degree in Educational Leadership (Bethel University). She has been teaching Biology and Chemistry for the past 24 years in Rochester, Minnesota.

Is it Important for Students to Want to Learn in Order to Succeed in Learning?

Cheryl Moertel, NBCTOctober 4, 2018

Throughout my teaching career, I have pursued a variety of instructional strategies to increase student learning to a deeper and lasting level for all students. Through this endeavor, I found that one especially prominent underlying cause for student failure or success was student motivation and willingness to learn. Although there are many factors that play into motivation, instructional strategy has been shown to affect it. For the past several years I have been grappling with a variety of teaching strategies that increase student motivation to learn biology and have explored motivation types in various groups of students. Motivation is defined…