Principle 5: It is impossible to build skill without motivation.
Without motivation, even the most capable expert will fail.
Note: Unconstrained Kids unpacks, translates, and integrates academic research and data about skill type and the principles of skill building to support the improvement of PK-12 reading, writing, and mathematics. This post is part of a series that describes 7 key principles of skill building I identified from Dynamic Skill Theory and the Science of Learning and Development. Like everything on this Substack, this post is a work-in-progress. I will make updates as needed. Citations are included at the end. Questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome.
First posted: June 4, 2025
Last updated: July 24, 2026
Key Takeaway
Skill is the capacity to think and act in an organized way in a specific context (Immordino-Yang and Fischer, 2010). It is impossible to learn or build skills if we are not motivated. Motivation is deeply intertwined with emotion, which is the body’s fuel for learning and skill building. Motivation stems from positive emotions about the value of an activity, personal expectations for success, and belief that we can influence the outcome. Motivation is an important part of the context for skill building.
Three core acts are required to build a new skill (Clark & Saxberg, 2018):
First, we have to start. We have to take the initial, crucial steps to begin to learn something new. This requires overcoming the immediate friction that stands between us and a new skill. The barrier could be external—like finding the right program, a mentor, or transportation. Or the barrier could be internal—hesitance, doubt, or simple inertia.
Second, once we start we have to persist. We have to continue our efforts to build the skill once the initial novelty wears off. This involves protecting our attention in the face of distractions or challenges, such as resisting the urge to check our smartphone or pushing past the immediate frustration of hitting a wall or an unexpected setback.
Finally, we have to invest sufficient mental effort. We don’t build skills by merely going through the motions. Building automated skills requires deliberate practice (Willingham, 2004). We have to learn from successes and failures to wire and rewire our mental circuitry.
In other words, we have to be motivated to build skill. Motivation is the process of starting, persisting, and investing sufficient mental effort to achieve a goal in a reasonable time (Clark & Saxberg, 2018).
For adolescents and adults, it’s conservatively estimated that motivation accounts for at least 30% of learning (Cantor et al., 2019). Motivation is described as “indispensable” for school success. It is suggested that motivation possibly matters more than intellectual ability (Dweck et al., 2011; Sternberg, 2017). As psychologist Richard Clark explains, “without motivation, even the most capable expert will fail” (Clark, 2006).
Motivation is deeply entwined with emotions (Meyer and Turner, 2006; Immordino-Yang and Damasio, 2007; Hardway, 2020). Our beliefs about the value of a task, our expectations for success, and how much control we feel we have–key components of motivation–are deeply connected to our feelings.
Strong negative emotions can overwhelm our mental capacity needed to build and practice skills (Clark & Saxberg, 2018). Negative emotions like anger, fear, and depression can lead to focus on past failures and lower beliefs about what’s possible in future attempts. As Richard Clark warns us, this is “one of the biggest killers of motivation” (Clark, 2003).
“Motivation nudges us to convert intention into action. It pushes us to start doing something new or to restart something that we have stopped. It controls our decision to persist at a specific work goal in the face of distractions and competing priorities. It leads us to invest more or less mental and physical effort to enhance both the quality and quantity of our work.” (Clark, 2006)
Motivation operates differently for children and youth
A trap we must avoid is assuming that motivation for children and youth operates the same as adults. For adults in a workplace setting, financial incentives and other tangible rewards are a highly effective way to drive performance (Clark, 2003). But children and youth appear to operate differently.
A major experimental study in three large urban districts paid students for reading books, performance on interim exams, or for classroom grades. All three approaches failed to make an impact on student achievement (Fryer, 2011). Psychologist David Yeager suggests that young people ages 10 to 25 are heavily motivated by non-financial incentives: status and respect (Yeager, 2024).
Both of these rewards are heavily social in nature, rooted in the interactions we discussed in Principle 3 and emotional connections described in Principle 4. Having a sense of control over success or failure is an important part of motivation for children, youth, and adults.
To help children and youth generate and maintain motivation for skill building involves helping them develop positive answers to three key questions (Clark & Saxberg, 2018):1
Why do I care? (Value of the activity)
Can I do this? (Personal expectation of success)
Do I dictate the outcome? (Sense of control or autonomy)
But wait, there’s more
Works Cited
Cantor, P., Osher, D., Berg, J., Steyer, L., & Rose, T. (2019). Malleability, plasticity, and individuality: How children learn and develop in context. Applied Developmental Science, 23(4), 307–337.
Clark, R. E. (2003). Fostering the work motivation of individuals and teams. Performance Improvement, 42(3), 21–29.
Clark, R. E. (2006). Motivating individuals, teams, and organizations. In J. A. Pershing (Ed.), Handbook of human performance technology: Principles, practices, and potential (Third, pp. 478–497). Pfeiffer.
Clark, R. E., & Saxberg, B. (2018). Engineering motivation using the belief-expectancy-control framework. Interdisciplinary Education and Psychology, 2(1).
Dweck, C. S., Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2011). Academic tenacity: Mindsets and skills that promote long-term learning. Gates Foundation.
Fryer, R. G., Jr. (2011). Financial incentives and student achievement: Evidence from randomized trials. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(4), 1755–1798.
Hardway, C. (2020). Of interest and engagement: The emotional force of learning and development. In M. F. Mascolo & T. R. Bidell (Eds.), Handbook of integrative developmental science: Essays in honor of Kurt W. Fischer (pp. 232-261). Routledge.
Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Damasio, A. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 1(1), 3–10.
Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Fischer, K. W. (2010). Neuroscience bases of learning. In V. G. Aukrust (Ed.), International encyclopedia of education (3rd Edition, pp. 310–316). Elsevier.
Meyer, D. K., & Turner, J. C. (2006). Re-conceptualizing emotion and motivation to learn in classroom contexts. Educational Psychology Review, 18(4), 377–390.
Sternberg, R. J. (2017). Intelligence and competence in theory and practice. In A. J. Elliot, C. S. Dweck, & D. S. Yeager (Eds.), Handbook of competence and motivation: Theory and application (Second). The Guilford Press.
Willingham, D. T. (2004). Ask the cognitive scientist: Practice makes perfect—But only if you practice beyond the point of perfection. American Educator, 28(1), 31–39.
Yeager, D. S. (2024). 10 to 25: The science of motivating young people: A groundbreaking approach to leading the next generation-and making your own life easier. Avid Reader Press.
This is the “Belief-Expectancy-Control” framework proposed by Clark and Saxberg (2018) to diagnose and solve motivation challenges in educational settings. These researchers describe this as a “learning engineering” approach that integrates and applies a wide array of research results and clinical experiences to help educators and program service providers to identify and solve typical motivation problems encountered in adolescents and adults. Although these researchers propose this framework as applicable for youth in middle and high school, Cantor et al. (2019) suggest it’s also applicable to young children as well.