The authors review research on children’s reading motivation and its relation to their reading comprehension. They begin by discussing work on the development of school motivation in general and reading motivation in particular, reviewing work showing that many children’s reading motivation declines over the school years. Girls tend to have more positive motivation for reading than do boys, and there are ethnic differences in children’s reading motivation. Over the last 15 years researchers have identified in both laboratory and classroom-based research instructional practices that positively impact students’ reading motivation and ultimately their reading comprehension. There is a strong need for researchers to build on this work and develop and study in different age groups of children effective classroom-based reading motivation instructional programs for a variety of narrative and informational materials.

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This chapter begins with a discussion of the nature of children’s achievement motivation and how it develops over the school years, with a focus on the competence-related belief, value, goal, interest, and intrinsic motivation aspects of motivation that have been emphasized in much recent research on motivation. Following is a discussion of how different aspects of classroom and school practices influence motivation and how teacher–student relationships and peer relationships impact students’ motivation. Next is a consideration of how school transitions influence students’ motivation, describing important differences in the structure and organization of schools at different levels of schooling. The chapter describes some recent intervention work to boost children’s motivation in different ways. The final section concerns how recommendations from motivation researchers align with, or in some cases do not align with, state and national policies for improving student achievement. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research, such as the need for more research on motivation in diverse groups of children and the next steps in motivation intervention research, and provides further thoughts on motivation research–educational policy links.