One of the primary goals of dance education is to make students life-long learners motivated by internal drives to know, do, and accomplish. The use of intrinsic motivators, i.e., motivation techniques that cultivate belief in the integral value of studying dance, is central to fostering a student's self-direction in dance. Extrinsic motivators, e.g., grades and motivating strategies that do not directly communicate how and why dance is valuable, can be useful teaching aids; however, they can be over-used and have the tendency to draw students' attention away from the lasting benefits of learning dance. The following instructional strategies are intended to help dance teachers cultivate intrinsic motivation in their students.

Make dance personally relevant

• Find ways to incorporate students' personal experiences, social concerns, and cultures into lessons. Conversely, relate content identified in the TEKS to life beyond the classroom.
• Discuss the reasons for activities with the class, explaining how specific tasks fit into the structure of the discipline as a whole. In addition, make connections to previous learning experiences in dance.
• Share experiences with students that show how and why dance is personally meaningful to you—their teachers, administrators and community members.

Foster creative thinking and learning

• Ask questions and propose problems that encourage diverse approaches to problem solving and that stimulate creative thinking.
• Introduce new and challenging ideas in class and encourage experimentation.
• Engage students' curiosity by designing activities that have unpredictable outcomes.

Teach independence, responsibility, and self-direction

• Give students choices, within the structure of the TEKS, of what and how they learn. Involve students in the process of planning, when appropriate. 
• Teach students to take responsibility for their own learning by creating environments in which students with many different learning styles have equal opportunities for success.
• Scaffold knowledge and skills, as demonstrated in the Dance TEKS, to build students' confidence, enabling them to face increasingly difficult learning experiences. Set challenging, achievable goals to encourage success and increase the challenges as students’ confidence and trust grow.

Practice constructive assessment

• Help students recognize quality work in dance by using evaluation criteria developed over time and by modeling the application of criteria in a variety of projects.
• Give specific evaluative feedback that considers students' learning over a period of time and helps students recognize their own strengths and needs. Encourage students to reflect on their processes and products and search for ways to improve their dance education.
• Ensure close alignment between assessment and instructional sequence, teaching practices, and course content.

Recognize and document student achievement

• Document growth of students' knowledge and skills by encouraging them to keep journals, sketchbooks, or portfolios of their ideas, projects, and achievements.
• Organize student performances in the school and community.