Motivation to Study and Work with Talented Students

Motivation to study and work is a quite variable process, which should be paid a high attention to constantly. The term “motivation” originates from the Latin word “movere” i.e., to move, and it is a hidden activity of internal driving force in the human psyche for his/her action. The inner stimulus is the motive, which can be expressed as a rational impulse making the human behaviour psychologically meaningful; therefore it is the cause of a human behaviour. The human mind is always simultaneously and parallely affected by several impetuses and motivation should be understood as the whole set of motives.These may differ or match up in intensity, direction and stability. Generally, in case the motives are targeted similarly, they reinforce each other; otherwise they weaken each other or can completely be eliminated.The efforts to explain the motivation and knowledge date back to the history. Various theories differ in their assumptions and specificities of human behaviour in particular situations. Generally speaking, there are three basic groups of motivation theories:–the theory focused on motivation causes,–the theory targeted at the motivation process itself,–theories covering special purposes, decision-making, participation-oriented, etc.1. The paper presents the authorś approaches to work with talented students at technical universities in Brno, their broad experience as well as various motivation methods, which are successfully applied and used in the educational process.The main aim is to prepare graduates with adequate professional, cultural, ethical and social training so that they are capable of creatively solving conceptual problems and adapting to practical requirements