Previous research has pointed out that students have a negative attitude towards thesubject of religion, which affects their motivation. This work uses qualitativesemi-structured interviews and interviewed five active teachers about their perception ofstudents' motivation, and how they as teachers work to promote motivation. Furthermorethis paper has it’s foundation in a cognitive perspective regarding extrinsic and intrinsicmotivationPupils' lack of interest, according to the respondents in this paper, is due to incorrectprejudices and expectations about what the subject of religion entails. After working withthe subject, students' motivation tends to increase when they realize that their prejudicesgenerally did not match the reality. This mostly occur due to the pupils realising the valueof understanding other religions and learn from them as a way to view their surroundings.The respondents report that they try to capture the students' interest by adapting theteaching to the students, so that they are challenged in the right way. In addition they aimto chang the teaching content to something new and exciting. By starting a work area thestudents probably do not associate with religion, such as faith and science. This is done toshow the students the many ways to study religions besides studying holy scriptures.This paper lifts the discussion regarding the criticism and the problems conductionmotivations studies, specially when trying to “measure” or “value” motivation, witch oftenare seen as an inner source and personal, thus making it hard to measure.