How do we move students toward intrinsic motivation?

To tackle this question, I consulted a couple of papers written by psychologists who study this topic (see “References” post for complete citations.) They point out that intrinsic motivation is an innate tendency, and the appropriate question to ask is not how to get it or what causes it but rather what conditions support and sustain it, versus subdue and diminish it (Ryan and Deci 2000). I like this perspective; it seems to make the job of motivating students easier since they already have an innate tendency! All we need to do as teachers is create the right conditions…

Well, maybe creating the right conditions is still a challenging goal, especially when we consider most college classrooms are designed for an audience of 30 to 300 students or more. Let’s first look at some of the research results on motivation in general, and then deal with translating them to the college classroom in the next post. I will break this up into two main sections, a) motivating people for activities that hold some degree of interest for them, and b) motivating people for activities that do not hold an appeal for them.

a) Motivating people for activities that hold interest for them
Cognitive evaluation theory integrates results from laboratory experiments and field studies from various settings on the effects of rewards, feedback and other external events on intrinsic motivation. They found the following elements to be important:
1. Events such as positive feedback, communication, rewards, etc. that induce feelings of competence during action can enhance intrinsic motivation for that action.
2. It is also important that there be a sense of autonomy (perception that they are responsible for the performance) to enhance the feeling of competency. Said another way, people must not only experience competence or efficacy, they must also feel their behavior is self-determined. This can result from either immediate support for their autonomy and competence, or from previous experiences that have already set up their personal autonomy. To clarify this idea of autonomy, we are referring to the power of using one’s own will in any act, whether in a group or alone, collectively or individually. It does not refer to being independent, unrelated to the group, or detached.
3. Choice, acknowledgment of feelings, and opportunities for self-direction were found to enhance intrinsic motivation.
4. Tangible rewards, threats, deadlines, directives, pressured evaluations, and imposed goals diminish intrinsic motivation because they emphasize an external source of causality.
In general, teachers who are autonomy supportive (in contrast to controlling) catalyze greater intrinsic motivation, curiosity and desire for challenge. Students taught with a more controlling approach lose initiative and learn less effectively, especially when learning requires conceptual, creative processing.

b) Motivating people for activities that do not hold an appeal for them
For activities that do not hold an intrinsic appeal, we can turn to strategies that move people along the extrinsic motivation spectrum. As mentioned in a previous post (“Motivation defined”), there are a variety of extrinsically motivated behaviors ranging from completely unmotivated to a level where the action is accepted or owned as being personally important and has been brought into alignment with the person’s own values and needs. Studies support the idea that people move along this continuum in their cognitive development, and that more autonomous extrinsic motivation is associated with more engagement, better performance, lower dropout, higher quality learning, and better teacher ratings, among others.

If extrinsically motivated behaviors are not inherently interesting, why would anyone perform them? The primary reason lies in our sociability, because the behaviors are prompted, modeled, or valued by significant others to whom we feel (or want to feel) attached or related. To move toward integrating the behavior into the internal realm, people must grasp the meaning and synthesize it with respect to their other goals and values. This processing is facilitated by a sense of choice, volition, and freedom from excessive external pressure toward behaving or thinking a certain way. Support for autonomy is critical and allows individuals to actively transform values into their own.