A Look At Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic motivation is any personal force that pushes someone towards an activity. It can drive one to persist at a task despite a lack of external motivation, and it can come in the form of positive reinforcement and reward.
It's this personal force that fuels intrinsic motivation, as opposed to extrinsic motivators like money, fame, or social status that don't necessarily need to be pursued for the purpose of success alone but are still often valuable resources. As a result, intrinsic motivation can protect people from the negative effects relating to its overuse.
Intrinsic motivation is often the connection between the two components of a solid school culture. It's what students take away from their educational experiences, which can help them to retain skills, behaviors, and knowledge that can be applied to their lives outside of academia.
Motivation comes from within, but it also comes from anything that reinforces a person's sense of purpose and keeps them going when things aren't going so well. It takes strength to keep moving in the face of discouragement and setbacks; it takes an incredible amount of support—and people—to keep in this positive-reinforcement mode every day.
The challenge is that there are so many ways to measure intrinsic motivation in students. It may look like students are motivated to do well, but students may be too self-conscious to disclose their true motivations. It may look like students have great drive, but that drive may not actually translate into the sort of hard work necessary for academic success. In other words, when we take a look at motivation as measured by academics, it can be difficult to tell if students are taking the right steps towards success while they're learning in the classroom.
In this series on intrinsic motivation, we'll examine popular measures of motivation and what they measure based on research available in the field of educational psychology. We'll also take a look at the reasons behind these measurement differences, so that you can assess whether or not your students are exhibiting intrinsic motivation.
This is part one of a two-part series on intrinsic motivation. In part two, we'll look at "real world" measures of motivation—things that are much easier to measure, but don't necessarily get more accurate each time they're measured.
The following three-part series will provide a comprehensive look at what motivates students in physics, engineering and math classes and how to take steps to build a better school culture--whether it be in your own classroom or in your community.
There's a lot of research showing that intrinsic motivation is an important quality in students, but there are many different ways to measure it, and all of the methods have their own drawbacks. This series will aim to explain what each method entails and what its implications for measuring it or improving your school environment may be.
I'd also like to point out that many aspects of intrinsic motivation aren't inherently measurable. For instance, while I think that many people are motivated by things like helping others or having friends, these things aren't necessarily quantifiable and can often shift depending on the situation. We'll address this when we look at "real world" measures later on.
By the end of this series, I hope to have provided a comprehensive look at intrinsic motivation and how it affects students in the classroom. I'll address some of the drawbacks in existing measurement methods and explain what we can do to improve them so that we better assess the motivation-related aspects of our students' education.
I'd also like to thank all of those who have contributed their work on intrinsic motivation to this project, as well as all those who have helped me out by reading through drafts and making valuable suggestions. While there are many aspects of education already well-researched, intrinsic motivation is still a relatively new area for researchers, and I'm excited to see what we can all put together by the end of this series.
Intrinsic Motivation: An Overview
The concept of intrinsic motivation has been around for hundreds of years; it was first described in depth by Scottish philosopher David Hume, who said that people are moved to action "by the mere pleasure of pursuing or engaging in an object." In other words, it's the draw to something that's internally satisfying or interesting and not necessarily because you'll receive some sort of reward for doing so. This is true even when it comes to the reward of learning itself. Over the past two decades, there have been a number of studies showing that intrinsic motivation is an important aspect of being successful in school and that it plays a big role in how people come to view their work.
In fact, this concept can be traced back as far as Aristotle's Politics in which he describes a desire for excellence as a key part of leading a good life. This idea has likely existed way before that, though. Even hunter-gatherer populations are motivated intrinsically—they're often incentivized by personal meaning rather than extrinsic rewards like money or material goods.
Intrinsic motivation is very important for learning, as it often leads to a drive to learn more. While there is some debate about whether subject mastery or application of skills is more important, there is a lot of evidence showing that intrinsic motivation helps students retain skills and knowledge over the long term. A recent meta-analysis on the subject found that intrinsic motivation can boost academic performance in underperforming students as well as better-performing students.
This also helps us understand why intrinsic motivation seems to be related to a variety of positive educational outcomes—why it relates so closely with things like self-esteem and self-efficacy, which are necessary for school success.
Because of this, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that it's an important part of a student's motivation. This has resulted in diagnosing motivation and attempting to measure it through a variety of different methods; however, this can lead to odd results.
One example is the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT), which measures students' achievement by looking at test scores and attendance rates. On the first full-day SAT administered, students scored an average of 200 points more than they did on the same test taken two months later. Essentially, the students were motivated for the test but didn't retain that motivation over time.
Some of this is due to how easy it is to take standardized tests—there's no intrinsic draw to do it, and it's very easy to say "I'm not going to try today," which results in a lack of motivation. Of course, there are some tests that require you to know material over a long period of time (like state tests) and some that don't (like high school AP tests), so I think this demonstrates that standardized tests aren't entirely representative of what intrinsic motivation looks like in the classroom.
How Motivation is Measured: Intrinsic vs.
Conclusion-Based vs. Achievement-Based
There are three main methods of measurement—intrinsic motivation is commonly measured through self-report questionnaires, while extrinsic motivation is typically measured by using external devices such as a computer programmed to reward students for working hard. Lastly, the achievement-based method looks at student's test scores and overall grade level. I'll go over each one in turn to explain what it means and what we can do to improve it.
Intrinsic Motivation: An Intrinsic Measurement Method
Intrinsic motivation refers to the motivation that comes from within a person's character or personality; it is believed to be the primary source of intrinsic motivation in humans.