One of the greatest questions among educators is how to create lifelong learners of our students. These life-long learners are known as “intrinsically motivated learners” and like other intrinsically motivated people they want to learn more because they LIKE TO LEARN. Everyone is intrinsically motivated to do something with their life, for instance I enjoy riding my bike. While others might feel bored sitting on a metal contraption for 40 miles I enjoy the quiet, constant motion, and time to myself. I do not ride my bike to get anywhere or train for a cross country tour (although that would be cool!) I do it simply for the love of riding. Whether is be reading, playing video games, or competing in sports everyone is intrinsically motivated by their hobbies and interests. One of the goals of education is to harness that motivation for learning. With all this talk about convincing kids that they should ENJOY learning what are really doing to help them get their? Are we really providing the right environment to entice them to want to learn or are we just hoping they will want to while sitting quietly in rows? This brings up another type of motivation that sometimes has a bad reputation, extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is an outside force that moves you to complete a task. We are far more familiar with extrinsic motivation than intrinsic because it is much more abundant in the world and in our field of education. Extrinsic motivation is when to provide a reward or consequence in order to entice the appropriate reaction out of the student. A prevalent example of this would be the use of a set of standardized grading criteria in your classroom. Part of the reason (please do not hate me teachers) students want to do well in your classroom or school is because they WANT to earn that “A+” in your class. That grade leads to a higher Grade Point Average which could lead to more college enrollment choices and for many students more merit based scholarship money. When students enter the workforce in jobs they hopefully love doing they will also be working to earn money, an extrinsic motivator. From rewards programs provided by retail stores to deadlines for properly filing your taxes extrinsic motivation plays just as much of a key role in the lives of our students as intrinsic motivation. New educational philosophy and practice are starting to accept that extrinsic motivation may have a positive role in education. These newer ideas are starting to include this crucial aspect of our adult lives in education. These new ideas, such as gamification, are combining extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in the classroom in the hopes that students will find what interests them (in a classroom setting) and molding content learning around those interests. A perfect example of this marriage of motivations is the concept of Genius Hour. The idea that students use 20% of their class time to design their own projects based on what they are interested in. These projects are published, shared, and collaborated on showing the power of intrinsic motivation in the classroom. If you want to see some excellent examples of genius hour see Jillian Hoge’s Genius Hour blog post and what her students were able to create in just eight short classroom sessions. Another example is Gamification in which video game aspects such as progress tracking and reward systems help motivate students to dive deeper into content. As we move deeper into the digitally driven 21st century let us remember the power of BOTH intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. True educators know that no student learns in only one way. It is our job as educators to find what interests our students and use that information to create the connections between those ideas and the ideas we want them to master. Through the marriage of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation this is truly possible.
2 Comments
Ameera Bousaid
5/15/2016 12:27:20 am
Thank you for sharing this! Great post! Internal and external motivation must be equal. You may also want to see Moustafa Hamwi - the passion guy blog. His blog contains all sort of motivational and inspirational posts, similar to yours. You both are really helpful for students like me. :)
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Brandon LewisMy name is Brandon Lewis and I am a high school history teacher in St. Louis Missouri. I practice the art of teaching at St. John Vianney High School. Archives
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