Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic and Extrinsic MotivationIntroduction

Motivation involves a constellation of beliefs, perceptions, values, interests, and actions that are all closely related. As a result, various approaches to motivation can focus on cognitive behaviors (such as monitoring and strategy use), non-cognitive aspects (such as perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes), or both. For example, Gottfried (1990) defines academic motivation as “enjoyment of school learning characterized by a mastery orientation; curiosity; persistence; task-endogeny; and the learning of challenging, difficult, and novel tasks” (p. 525). On the other hand, Turner (1995) considers motivation to be synonymous with cognitive engagement, which he defines as “voluntary uses of high-level self-regulated learning strategies, such as paying attention, connection, planning, and monitoring” (p. 413).

Discussion

Motivation

Motivation refers to “the reasons underlying behavior” (Guay et al., 2010, p. 712). Paraphrasing Broussard and Garrison (2004) broadly define motivation as “the attribute that moves us to do or not to do something” (p. 106). Intrinsic motivation is the motivation that is animated by personal enjoyment, interest, or pleasure. As Deci et al. (1999) observe, “intrinsic motivation energizes and sustains activities through the spontaneous satisfactions inherent in effective volitional action. It is manifest in behaviors such as play, exploration, and challenge seeking that people often do for external rewards” (p. 658). Researchers often contrast intrinsic motivation with extrinsic motivation, which is motivation governed by reinforcement contingencies. Traditionally, educators consider intrinsic motivation to be more desirable and to result in better learning outcomes than extrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 1999). Motivation involves a constellation of beliefs, perceptions, values, interests, and actions that are all closely related. As a result, various approaches to motivation can focus on cognitive behaviors (such as monitoring and strategy use), non-cognitive aspects (such as perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes), or both.

The mission of the teacher lies in getting the attention, arouse interest and promote the desire to learn, motivate students, awakening their interest in actively seeking answers to their concerns, that all his actions are directed toward the appropriation of knowledge. As well as facilitating the development process of the students in an atmosphere of trust to help them take the risk of discovering what they feel and want, revealing their intrinsic needs, understand their interests, should be very creative on how to make use of any time and resource to teach, to discipline firm with responsibility for education and the challenge of achieving meaningful learning in the life of a person. Success in this process is to create a motivating environment, pleasant climate and trust in order to reveal through experiences, strengths and weaknesses, feelings, thoughts, abilities and be able to persuade and lead to a given purpose stimulating the achievement of competencies in students.

Although, learning has always been a positive road through compliments and rewards, the use of punishment to gain good behavior was the leading ideology for many adults. Still to this day, many people believe punishment is required to achieve the desirable action. Fortunately, we have developed more into a society that believes in positive ways to attain learning in children. According to Downing (2005), “Research indicates that reinforcement ...