Intrinsic Motivation

By Kyle Kingery

Learning Objectives

You will be able to define "intrinsic motivation"
You will be able to identify possible intrinsic motivators in your students
You will learn to use intrinsic motivators to build a lesson

Extrinsic Motivation

Not to step out of my lane here, but it's useful to help define intrinsic motivation in contrast to extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation refers to rewards given for completing a task. Think grades, pieces of candy, points on a scoreboard, a degree at the end of a program, an accolade that may come attached to it. It is easy to imagine a carrot and stick style approach when applying extrinsic motivational methods. While your goal as an educator is to encourage the student to complete a task, the student's goal, with extrinsic motivation is to achieve the reward.

Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation is not simply the opposite of extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation refers to personal feelings of satisfaction as opposed to rewards that from an external source. Think the feeling of accomplishment, the pleasure felt when mastery is achieved, the thrill of the experience itself, or a simple desire for personal growth. While they seem to come from totally different perspectives, studies suggest that extrinsic motivations can be used to increase intrinsic motivation, as will later be shown.

<3 Paulo Freire <3 And the Power of Intrinsic Motivation

Growing up in Brazil in a time when poverty and hunger were ubiquitous in his community, a young Paulo, for his own reasons and of his own fruition, decided to revolutionize the way education could be done by tapping into his students' needs and wants thereby tapping into what intrinsically motivates them. His methods were so successful that he was arrested and thrown in jail after his students' critical thinking and desire to learn became too much for the powers that be to handle (Freire, 2009).

(Eric, 2022)

BUT HOW??

It is true that some students are intrinsically motivated to get extrinsic rewards. Mastering a subject feels good to them so they love getting good grades or being rewarded for a job well done. For some, this surface level variant of tapping into an intrinsic motivator is enough. But what about for those students who do need more? How do you find out how to spark their intrinsic motivation?

Paulo Freire's method was to send a team of investigators to get a handle on the communities they were going into. They would learn about their cultures, the unique ways in which they lived their lives, what problems they may encounter, etc. They would use this information along with information gathered from discussing the community with the community to build a curriculum from the ground up (Freire, 2009). That's a lot. But we can still use the time and resources we have to engage with our students in a way that will teach us about themselves and what really matters to them. The key here is that what really matters to a person is very closely tied to what intrinsically motivates them.

Intrinsic Motivation At All Ages

Young Readers

In one study, young students were entered into a reading game program that does what the name suggests. They'd read to earn points (an extrinsic motivation) and compete with their peers for high scores. While this shows the power of extrinsic motivation, these researchers noted an uptick in reading for pleasure (an intrinsic motivation) from the students after the reading game program ended and the extrinsic motivation was removed (Li & Chu, 2021). These students now see reading as a personal enrichment to their lives, not something they have to do, and so they do more of it.

College Gamers

In another study, college programming students were selected to be part of an experiment where some students were entered in a gamified version of their course and the rest were entered in the standard version of their course. A reflection was taken after the fact where, once again, researchers were able to show an increase in intrinsic motivation markers which corresponded to feelings of pleasure and enjoyment when learning (Banfield & Wilkerson, 2014). Something we can all agree at the very least helps grease the wheels of student success.

CAUTION!

Remember that while gamification can produce immediate observable results, that it is still taking the easy way out when it comes to intrinsically motivating your students. A common criticism of this approach basically goes, "well of course the students are more excited, they're playing games. They're still not interested in the material past the point where it lets them play a game and rack up points." As stressed above, gamification relies heavily on extrinsic motivation with a hope that it will spark some intrinsic motivation. There is no one size fits all approach to intrinsic motivation so in the next section I will attempt to layout a hypothetical scenario in which an educator is able to link the subject matter to something a student feels truly matters in their own life.

IN-CLASS APPLICATION

Imagine a scenario where you have a student that you know could do well, but just never seems interested in the subject matter. Tough to picture, I know. You've tried gamifying the lesson, you've stressed how the work affects the grade, but it just doesn't stick. Suzy just doesn't care to pay attention. You've just about given up when a bird lands on the windowsill in the middle of class. One student speaks up and misidentifies it as a robin. Suzy speaks up. Her eyes light up and she talks about the differences between robins and the swallow that has just landed on the windowsill for so long, and you hate to do it, but you have to get her to stop so class can continue.

Now you know what to do. You go home and rework your lesson plan for the next day to include a connection to birds. Maybe there's a math word problem in your lesson plan. Well now that word problem centers around someone bird watching in the park trying to figure out what proportion of birds they saw were birds of prey. Maybe you're teaching biology and can shift the focus from an animal no one cares about to one that Suzy cares about. Hopefully, you start to notice Suzy isn't staring out the window all day anymore. She's paying attention and engaged and, more importantly, feels as though the curriculum reflects herself. She is intrinsically motivated to pursue her own education.

Admittedly, this is also a shallow representation of what intrinsic motivation and education mean to each other. If you'd like to learn more about the truly transformative power of intrinsic motivation and how our current systems tend to stamp it down instead of encourage it, I'd like to point you to towards picking up a book or two by Paulo Freire, Ira Shor, or Stanley Aronowitz to name a few.

Quick check!

1) Is intrinsic motivation simply the opposite of extrinsic motivation?

A) Yes! If you know what extrinsic motivation is, you know that intrinsic motivation is the same thing in the opposite direction.

B) Not exactly! Intrinsic motivation is it's own separate concept; however, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation can be used in tandem.

2) Is there a formula you can apply to every classroom to find out what intrinsically motivates your students?

A) Yes! Finding out what intrinsically motivates your students is a replicable process that's easy to do if you follow these simple steps.

B) No! Every student is different and every classroom will hold different students who will need to be connected with in a way unique to them

3) Is Paulo Freire the most beautiful man to have ever existed?

A) Yes.

B) Yes, of course.

C) Oh, absolutely!

D) All of the above.

Answer Key

1) B

2) B

3) D

Conclusion/Wrap up

What Even is it?

Intrinsic motivation is the drive that comes when what you're doing makes you happy, or leaves you feeling fulfilled, or feels like it is related to you and your life as an individual or as a part of your own community. It comes with a sense of purpose or satisfaction that, while the pursuit of extrinsic rewards may induce intrinsic motivation, is not directly related to those extrinsic rewards. Go on. Wax poetically.

What does it look like?

As an educator it will be up to you to recognize whether a student is intrinsically motivated or not. Easier said than done, but if you tune yourself to be aware when disinterested students suddenly become interested, for example, you will know you have found something that intrinsically motivates them. It looks like whatever gets your students excited or passionate or feeling like the lesson applies to their life.

(Raywoo)

How can we use it?

Intrinsic motivation not only pushes your students to do better on tests, it pushes them to do better in life. A student who is taught to exercise their ability to access what they want for themselves is a student who will be able to make decisions that make them happier and will be in a much better position to take control of their life than a student who has been trained to rely on extrinsic motivation. In other words, we use it to free them.

References
Banfield, J., & Wilkerson, B. (2014). Increasing student intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy through gamification pedagogy. Contemporary Issues in Education Research, 7(4), 291-298. DOI:10.19030/cier.v7i4.8843
Eric. (2022, September 20). A 101 años del Nacimiento de Paulo Freire. CLACSO. Retrieved February 12, 2023, from https://www.clacso.org/en/a-101-anos-del-nacimiento-de-paulo-freire/
Freire, Paulo. (2009) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (Translated by Ramos, Myra B.) (30th Anniversary ed.), Continuum. (1970)
Li, X., & Chu, S. (2021). Exploring the effects of gamification pedagogy on children's reading: A mixed-method study on academic performance, reading-related mentality and behaviors, and sustainability. British Journal of Educational Technology, 52(1), 160-178. doi:10.1111/bjet.13057
"List of goals written in notebook" by wuestenigel is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.
Raywoo. Theory and practice words written on the chalkboard [JPG]. Shutterstock. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/theory-practice-words-written-on-chalkboard-119963116

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