Description of SDT

Focusing on adolescents’ self-efficacy helps explain student successes and failures (Ryan & Deci, 2020). Self-Determination Theory (SDT) emphasizes people’s inherent motivational propensities for learning and growth, as well as how these tendencies can be supported (Ryan & Deci, 2020). SDT assumes that individuals possess a natural drive to learn and improve in pursuit of success. When developing motivation and self efficacy, there is a stepped system that displays how students may be motivated, and what behavioral patterns they may exhibit, which will be in the figure below.

This continuum of motivation illustrates how students can move from amotivation to fully internalized, intrinsic motivation, with each stage reflecting a different perceived locus of causality. 

• At the amotivation end, individuals lack a sense of competence, value, or relevance in the task, leading to repeated instances of disengagement and an impersonal locus of causality where actions feel pointless. (Howard et al., 2021)

• People exhibiting external regulation display the most controlled form of extrinsic motivation, in which behavior is consistently driven by rewards, punishments, or compliance, reflecting an external locus of causality. 

• Introjected regulation reflects partial internalization, where actions are motivated by ego involvement and the desire for approval or avoidance of guilt and shame, producing a somewhat external locus of causality. 

• Identification marks a shift toward more autonomous motivation, as individuals begin to see value and relevance in the tasks they encounter, and endorse them as personally important, even if it is not inherently enjoyable, indicating a somewhat internal locus of causality. 

• Finally, integration represents internalized motivation aligned with one’s values and identity, characterized by congruence, interest, enjoyment, and satisfaction, and an internal locus of causality in which behavior is experienced as a form of expression and identification.

• Individuals with internal motivation display recurring patterns through a completely internalized form of motivation, an individual completes a task for satisfaction, enjoyment and interest like before, but it is not as a display of identity but a completely internal form of regulation and motivation. (Howard et al., 2021)