Motivation to Learn
Broadly speaking, motivation is either intrinsic/expressive (doing something for its own sake) or extrinsic/ instrumental (doing something for some other reason). A useful, slightly more detailed, categorisation is:
|
Intrinsic |
Extrinsic |
|||
|
Expressive |
Achievement |
Social |
Instrumental |
|
| Characteristics | Interest for its own sake: satisfaction derived directly from understanding/ skill | Desire to succeed: “I'm not going to let this beat me”: mastery represents something important | In order to gain social acceptance, either within the class/course etc. (“Pleasing teacher” or being one of the in-crowd, or outside | In order to gain a tangible reward or avoid negative consequences |
| Strengths | Enthusiasm, commitment | Commitment | Co-operativeness if class-oriented | Can develop into more significant commitment |
| Weaknesses | May get “carried away”: lose sight of wood for trees | Potentially fickle
What the learning represents to the student may not be the same as what it represents to you |
May concentrate
on the appearance of achievement to the detriment
of “deep” learning
Social aspirations may change |
Achievement rests
on strict criteria of “relevance”
Aspirations may be met in other ways Anxiety may impede learning |
Also look at the useful categorisation suggested by Morgan (1983).
Levels of Motivation
Maslow is the classic model here. Abraham H Maslow (1908-1970) was a humanistic psychologist who rejected the prevalent paradigm of exploring psychology either from experimentation with animals (behaviourism) or from the experience of mixed-up people (principally psycho-analysis), and concentrated on human potential for self-actualisation. He is chiefly known for his “hierarchy of needs” (but beware, because this is often mis-represented) See Maslow (1987)
Click here for more on Maslow and other theories of motivation (primarily in a management context)
The essence of the hierarchy is the notion of “pre-potency”, which means that you are not going to be motivated by any higher-level needs until your lower-level ones have been satisfied. Note however, that pre-potency only makes sense over a substantial time-scale. I ate a good breakfast this morning, but I shall be hungry again tonight: thus I may become concerned about Physiological needs again then. But if I “know where the next meal is coming from”, concern about meeting those needs will not be a great motivator.
Where the model is useful is in identifying individuals who get stuck on the lower levels, and who because of early insecurity or later trauma, cannot afford to be concerned with the higher levels: but this is chiefly relevant to mental health professionals rather than teachers. It also, of course, draws attention to how very basic problems—such as being too hot or too cold—can inhibit motivation to learn at higher levels, but we did not really need Maslow to tell us that.
The major difficulty with Maslow is that although his hierarchy makes sense in general terms — if I am pre-occupied with physical needs, I am not usually going to be interested in self-esteem needs, for example — there are equally many occasions on which it does not hold good. It is excessively individualistic, and does not allow for altruism. And although most of Motivation and Personality is about defining “self-actualisation”, he never really succeeds in doing it. It is one of those models in which there is actually less to it than meets the eye!
A similar point is made in Herzberg's “motivational hygiene” theory, according to which demotivators (or "hygiene factors") have to be reduced as well as motivators (or incentives) increased, to develop positive motivation (Herzberg 1966):
They count most at the start of the course, before the positive motivators have had time to kick in, and when students may already be rather anxious. Even so, everyone in a learning group is motivated to do something: the question is whether the motivation fits with the requirements of the programme. The issue is not an absolute one about motivation, it is about our assumption that people ought to be motivated to learn what we want them to. (See “What is taught and what is Learned”)
ATHERTON J S (2009) Learning and Teaching; [On-line] UK: Available: Accessed:
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Original
material by James Atherton: last up-dated 4 November 2009 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.