Why Motivation Theory Is Absolutely Crucial to Educators Part 2

Why Motivation Theory Is Absolutely Crucial to Educators

Part 2: The Journey to Understanding Motivational vs Behavioral Psych

This is Part 2 of a Series. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

My journey with deciphering which instructional practices help learner motivation is long and winding. My personal struggle of teaching within traditional systems early in my career demonstrated to me that we were turning off too many students. It led me to question, “There has to be a better way!”

Mastery-based learning gained some traction with Bloom in the 1980’s, but much of the resistance to implementation was its difficulty to replicate without higher staffing levels. The technology wasn’t there yet.

It was the early phase of computer technology that piqued my first interest of the potential for better ways to lead instruction for learners. In those emerging days of the personal computer, the difficult push was convincing teachers to change instruction to fit the new capabilities of the technology. Rather, they fell back to using the technology as a “new type of worksheet.” I spent years promoting changing instruction, but found many defaulted to continue teaching in traditional ways, just using tech to expedite those methods.

Weight-Bearing Walls

When the customized and personalized movements emerged, the initial emphasis was choice and pace. Unfortunately, these pressed against what the book Inevitable (Schwahn & McGarvey, 2012) described as the “weight-bearing-walls” of educational structures. The most difficult walls include grade levels, pacing guides, grading systems and class ranks, secondary course structures and schedules, time-based terms (semesters and years) just to name a few. Moving and removing these structures requires almost insurmountable justification. SDT is an important starting point to justify extinguishing many practices of traditional instruction tied to these weight-bearing walls.

The Daniel Pink book Drive (Pink 2011) opened a whole new perspective as it questioned demotivationing carrot-and-stick practices embraced by our society in schools and businesses. The book identified the three intrinsic motivational influences:

• competence or mastery, and
• autonomy,
• relatedness or purpose.

Unfortunately, plying teachers to embrace these ingredients into instructional practice was not enough; it was much too vague for instructional impact. For example, when asking teachers to implement choice for learners to reinforce autonomy, often the choices offered to learners were low level: worksheet A or worksheet B. I tried to emphasize that teachers should give learners more “authentic” choice, but then we spent time trying to define authentic.

Move Over Behavioral Psychology

It was this search for better understanding of how choice impacted motivation that eventually drove me to Self Determination Theory (SDT), the branch of psychology that focuses on intrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci 2022). It is the foundational basis for much of what Drive hit home. Having endured a multi-decade dominance of behavioral psychology and rewards/reinforcement in education, SDT can be a breath of fresh air for some educators. To others, the ideas are so foreign and counter to their understanding of behavior/rewards that it is hard to consolidate the two.

To be clear, SDT does not “replace” behavioral psychology. Understanding behavioral techniques continues to be important for educators and classroom management of student behaviors. But focus on behavior management often bled into a belief that compliance was the end goal to learner motivation.

The key point is this: as we learn more about intrinsic motivation, we begin to separate behavioral issues from learning/academic motivational issues. Viewing behavioral management as the same vehicle for all student motivation glosses over what we now know about intrinsic motivation. Separating the two also helps us to recognize when our academic rewards and systems are geared more for coercing learners’ behaviors rather than their true purpose: enhancing learning and motivation.

This is Part 2 of a Series. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Resources

Pink, D. H. (2011). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates US. Chungrim.
Ryan, R. M., Deci, E. L. (2018). Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness. United Kingdom: Guilford Publications.
Schwahn, C. J., & McGarvey, B. (2012). Inevitable: Mass customized learning: Learning in the age of empowerment. Chuck Schwahn & Bea McGarvey.