Wendy Chang
Dr. Doris Shih
Educational Research
Research Paper
January 21, 2005
HOW TO PROMOTE INTRINSIC MOTIVATION IN ELEMENTARY
SCHOOL STUDENTS?
Introduction
Many schools have stated that one of their goals of education is to develop
students’ interest in life-long learning. The people who continue to learn throughout
their lives must actively make decisions and take actions to develop their education.
In other words, they have no teacher giving deadlines or grades to oversee their
performances. The autonomic learning habits should be cultivated from young, and
therefore, elementary school education should take the responsibility to create an
environment in which students can enjoy learning and see learning as a life-long
process. It is believed by researchers that intrinsic motivation plays an important part
in a person’s desire to study, and his/her willing to take on new challenges and keep
working on them. In order to equip students with these characteristics, elementary
school teachers need to understand how intrinsic motivation can be effective in
facilitating students’ learning and ultimately lead to their interest in life-long learning.
In this paper, I am going to discuss strategies for promoting intrinsic motivation in
three aspects: reward giving, teaching methods and classroom community creating.
Literature Review
The definition of Intrinsic Motivation
Teachers often describe good students as hardworking, interested, and motivated.
Motivation is believed as crucial to a child’s learning, and is often heard as being a
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major problem in schools today. Two types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation, have been identified by Deci and Richard. They describe an intrinsically
motivated person as “one who engages in an activity for the activity itself; the reward
being the activity” (Deci and Richard 1994). For example, a child who cleans his
room for the purpose of showing his baseball card collection to his friends is said to
be intrinsically motivated. Extrinsic motivation occurs when a person completes a
task because he or she wants to receive an external reward. A child who is promised a
trip to the movies after cleaning his room is said to be extrinsically motivated (1994).
While the majority of rewards given in school are extrinsic motivators, children
learn the most when intrinsic motivation is given. SERVE contends that children who
are intrinsically motivated display a number of behaviors that allow them to perform
accordingly with their academic abilities. For example, children who are intrinsically
motivated are deeply involved in the task at hand and experience a feeling of
enjoyment (SERVE). In addition, according to Koestner (1971), an intrinsically
motivated person feel that he or she can try to produce a change in the environment,
and feels confident that the change will occur (1971).
Methods to promote intrinsic motivation
The effect of rewards
Intrinsic motivation is important to the development of life-long learners, but is
often hard to see in many classrooms. For example, Deci and Richard discovered that
money as a reward has detrimental effects on motivation. Students became less
motivated when paid money as reward. On the other hand, when students were given
praise as a reward, their motivation was enhanced (1994). In addition, Deci and
Richard found that when a person perceived a reward to be more than what he or she
deserves, the person put forth more effort in an activity.
Some rewards have been shown to interfere with the quality of learning. A study
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by Weaver showed that a reward of food distracted the subjects from the learning task,
and resulted in less learning. In his experiment, the subjects, preschool students, were
given pieces of candy for correct answers in a learning task, while a control group was
not given anything for correct answers (Weaver, 2004). The group receiving candy
proved to be slower in acquisition of the new skill, and tended to make more error
than the control group (2004). This study supports the idea that when the learning task
becomes a way to receive reward, it has negative effect on the learners.
External rewards also interfere with the choices children make about their own
learning. Cameron and Pierce (1994) examined the way students challenged
themselves when graded by a teacher, and then evaluated by themselves. Eighth grade
students were given two tests of both easy and difficult math problems. Students
could choose a number of problems to work on, and were told that one test would
receive a grade, and the other was to be completed with the student evaluation himself
(1994). They found that students consistently chose easier problems for the test that
was going to be graded, but chose the more difficult problems for the one that is going
to be evaluated by themselves. So the results of this study indicate that the giving of
grades takes a child’s attention away from the task of learning and to the task of
getting the reward. Therefore, all these examples suggest that extrinsic motivators
should be used sparingly, and so that they do not undermine intrinsic motivation.
Creation of an autonomous classroom climate
Many researchers believe that developing an autonomous classroom climate is a
method to promote intrinsic motivation. Paynter (2004) claims that “when children
feel in control of their environment, they are not only internally motivated to work,
but also experience positive feelings of self-worth” (2004). She further says “giving
children choices in their learning can be a very powerful tool in developing intrinsic
motivation” (2004). She studies children doing art activities. One group of children
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was given a choice of materials to use in the activity, and the other group was given
assigned materials to use. And she found that the children given a choice of materials
were judged as significantly more creative, and that they spent more time on the
activity (Paynter). According to Paynter, this fact has important implications. As
children grow older and more demands are made on them in school, the students need
to be more motivated. And students who are given more choices in their learning are
assumed to be more intrinsically motivated than those who are not (Paynter).
Koestner (1971) suggests many ways to give children choices in the classroom.
With respect to academic learning, children can make choices in what they learn
simply by choosing what book to read, and choose how to learn by deciding on what
types of groups to work on, or where they will work in the classroom. In addition,
students can make choices in how well they learn by helping to determine the criteria
by which their homework will be graded (1971). Finally, Koestner points to the
importance of including children in discussions about social and behavioral issues in
the classroom, such as rules and procedures. Children given a choice in these issues
will be much more likely to take them seriously, and with intrinsic motivation.
Therefore, according to him, it is important to empower kids by giving them options
and the opportunity to make decision.
The literature review has covered three sections regarding the effect of rewards
on student motivation. First, intrinsic motivation is an important trait in people that
leads to success in school. Second, the common use of rewards in school has been
shown to have a negative effect on learning and undermines the intrinsic motivation
in children. Finally, creating an autonomous classroom climate has been suggested as
an effective way to foster intrinsic motivation.
Methodology
I conducted a questionnaire and a telephone interview to collect data regarding
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reward giving, teaching methods and classroom community creating in elementary
school.
Questionnaire
10 female and 10 male elementary school students, ranging from 4th-6th graders,
are the respondents of my questionnaire. They go to four different elementary schools
in San-Chung City and are members of a Level 5 class in Hess Language School,
Cheng-Yi Branch. The questionnaires are distributed to them in December, 2004 by
their teacher at Hess, who is my friend. The purpose of the questionnaire is to find out
the most common methods that the respondents’ school teachers use to reward
students’ good academic performances and the respondents’ opinions about the
effectiveness of those methods. The first question is fixed-alternative in which the
respondents can make multiple choices. The second question provides the same
alternative answers as the first question but requires the respondents to rate them
according to their preferences (See Appendix A).
Telephone Interview
My interviewee is my class teacher (導師) in my 5th and 6th grades, Ms Liu. Ms
Liu had taught in various elementary schools in Kaohsiung County and Taipei City for
29 years before she retired in 2002. Throughout her teaching career, Ms Liu had been
continuously dedicated to developing innovative teaching methods and creating
autonomic classroom atmosphere. The content of the interview is focused on Ms Liu’s
opinions about the results of the above questionnaire and the successful methods she
used to promote students’ intrinsic motivation over the years.
Results and Discussion
Reward giving
From the result of Question 1 in Table A, we can see that the most common
method elementary school teachers use to reward good academic achievement is
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“giving small presents” (16 votes), and the second common one is “giving extra
points” (15 votes). “Writing encouraging words on homework/communication books”
ranks the third (11 votes) and it is followed by “giving public compliments” (9 votes)
and “giving verbal praises privately” (8 votes).
Table A.
Types of Rewards
Votes
Give small presents
16
Give extra points
15
Give public compliments in front of the class
9
Give verbal praises privately
8
Writing good comments on
homework/communication books
11
others
2
The result of Question 2 in Table B and C indicates that girls and boys have very
similar opinions about the different types of rewards. All of them chose “giving extra
points” as their favorite and ranked “giving small presents” and “writing encouraging
words on homework/communication books” as the second and the third. “Giving
public compliments in front of the class” gets only 12 points in both genders, while
“giving verbal praises privately” is the least liked one.
Table B--Females
Types of Rewards
Points
Give small presents
29
Give extra points.
25
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Give public compliments in front of the
7
12
class
Give verbal praises privately
7
Write good comments on
homework/communication books
20
others
1
Table C--Males
Types of Rewards
Points
Give small presents
31
Give extra points
28
Give public compliments in front of the
class
12
Give verbal praises privately
5
Write encouraging words on
homework/communication book
16
others
1
Note: “1”=5 points, “2”= 4 points... “5”=1point
According to Deci & Richard’s definition of “intrinsic motivation” and “extrinsic
motivation”, the first three items in the questions, “giving small presents”, “giving
extra points”, and “giving public compliments in front of the class” should be
considered as methods to arouse students’ extrinsic motivation, because tangible
things, such as presents and points, or public recognition are given. “Giving verbal
praises privately”, on the other hand, is counted as a way to promote intrinsic
motivation. “Good comments on homework/communication books” is probably in
between. This is not a type of tangible reward, but for elementary school students,
homework books and the communication book are examined by parents. In other
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words, children might want their teachers to write nice words not for the sake of
encouraging them, but for their parents to know.
The result of the questionnaire shows that most teachers rely on external rewards
to motivate students, and this fact proves the researchers are right that intrinsic
motivation is seldom seen in classrooms. But interestingly, teachers’ choices of
rewards seem to match students’ preferences: Students’ favorite kinds of rewards are
those which their teachers’ give the most often, while their least-liked kinds of
rewards are given less frequently.
Ms. Lui commented on this result and said it is understandable that most children
preferred external rewards, because most of them only see tangible things as “real
rewards”. External reward is not necessarily bad, but the effect of it is not long-lasting.
So it comes the dilemma for teachers. Should teachers give external rewards to please
children and get immediate effects or should they promote intrinsic motivation which
leaves a longer influence on children? In Ms. Lui’s opinion, all kinds of reward are
not as effective as creative and simulating teaching methods. If students really enjoy
learning and have a strong motivation, their teachers do not have to rely on rewards so
heavily.
Teaching Methods
Throughout Ms. Lui’s 29 years of teaching career, she had tried numerous
teaching strategies to arouse students’ interests in learning. According to her
experience, the most successful approaches include cooperative learning, allowing
alternative solutions and encouraging creativity. For example, Ms Lui often
incorporated group work as part of her Chinese writing class. After assigning an essay
topic, she asked students to work in a group of four. The four children had to
brainstorm on this topic and share their thoughts with one another. And when time
was up, all the students went back to their seats to organize their thoughts and create
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their own writing. Ms. Lui believes the power of cooperative learning. “Small group
discussions can help students generate more ideas. And what’s more important is that
the weaker students can benefit from the pouring of ideas and won’t feel frustrated if
they can’t think of too much to write,” said Lui.
Ms. Lui also had unconventional teaching methods for her math class. Unlike
most math classes in which students watching their teachers solve problems on the
blackboard, Ms, Lui’s class never allowed students to be passive learners. Ms. Lui
encouraged students to solve problems themselves instead of demonstrating the
“correct solution” herself. When the class did math exercises, each member of the
groups took turns going up to the front and writing down their solutions on the
blackboard. If the student in the front did not know how to solve the problem, other
group members were allowed to help. And what came out of this was that very often,
the methods students chose to solve the problem were different. So this teaching
method helped students to see that there could be various ways to approach a problem
and that they should not be fixed in a single way of thinking.
Finally, Ms. Lui encouraged students’ creativity. This was also reflected in her
math teaching. To get the children more involved in learning, Ms. Lui made a rule that
students should design their own math problems after each lesson. At first, some
parents opposed to this idea, because they thought the teacher was too lazy to even
make math problems for students. However, this method proved to be successful,
because when students made problems themselves, they were pressured to understand
the rationale of the type of problem they were working on. Ms. Lui recommended this
method to other math teachers, and it also worked well in their classes and they all
believed that this could further push students to think and understand the solutions for
different types of problems.
The three strategies Ms. Lui used to promote students’ intrinsic motivation,
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confirm Paynter’s belief that when children feel in control of their learning, they are
not only internally motivated to work, but also experience positive feelings of
self-worth (2004). Working with group members to generate essay ideas, allowing
different solutions to a math problems and encouraging students to create their own
math problems can be seen as methods to let children take the control of their learning.
In these activities, children played active roles in the class while the teacher was only
a guide on the side. And by actively involving in the task at hand, children could feel
a greater sense of achievement.
Classroom Community Creating
Ms. Lui believes that in order to provoke students’ intrinsic motivation, teachers
should create a class atmosphere that is both intellectually and emotionally
comfortable. In other words, teachers should not only focus on academic performance
but also help students to build self-confidence and self-worth. And Ms. Lui’s
experience has told her that students’ positive attitudes toward themselves will
eventually lead to better academic achievements. To promote self-confidence, Ms Lui
created a cooperative classroom community in which all the students had equal status.
For example, she empowered every kid the opportunity to be the class leader. Instead
of electing a class leader for the whole semester, every student took turns to be the
class leader for the day. “All students are equal in the class despite their family
backgrounds and academic abilities” is Ms. Lui’s philosophy of education. In addition,
students took turns correcting their classmates’ homework before the teacher
corrected it herself. In other classes, the teacher assigned the group leader (排長) to
be responsible for correcting students’ homework, but all students in Ms. Lui’s class
shared the opportunity to do so. Ms. Lui believed that correcting classmates’
homework could help students to be more aware of what the commonly-made
mistakes were and reinforced the students’ memory of correct answers.
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Both of these two strategies helped to build children’s self-confidence. By taking
turns to be the class leader and correcting students’ homework, all the members of the
class gained equal opportunities of learning in spite of their backgrounds and natural
talents. And this type of learning environment could promote autonomous learning
since the students were all actively participated in the class and no one was left out.
Conclusion
The most common types of rewards that elementary school teachers use are those
that promote students’ extrinsic motivation, not intrinsic motivation. However,
children seem to prefer external rewards and see them as more effective. But Ms. Lui
believes the effect of external rewards is short-lived. The best way to promote
intrinsic motivation, according to her, is to create stimulating teaching methods and an
intellectually and emotionally comfortable class community where children are their
own masters of learning. And the strategies she used to promote intrinsic motivation
support the previous researches.
A major limitation of this research, however, is that the research span is too short,
and I did not have an opportunity to observe a class myself. It takes a long time to
examine students’ academic performance in order to find out whether it correlates
with the rewards or teaching methods being used. In the future, if possible, I could do
an action research to further explore the effectiveness of different strategies to
promote students’ intrinsic motivation.
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References
Cameron, J., & Pierce, D. (1994). Reinforcement, reward, and Intrinsic Motivation: A
meta-analysis［Electronic version］. Review of Educational Research, 64 (3).
Retrieved November 3, 2004, from http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb
Deci, E. L., & Richard. R (1996). When paradigms clash: Comments on Cameron and
Pierce's claim that rewards do not undermine intrinsic motivation ［Electronic
version］. Review of Educational Research, 66 (1). Retrieved November 3, 2004,
from http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb
Koestner, R. (1971). Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation.
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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 18, 105-115.
Liu, Shuang-Lan. Personal Interview. Jan. 3rd, 2005
Paynter, L. (2004). Teachers' preferences for extrinsic, intrinsic, and moral
motivators, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Johns Hopkins University,
Maryland, U. S. A.
SERVE. (n.d.). What kind of motivation should schools aim to cultivate? Retrieved
November 17, 2004, from
http://www.serve.org/assessment/accountability/question2.html
Weaver, A. D. (2004). Idiosyncratic effects of different classroom rewards on task
performance and on-task behavior, Unpublished doctoral dissertation Mississippi
State University, Mississippi,
U. S. A.
Appendix A
Questionnaire for Rewards Giving in Elementary Schools
English:
1. What are the most common methods do your school teachers use to reward good
academic achievements, including good performances in class, on homework and
on exams. (multiple choice)
□
□
□
□
give small presents
give extra points
give public compliments in from of the class
give verbal praises privately
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□ write encouraging words on homework books or the communication book
□ others (please give examples) :___________________________
2. When you perform well academically, which rewards can encourage you to
continue to work hard the most? (Please put “1” for your first choice; “2” for your
second choice…etc)
□
□
□
□
□
□
give small presents
give extra points
give public compliments in from of the class
give verbal praises privately
write encouraging words on homework books or the communication book
others (please give examples) :___________________________