RESEARCH QUESTİON

RESEARCH QUESTİON- IS THE INTRINSIC MOTIVATION MORE USEFUL FOR  STUDENTS THAN THE EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION ?

-Is The  Intrinsic Motivation More Useful For  Students Than The Extrinsic Motivation ?

-Yes, it is !

         I believe that intrinsic motivation is more useful for students than the extrinsic motivation.The first, I want to talk about the differences between the two types of motivation. There are a lot of theories about what motivates students. In actuality, you are motivated by both internal and external factors, as there is always a mixture of reasons why you do, achieve, behave, learn and react. Personality and self-concept often identify whether or not you will be intrinsically or extrinsically motivated. Some theorists (e.g., Combs, 1982; Purkey & Schmidt, 1987; Purkey & Stanley, 1991) maintain that there is only a single kind of intrinsic motivation, which can be described as a motivation to engage in activities that enhance or maintain a person's self-concept. Most theorists (e.g., Malone and Lepper, 1987) define the term more broadly.Intrinsic means internal or inside of yourself. When you are intrinsically motivated, you enjoy an activity, course or skill development solely for the satisfaction of learning and having fun. There is not external inducement when this motivation is the key to behavior or outcome. In contrast, extrinsic motivation means external or outside of yourself. When you are motivated to behave, achieve, learn or do based on a highly regarded outcome, rather than for the fun, development or learning provided within an experience so, this type of motivation is not additive. Extrinsic motivators can often distract students from learning the subject at hand. It can be challenging to devise appropriate rewards and punishments for student behaviors. Often, one needs to escalate the rewards and punishments over time to maintain a certain effect level. Also, extrinsic motivators typically do not work over the long term. Once the rewards or punishments are removed, students lose their motivation.

      I think that intrinsic motivation is best. Intrinsic motivation can be long-lasting and self-sustaining.  Efforts to build this kind of motivation are also typically efforts at promoting student learning.  Such efforts often focus on the subject rather than rewards or punishments. Certain behaviors should not be made for rewards. People should perform an activity for its own sake rather than the desire for some external reward. Thus, they expect rewards to do something through life and this condition affects them negatively and also creates personality disorders in humans. For example, when they prepare assignments, they think the only grades but normally they should try to learn something from their homework. The another example, if they participate in a sport, they  find the activity enjoyable but some of them participate in a sport in order to win awards.

     James Middleton, Joan Littlefield, and Rich Lehrer have suggested the following model of intrinsic academic motivation.First, given the opportunity to engage in a learning activity, a student determines if the activity is one that is known to be interesting.  If so, the student engages in the activity.If not, then the student evaluates the activity on two factors—the stimulation (e.g. challenge, curiosity, fantasy) it provides and the personal control (e.g. free choice, not too difficult) it affords.If the student perceives the activity as stimulating and controllable, then the student tentatively labels the activity as interesting and engages in it.  If either condition becomes insufficient, then the student disengages from the activity—unless some extrinsic motivator influences the student to continue.If the activity is repeatedly deemed stimulating and controllable, then the student may deem the activity interesting.  Then the student will be more likely to engage in the activity in the future.If over time activities that are deemed interesting provide little stimulation or control, then the student will remove the activity from his or her mental list of interesting activities.
      The challenge, then, is to provide teaching and learning activities that are both stimulating and offer students a degree of personal control.

http://education.purduecal.edu/Vockell/EdPsyBook/Edpsy5/Edpsy5_intrinsic.htm