Week Three: Motivation Strategies

Campus teachers report the use of strategies like goal setting, charting student progress and allowing students to choose types of formative assessments have resulted in little success. These strategies have had success with the intrinsically motivated student but little effect with the extrinsically motivated student. On our campus the intrinsically motivated students are fascinated with the subject, connect it to life and the world, and they get a sense of achievement when they master it. Extrinsically motivated students however need their parents and other authority figures to hold them to expectations, rewards when completing a task, and grades to bribe them to do their academic best. They challenge in teaching this type of students is that we have to keep increasing the rewards and punishments over time to continue its effect. This type of system does not work over a long period of time and once the rewards or punishments are gone, so is student motivation. Also, research shows that extrinsic rewards can have a negative impact on intrinsic motivation.