Motivational pedagogy: locking in the learning

Motivational pedagogy: locking in the learning

In our current teaching practice, Motivational Pedagogy has emerged to generate classroom behaviour management strategy, develop routines, form relationships and guide curriculum planning. Students may start out learning to please the teacher and earn material rewards and then find the means (learning) becomes an end in itself (Sprinthall and Sprinthall, 1981). As children mature, they need to move beyond extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. Learning will be far more long lasting when it is sustained by intrinsic motivation (Bruner, 1962). Students as a result, not only participate, they are engaged and ultimately absorbed in their learning. We believe improved academic achievements, as can be evidenced from the data collected from the statewide year 5 and 7 tests, can be directly attributed to our application of Motivational Pedagogy.

Our paper emphasizes the importance of Motivational Pedagogy in classroom practice and consists of both extrinsic (Deci and Ryan, 1985) and intrinsic approaches to cater for a diversity of Middle School developmental ranges. The three extrinsic approaches are reward motivation, guided motivation and reality motivation. The three intrinsic approaches are, curiosity motivation (Harlow, 1971), competency motivation (White, 1959) and metacognitive motivation.

Real learning can become a solid lifetime pursuit if a student can be guided from external satisfaction to an internal drive towards self directed competence. The challenge for teachers is to facilitate this transition from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation to maximize life long learning.

Blanket permission for this publisher granted email 7/11/2007.