On chasing the rainbow of intrinsic motivation
And the viable alternatives teachers can adopt to support effort and learning
Chapter 1. I am born
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously. – Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.
It’s summer break in Australia, and I have been between jobs, meaning that for the first time in several years, I have been idle. I have spent some of my days alternating between David Copperfield and Nick Gibb’s memoir, Reforming Lessons, two books that have given me equal pleasure and oddly share some of the same humour and archaic quirks of syntax. Passages such as the above produce a warm sense of familiarity in me, as someone with high literacy and background knowledge, whereas they may produce feelings of anxiety in a 14-year-old reader.
Like many of my peers who teach compulsory subjects, I have learned that my enjoyment of reading and literature may not be teachable. Of course, we have a responsibility to equip students to meet the challenges of reading and to access the knowledge afforded by studying great works; there is a higher purpose at play. My classes may be the only exposure some students have to great literature in their lifetime. I can model my enthusiasm for the subject—indeed, this is essential. But I may never reach the heady heights of inspiring intrinsic motivation in my students.
Unsurprisingly, this Tweet went viral recently. I’d say it’s motivation-adjacent, as the breadth of replies suggests, where teachers attribute this phenomenon to everything from engagement to disruptive behaviour, to instructional quality. It speaks to the problem of trying to engage the disengaged, but leaves a notable gap when it comes to solutions. It’s unclear whether teachers should invest in praising effort or making effort worthwhile in the first place; even then, what do we do with that subset of students who really don’t care?
Intrinsic motivation has long been seen as a kind of holy grail in motivation research. The field tends to position this kind of autonomous motivation as the ultimate destination. When we think of romantic notions of engagement, these are often the aspirations we hold for students of our subject. Here are some of the survey items from the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. You’ll see what I mean:
• I enjoyed doing this activity very much.
• This activity was fun to do.
• I thought this activity was quite enjoyable.
• I would describe this activity as very interesting.
• I felt bored while doing this activity. (reversed)
• This activity did not hold my attention at all. (reversed)
If you look at the diagram above, linked here, you’ll see that motivation occurs on a spectrum. Intrinsic motivation appears in its own esteemed, walled-off section on the right. A dance teacher might teach several students who would chassé around the school if they could, so passionate are they about their craft. Much of the research into inquiry learning takes intrinsic motivation as its aim while conveniently sidestepping academic outcomes, such is the lionisation of intrinsic motivation in our profession.
But as adults approaching our New Year’s health and fitness resolutions are painfully aware, intrinsic motivation is a pipe dream for most subject teachers. Rather, communicating the value of a subject, piece of knowledge, or skill will be more fruitful, indeed essential, for most teachers. This is known as identified motivation and can be embedded in teaching sequences, where teachers explicitly communicate the importance of the lesson, as Archer and Hughes, and Hollingsworth and Ybarra recommend.
An aspirational school culture can also go a long way towards promoting this kind of motivation and may even give rise to integrated motivation, which is the sense that this is who I am, or that effort and persistence are simply who we are as a school or a class. These are well within a school’s power to influence. It may be that we are better off investing our time as teachers in creating the conditions for these forms of motivation, given that they are more likely to inspire the kind of effort we want to see in schools—in other words, not the effortless effort implied by intrinsic motivation.
Greg Ashman recently pointed out Slava Kalyuga’s discussion about the lack of emphasis on motivation in cognitive load theory research. The way Kalyuga discusses the field, it seems as though motivation and instruction are running parallel aims:
Accordingly, cognitive load theory and other instructional theories should comprise not only knowledge learning activities as such, but also activities aimed at motivating and engaging learners. As an implication for learning and instruction, intentionally designed and structured learner activities might need to be included to predispose and motivate learners prior to actual learning of biologically secondary knowledge.
Happily, Kalyuga is slightly off base here. The field linking motivation and engagement with cognitive load is emerging but strong, and makes intuitive sense. Key scholars are my supervisor Paul Evans, Andrew Martin, Rebecca Collie, David Feldon and Andrew Kingsford-Smith. I was fortunate enough to have lunch with Feldon last year when he visited Australia. Some of his work concerns cognitive load and motivation. He argues that because cognitive load is often measured as perceived effort, when load is high, students perceive that they must exert more effort. Makes sense, right?
His thinking draws on expectancy-value theory, where students will put in more effort if they believe they will succeed. Feldon also noted that since prior knowledge reduces intrinsic load and is associated with task value, it would make more sense to study them together. Conversely, when extraneous load is high and intrinsic load is not sufficiently optimised, students switch off. This aligns closely with Kalyuga’s Expertise Reversal Effect, where task complexity must be matched to learner expertise at a Goldilocks level for learning to occur. Taken together, it becomes easy to see how inquiry approaches tend to advantage already-able students while leaving many others behind.
The problem arises when we use the term motivating as a verb. What we ought to be doing is providing conditions for students to thrive: supporting their competence through structured teaching and disciplinary environments where everyone can learn; providing opportunities to practice and solve problems; treating students with unconditional positive regard; and making school a place where students are seen and known, academically and otherwise. As individual teachers, modelling enthusiasm and providing rationales for learning show that school is worthwhile, even if not something any of us would do voluntarily on a Sunday morning.