Motivation

Extrinsic motivation: behaviour that is driven by the desire to obtain rewards or avoid consequences
Intrinsic motivation:  behaviour that is driven by internal factors within ourselves

It was interesting to observe how the two humanities 8 classes were driven by different motivations. In the beginning of my practicum, I told them that I decided to reward the student who created the best chapter title for their journal entry to encourage them to be more creative. The louder class was so excited after I proposed the system, and most of them really stepped up their game to create better titles. On the other hand, after I told my quieter class about reward system, they were not as thrilled as I thought they would. They just asked me to choose the best title and explained how they could improve. They wanted to know how I assessed the creativity and relevance of the title more than wanting the reward. I would classify that as both extrinsic and intrinsic because they wanted to learn, and they also wanted to ace that title. However, the titles that the quieter class had came up with were never as creative as the other class. I started to wonder if extrinsic motivation had a more effective impact on the outcome.

The more I thought about it, the more I puzzled. Finally, I thought of an explanation. In the louder class, the students would vote on the best title. I had to write down the best 5 titles each time, and the students would have to explain how they came up with such title and how it was relevant to the chapter. As a result, the students who got the best title for that particular chapter did not only get a reward from me, but s/he also got recognized by other students. Indeed, the student would feel very satisfied that s/he got the majority of the votes to win the best title. It would make sense because teenagers would want to be liked by their peers. This example showed that intrinsic motivation would probably be more effective; however, it really depended on the driving force behind the behaviour. At this period of their life stage, the recognition from peers might be the most important goal. Since George H. Mean described the self as a “blend of what important people in our lives think of us”, the fact that their classmates thought his/her title was the best among the others would be very influential in the perception of self.