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The document discusses how students' motivation can come from intrinsic or extrinsic sources and how their home environment and beliefs about themselves can influence their motivation levels. Academic motivation is an important predictor of students' academic performance. Intrinsically motivated students tend to perform better in the long run compared to extrinsically motivated students.

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31 views

2 2

The document discusses how students' motivation can come from intrinsic or extrinsic sources and how their home environment and beliefs about themselves can influence their motivation levels. Academic motivation is an important predictor of students' academic performance. Intrinsically motivated students tend to perform better in the long run compared to extrinsically motivated students.

Uploaded by

linh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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According to Lumsden (1994), although students may be equally motivated to perform a

task, the sources of their motivation may differ.

In the essay, “What factors influence the development of students’ motivation”,


Lumsden and Linda S. depicted how a child’s home environment shapes the early
attitudes he or she will develop toward learning. All children are curious by nature and
parents are the initial source of information, they are the first to introduce the world to
their children. Hence, children will find that learning is useful and can often be fun and
rewarding when parents aren’t bothered by their questions, encourage exploration and
introduce them to different aspects that can broaden their world. When children grow
up in a home that provides them a sense of self-esteem, competence, autonomy, and
self-efficacy, they will be more optimistic regarding the risks that come with learning. In
contrast, when children do not believe they are essentially competent and capable, they
will lose the ability to tolerate and cope with failure and thus avoid participating in
challenging academic activities.

Schunk (2009) claimed that students who are motivated to learn engage more in courses
and carry out various activities. For instance, they are not afraid to ask questions, they
repeat information and correlate it with previous known information; motivated
students are more likely to put more effort when they face a challenge than give up on
it. Students are often motivated in two ways: intrinsically and extrinsically. An
intrinsically-oriented student undertakes an activity “for its own sake, for the enjoyment
it provides, the learning it permits, or the feelings of accomplishment it evokes” (Lepper,
1988); whereas a student who is extrinsically motivated performs “in order to obtain
some reward or activity itself”, namely grades, parents or teacher approval.

Another dimension of motivation is the concept of academic motivation. Numerous


studies have discovered that academic motivation can, more often than not, determine
students’ overall academic performance (Green et al., 2006; Linnenbrink & Pintrinch,
2002). Furthermore, other relevant research suggested that academic motivation is an
accurate predictor of college students’ academic achievement compared to aptitudinal
factors, such as college entrance exam scores or IQ (Cote & Levine, 2000; Ray, Garavalia,
& Murdock, Fall 2003). Academic motivation is vital because it greatly influences how
students approach tasks, the time and energy they consume and the amount of effort
the put in completing those tasks (Lindner & Harris, 1998; VanZile-Tamsen & Livingston,
1999).

Admittedly, Afzal et al. (2010) found that intrinsically or autonomously motivated


students performs much better and more consistently. He firmly believes that this
finding, however, does not often apply to their extrinsically motivated counterparts as
they only perform well or excel for a limited period of time to obtain a reward but
overall, their performance is unremarkable. As a matter of fact, college students that
have more optimistic academic expectancy (Solberg Nes, Evans, & Segerstrom, 2009)
and are more confident about their capabilities (Hsieh & Schallert, 2008) tend to be
more motivated in the learning process than are students with the opposite mindset.

There are many researches on how motivation affects students’ academic performance
in the literature; when the results of these studies are examined, it was claimed that
there is a positive relationship between academic achievement and intrinsic motivation
(Corpus et al., 2009; Law et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2010). Specifically, intrinsic motivation
positively influences students’ learning achievement and self-efficacy perceptions
(Ames, 1992; Gottfried, 1990; Pokay & Blumenfeld, 1990). Alternatively, relevant studies
wrote that learning motivation and academic achievement are not positively associated
with extrinsic motivation factors (Benabou & Tirole, 2003; Velki, 2011). Extrinsically
motivated students, Lei (2010) stated, often initiate or complete a task to solely obtain
awards or high grades. Thereby, students exhibiting greater academic intrinsic
motivation are anticipated to be more competent in school, have more positive view of
the potential academic outcomes, lower level of perceived stress, show better learning
results and thus, they evidence a significantly higher academic achievement (Gottfried et
al., 2005).

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