Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation :: Teaching Education

Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation What is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation? What would you do as a future teacher to enhance intrinsic motivation in your students? The main difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is the goals of the students. With intrinsic motivation, the student studies subject material for the sake of learning. These students find studying enjoyable and learning new ideas as a reward itself. Extrinsically motivated students study for the sake of outside influences such as getting teacher and peer praise, acquiring a good grade or some other type of reinforcement that a teacher or peer might offer. Another difference that is worth mentioning is that research shows that intrinsically motivated learns more than extrinsically motivated students. This could be due to the fact that intrinsically motivated students are also extrinsically motivated. But on the other note, extrinsically motivated students are seldom found to be intrinsically motivated. Motivating students to become intrinsically motivated is no easy task for teachers. To some students, they enjoy learning. But for the others, this is where is the challenge really comes in. To facilitate material to students "dry" would totally be out of my agenda. I would try to teach to my students to the point where the material becomes alive within them. I to make their minds grow in curiosity of the subject so continual learning can take place. I would do this by means of relating material to what interests the students. I would also put as much energy into my teaching whether it be in my tone of voice, body language, appearance, or all of the above.