Intrinsic Motivation and Learner Autonomy

It is hard not to talk about intrinsic motivation when it comes to explaining motivation and learner autonomy in class. Years of ‘carrot and stick’ are over. It is all about being autonomous and self-motivated. However, what causes someone to be intrinsically motivated? What makes intrinsic motivation as one of the greatest assets if compared to ordinary extrinsic motivation? What benefits can come from being autonomous?

Traditionally, education is being designed to fit the if-then or reward-punishment sort of style. As the behavioural science always reveals to us that humans can sometimes be predictable in their behaviour. Hence, the name ‘behavioural’ comes into existence. This science tells us that humans will get more motivated if they are rewarded. That is what we believe until some anomalies take place and make us think “well, it is not always be the case, innit?” Logically, humans will be more productive if they are incentivized but what happens in most cases nowadays is that incentive and reward may perhaps impede one’s performance. It is instead can give degradable effect to humans’ performance.

Here, take this as an example. Two groups of students – A and B where A is told if they were to complete the rubik cube, they will be rewarded with £1. Whereas the B group is told that, they will not receive anything from completing the puzzle. Logically, the A group will perform better and solve the rubik cube puzzle faster. So what’s the finding? On the first two days, both groups perform almost at the same. Both solve the puzzle within the same time – 1 hour. But what happens on the third day will surprise us. While the B group performs consistently 1 hour, the A group performs worst. They take longer time to solve the puzzle. Why does this happen? The science told us humans will be more productive when reward is given. Despite that, the B group receives nothing yet they perform the best. Is there some sort of conspiracy going on here?

Intrinsic motivation is something difficult to explain unless you experience it yourself. In order to help with explaining, I will take an example from my experience. So extrinsic motivation is any form of incentives that comes externally be it money, sex, food or even sleep. Intrinsic motivation contrastively, comes from within. It is innate. Truth to be told, I went to school because I was told to go to school. I pushed myself hard to the very edge of depression because of my family’s pressing need to improve our family…true story. That’s extrinsic motivation. Nevertheless, I have my favourite pastime. I play guitar. I know I won’t get rewarded for being able to play ‘happy birthday’ song by plucking my guitar. But that never brought me down. I learnt how to play the guitar from a friend of mine for a month. One day he told me that he could no longer be my teacher because he had another commitment to do. So I went all autonomous. I sought for youtube videos. I read online articles. I did everything voluntarily. It was autonomous and I was driven by the greatest intrinsic motivation of any man – the power of love. See? No form of external reward was evident.

This gets me into thinking. What’s the consequence of being autonomous and intrinsically motivated? I mean if both being extrinsic and intrinsic can still make people work, then why bothers? I used to listen to this case study delivered by Dan Pink in his TED speech in regards to 'autonomous-mastery-purpose'. He really had piqued my curiosity. There used to be two types of encyclopaedia projects, one was well funded by the Microsoft called the Encyclopaedia En Carta (I think this how it’s supposed to be spelt), another one was the open-source encyclopaedia, our dear Wikipedia. So which had fared better? It was Wikipedia. An open-source, not professionally funded, it worked like a repository of knowledge. Anyone could log in and provide their two cents. Without being paid, why people still contribute to it? Okay this phenomenal revelation not only happens in Wikis. Nowadays, we have so many forms of open source websites – for recipes, news, how to take care of your pets. Almost everything is at your disposal, free of charge. The question is still left unanswered – how can vocations work in our capitalist practising world?

Now, let’s take this into the education context. Recently, I was badly reprimanded for believing that learner autonomous is possible. Of course it is, only the gradient of autonomy is different. Going back to our main concern: learner autonomous. “You can give a man a fish, he’s gonna live for a day. But if you teach him how to fish, he’s gonna live longer (okay, screw it. I’m not good with adages). That is one autonomous learning taking place. You see, no matter how teachers won’t be around students forever. For how long students should wait for teachers guidance before venturing into wilderness? One day students will need to live on their own and tailor their life to fit all sorts of circumstances. The point of teaching is to let learners learn the concept of “lifelong learning”. The process of learning will not stop once you graduated from your tertiary education. In fact, your life has just begun. Yet again…no matter how teachers try to entice and get their students to be engaged in their class…like it or not “you can always bring a horse to the water but you can never make it drink”. Teachers can only provide with all the adequate support but it is up to the students to take it or leave it. To make them take it, the strongest will shall come from within. They want to learn it because they want to learn it.

Interestingly, in Islam we have this is what known as ‘ehsan’. It is the metaphorical state whereby one is performing their ‘ibadah’ (any form of worshipping) sincerely as if God is watching him. By way of explanation, one is performing their 5 times a day prayer without expecting any reward but pure submission to the one God. Nobody is watching you. You can always choose to be lazy and skip your prayers. Nobody gonna hate you for that. And the best Muslim is called ‘muhsin’. It’s an Arabic word with the root word ‘ehsan’. So in religions, being autonomous is utmostly recommended.

Nonetheless, we still haven’t solved the puzzle – how intrinsic motivation comes into existence? That is something each one of us need to ponder.