Within-year changes in children’s intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations: Contextual predictors and academic outcomes

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2009.01.001Get rights and content

Abstract

The present study was designed to investigate the nature, timing, and correlates of motivational change among a large sample (N = 1051) of third- through eighth-grade students. Analyses of within-year changes in students’ motivational orientations revealed that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations decreased from fall to spring, with declines in intrinsic motivation especially pronounced for the adolescents and declines in extrinsic motivation especially pronounced for the elementary students. These changes in motivation were explained, in part, by shifts in students’ perceptions of the school goal context. Findings suggested that typical age-related declines in intrinsic motivation may be minimized by a school-wide focus on mastery goals. Finally, the potential academic consequences of students’ motivational orientations were examined with a series of hierarchical multiple regressions. Intrinsic motivation and classroom achievement appeared to influence one another in a positive and reciprocal fashion. Poor classroom performance minimally predicted higher levels of extrinsic motivation, but extrinsic motivation was not a source of low classroom grades.

Introduction

The question of what motivates children’s behavior in achievement contexts is one of long-standing interest to psychologists and educators. Much of the research in this area has classified motivation as either intrinsic (i.e., inherent to the self or the task) or extrinsic (i.e., originating from outside of the self or the task). That is, students are often thought to be learning either for the sake of learning or as a means to some other end, whether it be praise, tangible rewards, or meeting the demands of powerful authority figures.

The contrast between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations is meaningful, in part, because of their academic correlates. In achievement contexts, intrinsic motivation has been associated with a host of positive outcomes including positive affect (Gottfried, 1985, Gottfried, 1990, Harter, 1981, Harter et al., 1992, Ryan and Deci, 2000), creativity (Amabile, 1996), adaptive coping strategies (Boggiano, 1998, Ryan and Connell, 1989), academic engagement (Otis et al., 2005, Ryan and Connell, 1989), text comprehension and pleasure reading (Guthrie et al., 2006, Wang and Guthrie, 2004, Wigfield and Guthrie, 1997), deep conceptual learning strategies (Meece et al., 1988, Pintrich and Garcia, 1991, Rijavec et al., 2003), and academic achievement as indexed by standardized tests and classroom grades (Boggiano, 1998, Gottfried, 1985, Lepper et al., 2005, Miserandino, 1996). Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, has been associated with negative emotions (Dowson and McInerney, 2001, Harter et al., 1992, Ryan and Connell, 1989), maladaptive coping strategies (Boggiano, 1998, Ryan and Connell, 1989), and poor academic achievement (Lepper et al., 2005). It is not, however, a uniformly negative motivator. In fact, extrinsic motivation is predictive of both self-regulation (Miller, Greene, Montalvo, Ravindran, & Nichols, 1996) and positive adjustment to high school (Otis et al., 2005). Although it may not have the same sustaining power as intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation is arguably necessary at times and, at the very least, indicates some engagement with the learning process (see Lepper & Henderlong, 2000).

Given the predictive power of students’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations, it is important to investigate how these forms of motivation might change with development (see Murphy and Alexander, 2000, Pintrich, 2003). There is a fairly strong consensus across distinct theoretical traditions that intrinsic motivation tends to decline with increasing age (Bouffard et al., 2003, Eccles et al., 1998, Gottfried et al., 2001, Harter, 1981, Otis et al., 2005). The developmental path of extrinsic motivation is less clear, with studies reporting increases (Anderman et al., 1999, Harter, 1981), relative stability (Harter et al., 1992, Lepper et al., 2005), and even decreases (Otis et al., 2005, Ratelle et al., 2004) over the childhood and adolescent years. Because of measurement issues, however, there remain several ambiguities about the nature and timing of developmental change in children’s motivational orientations.

A first ambiguity arises because of the way in which intrinsic and extrinsic motivations have been operationalized. Much of the research on children’s motivational orientations has been conducted with Harter’s (1981) scale, which requires children to select either an intrinsic or an extrinsic reason for a variety of classroom behaviors (e.g., Boggiano, 1998, Ginsburg and Bronstein, 1993, Harter and Jackson, 1992, Meece et al., 1988, Newman, 1990).1 The typical developmental pattern, therefore, could reflect decreasing intrinsic motivation, increasing extrinsic motivation, or some combination of the two. Because of this concern, Lepper et al. (2005) recently decomposed Harter’s scale into separate measures of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (cf. Ryan & Connell, 1989). They found a linear decline in intrinsic motivation from third to eighth grade, but few differences in extrinsic motivation across grade levels. Contrary to Harter’s (1981) research, then, extrinsic motivation appears not to increase over the school years, although this finding should be replicated given that it was based on only a single cross-sectional study.

A second ambiguity about the nature of developmental change arises because of the prevalence of cross-sectional studies which confound age and cohort differences (e.g., Harter et al., 1992, Lepper et al., 2005, Newman, 1990). In order to document true developmental change, longitudinal research is necessary. Unfortunately, extrinsic motivation has been largely neglected in longitudinal research, with the exception of a few recent studies that have revealed developmental decreases during high school and over the transition to college (Otis et al., 2005, Ratelle et al., 2004). A larger body of longitudinal research has revealed developmental decreases in intrinsic motivation (Bouffard et al., 2003, Gottfried et al., 2001, Otis et al., 2005) and related constructs, such as values (Jacobs et al., 2002, Wigfield et al., 1997), learning motivation (Spinath & Spinath, 2005), and mastery goals (Anderman and Midgley, 1997, Anderman et al., 1999). Nearly all of this research, however, has focused on motivational shifts that occur over a school transition or across different academic years.

A final ambiguity about the timing of developmental change arises, then, because motivation is typically measured only once each academic year. In these cases, theoretically important school experiences that occur during the academic year are confounded with those that result from moving up a grade, working with new teachers, being exposed to a new curriculum with different grading practices, and often entering a new school (see Bong, 2005, Eccles and Midgley, 1989, Gentry et al., 2002). In short, relying exclusively on between-year comparisons in motivation may obscure the temporal location of change. No research to date has examined children’s intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations over the course of a single academic year, but some work has examined changes in similar constructs. Pajares and Graham (1999), for example, found fall-to-spring decreases in sixth graders’ interest, enjoyment, effort, and persistence in their math courses. Moreover, studies comparing between- and within-year changes have shown that the majority of change in children’s achievement goals (Meece & Miller, 2001) and interest in school (Nurmi & Aunola, 2005) takes place during the academic year.

The present study builds upon this work by using a short-term longitudinal design to assess third- through eighth-grade students’ motivation in both the fall and the spring of a single academic year. Moreover, we address the limitations of previous research by measuring both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations using the separate scales for each construct from Lepper et al. (2005). The intrinsic motivation scale assesses students’ challenge-seeking, curiosity-driven engagement, and desire for independent task mastery. These components represent a rich set of intrinsic motives aligned with those of classic motivational theories (e.g., Berlyne, 1960, Deci and Ryan, 1985, Hunt, 1965, White, 1959), although Lepper et al. found that they functioned as a single higher-order intrinsic factor among primary school children. The extrinsic motivation scale, on the other hand, includes both a higher-order extrinsic factor and three distinct component dimensions: the desire for easy work, the desire to please authority figures, and a dependence on one’s teacher. The desire to please authority figures may have the greatest face validity as an extrinsic motive in that it explicitly addresses behavior as a means to a separable end, and is largely analogous to introjected extrinsic motivation in self-determination theory. In a less direct fashion, the desire for easy work and dependence on teacher serve as markers or symptoms of extrinsic motivation in children. That is, students who seek to complete their schoolwork as a means to some other more valued end will desire a quick path to completion with a minimal investment of mental effort (Kruglanski, Stein, & Riter, 1977). Likewise, when students approach their work in an instrumental fashion, they will look to the teacher for guidance to ensure that tasks are being completed in a way that will garner the desired approval and/or tangible benefits.2

Based on prior research that has documented developmental declines in intrinsic motivation, we expected to find a within-year decrease in intrinsic motivation. We expected that this decrease might be especially pronounced for adolescents as compared to elementary students because the middle school environment tends to be a suboptimal learning context for early adolescents (Anderman and Maehr, 1994, Eccles and Midgley, 1989). Indeed, we also expected to replicate Lepper et al.’s (2005) finding of higher levels of intrinsic motivation among younger as compared to older students. We did not have strong developmental predictions regarding extrinsic motivation because cross-sectional work has suggested relative stability (Harter et al., 1992, Lepper et al., 2005), but longitudinal work with high school students has found decreases across academic years (Otis et al., 2005). We also considered the extent to which each of the three dimensions of extrinsic motivation might have distinct developmental pathways. In part because of the age-related decline in intrinsic motivation, we expected students to increasingly want to take the quickest, easiest path to completion of their schoolwork. Thus, we anticipated that the desire for easy work might increase over the academic year and that it would be higher for adolescents than elementary school students. On the other hand, we anticipated that the desire to please authority figures and students’ dependence on teachers might decrease over the year because of typical age-related increases in autonomy-seeking and a focus on peers rather than authority figures (Berndt, 1979, Steinberg and Silverberg, 1986). Likewise, we expected that levels of both of these constructs would be higher among elementary school than adolescent students.

A second aim of the present study was to examine the extent to which the educational context might account for these developmental shifts. A long history of research has shown that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are affected by a variety of social forces including autonomy support, environmental structure, and the quality of interpersonal relationships (see Deci and Ryan, 2002, Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000, Schweinle et al., 2006). More recently, the educational context has been conceptualized in terms of achievement goal theory, which focuses on the extent to which schools or classrooms promote mastery goals or performance goals (see Kaplan et al., 2002, Meece et al., 2006). A mastery goal context emphasizes conceptual understanding over test scores and focuses on effort and improvement. This type of environment tends to predict adaptive motivational outcomes, including self-efficacy, effective learning strategy use, task value, and a preference for challenge (Ames and Archer, 1988, Bong, 2005, Kaplan and Maehr, 1999, Roeser et al., 1996, Wolters, 2004, Young, 1997). A performance goal context, on the other hand, emphasizes social comparisons of ability, uses competitive grading practices, and rewards error-free learning. This type of environment tends to predict less adaptive motivational outcomes, including negative affect, procrastination, and self-handicapping (Anderman et al., 1999, Kaplan and Maehr, 1999, Urdan et al., 1998, Wolters, 2004).

These school and classroom goal contexts have been clearly linked to students’ personally-held mastery and performance goals, which are related to – yet distinct from – their intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations. Personal achievement goals and motivational orientations are similar in that both describe the reasons underlying individuals’ behaviors and both represent a contrast between activity-driven (i.e., working in order to learn or enjoy) and instrumental (i.e., working as a means to a separable end) engagement (Lepper, 1988, Marsh et al., 2003). However, unlike personal achievement goals, which are largely cognitive and serve to direct motivational energy, intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations are the affective source of motivational energy itself (Elliot et al., 2002, Pintrich and Garcia, 1991). Motivational orientations are also considerably broader constructs than personal achievement goals. Intrinsic motivation goes beyond the mastery goal focus on building competence to include the concepts of interest, enjoyment, and the internal origin of behavior. Likewise, extrinsic motivation goes beyond the performance goal focus on demonstrating competence relative to others to include a variety of instrumental motives, such as the desire to please others, avoid punishment, or obtain material rewards (Lepper, 1988). Both constructs, however, are presumably affected by the goal orientation of the achievement context – a claim that has been substantiated for personal achievement goals but not for intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations to date.

Because of its focus on learning and improvement, a mastery goal context would likely promote an intrinsic orientation. Consistent with this hypothesis, both students and teachers perceive grade-related decreases in the emphasis on mastery goals that parallel the grade-related declines in intrinsic motivation (Anderman and Midgley, 1997, Midgley et al., 1995). A performance goal context, on the other hand, would likely promote an extrinsic orientation because of its focus on test scores and competitive grading practices. Indeed, performance-oriented environments have been associated with a desire for correct answers and good grades (Anderman et al., 1999, Young, 1997). Moreover, Harter et al. (1992) found strong extrinsic orientations to the extent that middle school students perceived their academic environment to be highly performance-oriented. Taken together, these studies raise the intriguing possibility that the predicted changes in students’ motivational orientations may be explained, in part, by systematic shifts in the school goal context.

We addressed this possibility in the present study by measuring students’ perceptions of the school goal context both in the fall and in the spring. We expected that within-year shifts in perceptions of the school as mastery-focused would predict within-year changes in intrinsic motivation. Likewise, we anticipated that within-year shifts in perceptions of the school as performance-focused would predict within-year changes in extrinsic motivation. These hypotheses are bolstered by a host of research documenting changes in similar constructs as a result of the transition from elementary to middle school (see Eccles & Midgley, 1989). Even more supportive are recent longitudinal studies that have shown changes in students’ self-efficacy, positive affect, and personal mastery goals to be predicted by shifts in their perceptions of the learning context during middle school (Urdan & Midgley, 2003) and within a single academic year in high school (Bong, 2005).

A final issue concerns the relationship between motivation and achievement. Several investigations have revealed a positive association between intrinsic motivation and students’ classroom grades and standardized test scores (Boggiano, 1998, Gottfried, 1985, Gottfried, 1990, Harter and Connell, 1984, Lepper et al., 2005, Miserandino, 1996). The direction of this relationship, however, is unclear. Intrinsically motivated learners tend to engage the material, enjoy the process of discovery, and employ deep learning strategies – all of which are likely to result in learning and achievement (Deci and Ryan, 1985, Meece et al., 1988, Nurmi and Aunola, 2005). Conversely, students who receive high marks likely experience a sense of efficacy and receive competence-enhancing feedback, both of which promote intrinsic motivation (Harter and Connell, 1984, Ryan et al., 1983, White, 1959). Perhaps the most likely explanation is that the relationship between intrinsic motivation and achievement is synergistic and bidirectional – a hypothesis that we tested in the present study.

The negative association between extrinsic motivation and various indicators of academic achievement is perhaps even more interesting to consider (Lepper et al., 2005, Ryan and Deci, 2000, Wolters et al., 1996). On the one hand, extrinsically motivated students may be distracted from the learning process by their focus on performance outcomes. Indeed, external orientations have been linked with the use of superficial learning strategies (Meece et al., 1988, Stipek and Gralinski, 1996), which certainly do not promote achievement. It is equally plausible, however, that students become more extrinsically motivated as result of receiving poor marks. In the face of poor performance, concerned authority figures may offer rewards, threats, and other extrinsic contingencies which could easily increase students’ desire to please adults and to seek easy work that guarantees better performance in the future. A final aim of the present study, therefore, was to examine whether motivational orientations are best characterized as predictors or outcomes of achievement.

In summary, the present study was designed to address three central questions: (a) How do intrinsic and extrinsic motivations change over the course of a single academic year, (b) do shifts in students’ perceptions of the school goal context predict changes in their motivational orientations, and (c) how do motivational orientations and academic achievement predict one another over time? We hypothesized that intrinsic motivation would decrease over the course of the school year, that this decline would relate to students’ changing perceptions of the school mastery context, and that intrinsic motivation and achievement would predict one another in a positive and reciprocal fashion. Predictions regarding extrinsic motivation were less certain given conflicting trends in the extant literature, but we expected that any changes in extrinsic motivation would relate to students’ changing perceptions of the school performance context.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 1117 third- through eighth-grade students drawn from eight schools in Portland, Oregon. Students were recruited from several different types of schools in order to increase the generalizability of the findings: three K-8 Catholic schools (n = 256), one K-8 public school (n = 133), three K-5 public elementary schools (n = 349), and one 6–8 public middle school (n = 379).

Results

There were very few missing data aside from the exceptions noted above. When children left particular items blank (which happened in less than 1% of cases), composite variables were created based on the average of completed items for each measure. For all analyses reported below, the criterion alpha was set at a conservative .01 to reduce the chances of a Type I error due to the large sample size.

Discussion

The present study revealed within-year declines in levels of intrinsic motivation among both elementary and middle school students. This developmental trend affirms the troubling conclusion that the more time children spend in our schools, the less they seem to be learning for learning’s sake – a conclusion that theorists and educators have bemoaned for decades (see Dewey, 1900, Holt, 1964, Lepper et al., 2005). Importantly, though, the present study addresses several ambiguities from the

Acknowledgments

Funding for this research was provided by a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship to the first author. We thank the team of undergraduate research assistants who helped to collect the data and the schools, teachers, and children who participated in this research. We are also indebted to Kris Anderson for her assistance with data analysis.

References (90)

  • T. Urdan et al.

    Changes in the perceived classroom goal structure and pattern of adaptive learning during early adolescence

    Contemporary Educational Psychology

    (2003)
  • C.A. Wolters et al.

    The relation between goal orientation and students’ motivational beliefs and self-regulated learning

    Learning and Individual Differences

    (1996)
  • T. Amabile

    Creativity in context

    (1996)
  • C. Ames

    Classrooms: Goals, structures, and student motivation

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (1992)
  • C. Ames et al.

    Achievement goals in the classroom: Students’ learning strategies and motivation processes

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (1988)
  • A.L. Amrein et al.

    The effects of high-stakes testing on student motivation and learning

    Educational Leadership

    (2003)
  • E.M. Anderman et al.

    Motivation and schooling in the middle grades

    Review of Educational Research

    (1994)
  • E.M. Anderman et al.

    Declining motivation after the transition to middle school: Schools can make a difference

    Journal of Research and Development in Education

    (1999)
  • D.E. Berlyne

    Conflict, arousal, and curiosity

    (1960)
  • T.J. Berndt

    Developmental changes in conformity to peers and parents

    Developmental Psychology

    (1979)
  • A.K. Boggiano

    Maladaptive achievement patterns: A test of a diathesis-stress analysis of helplessness

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (1998)
  • M. Bong

    Within-grade changes in Korean girls’ motivation and perceptions of the learning environment across domains and achievement levels

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (2005)
  • T. Bouffard et al.

    Changes in self-perceptions of competence and intrinsic motivation among elementary schoolchildren

    British Journal of Educational Psychology

    (2003)
  • J. Brophy

    Goal theorists should move on from performance goals

    Educational Psychologist

    (2005)
  • J. Cohen et al.

    Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences

    (1983)
  • E.L. Deci et al.

    A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation

    Psychological Bulletin

    (1999)
  • E.L. Deci et al.

    Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior

    (1985)
  • E.L. Deci et al.

    Handbook of self-determination research

    (2002)
  • J. Dewey

    The school and society

    (1900)
  • M. Dowson et al.

    Psychological parameters of students’ social and work avoidance goals: A qualitative investigation

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (2001)
  • J.S. Eccles et al.

    Stage-environment fit: Developmentally appropriate classrooms for young adolescents

  • J.S. Eccles et al.

    Development during adolescence: The impact of stage-environment fit on young adolescents’ experiences in schools and in families

    American Psychologist

    (1993)
  • J.S. Eccles et al.

    Motivation to succeed

  • A.J. Elliot et al.

    The need for competence

  • M. Gentry et al.

    Students’ perceptions of classroom activities: Are there grade-level and gender differences?

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (2002)
  • G.S. Ginsburg et al.

    Family factors related to children’s intrinsic/extrinsic motivational orientation and academic performance

    Child Development

    (1993)
  • A.E. Gottfried

    Academic intrinsic motivation in elementary and junior high school students

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (1985)
  • A.E. Gottfried

    Academic intrinsic motivation in young elementary school children

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (1990)
  • A.E. Gottfried et al.

    Continuity of academic intrinsic motivation from childhood through late adolescence: A longitudinal study

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (2001)
  • J.T. Guthrie et al.

    Influences of stimulating tasks on reading motivation and comprehension

    Journal of Educational Research

    (2006)
  • S. Harter

    A model of mastery motivation in children: Individual differences and developmental change

  • S. Harter

    The relationship between perceived competence, affect, and motivational orientation within the classroom: Processes and patterns of change

  • S. Harter

    Teacher and classmate influences on scholastic motivation, self-esteem, and level of voice in adolescents

  • S. Harter et al.

    A model of children’s achievement and related self-perceptions of competence, control, and motivational orientation

  • S. Harter et al.

    Trait vs. nontrait conceptualizations of intrinsic/extrinsic motivational orientation

    Motivation and Emotion

    (1992)
  • Cited by (170)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text