Motivation and Achievement

Motivation and Achievement

Motivation is a word that contains a whole cannon of psychological theory regarding success, failure, achievement, expectations, standards and self-concept. In fact, motivation has a lot of names: optimism, drive, encouragement, vision, willpower and persistence are just a few. Most importantly, motivation is a tool that one can use to empower himself and to propel others to act in more desirable ways – in fact; it replaces the need to punish for undesirable actions with a better alternative: reinforcing positive behavior (Skinner, 1853; Kanazawa, 2010).

Psychological Theories

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was one of the first major motivation theory to suggest that a person’s deepest desires were maintained throughout their lives and that only few people would become fully self-actualization (finally becoming self-satisfied in all that one achieves). Attribution theory also postulates that people are so enamored with success and failure that they need to understand why they succeed or fail. Finally, self-efficacy theory approaches motivation from an internal angle and argues that one’s expectations, standards and self-concept produce happiness and anything that challenges this creates discord and disunity (Bandura, 1992).

Employee Motivation

For the most part, no leader can hope to achieve the business objectives without developing those responsible for seeing those visions come to fruition. On the other hand, it sometimes seems that these two concerns are competing, for example, the need to develop employees and ensure their personal and professional growth may compete with a deadline and short-term success may run up against long-term development needs. And yet, human motivation in leadership is essential because it engages staff and engagement increases productivity (Kanazawa, 2010). Good leaders will employ instrumentation and expectancy to motivate staff.

Academic Motivation

A lot of people in education talk about high standards for student achievement and behavior. More thoughtfulness, responsibility, dedication to work and better study and listening skills are always at the tops of those lists. Educators are challenged to maintain a learning environment that demands, fosters and celebrates high standards without compromising the unique qualities of self. And yet, there is no real agreement about how to achieve this or what it should look like when in place. Desirable levels of achievement are detailed in state standards for curriculum and assessments, but, they may not make adequate provisions for exemplary achievement because they are minimum standards (Berger, 1997).

Intrinsic Motivation and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Additionally, high standards have to be something that students internalize, rather than something that is forced upon them. Because the origin of high expectations and high standards is really unclear, schools can end up spending a lot of time saying they want high standards while actually engaging in practices that undermine the development of these standards in students. The current situation in the US public schools is to have fairly low expectations and fairly low internalization of expectations from students. These low expectations create low achievement levels (Ozturk & Debelak, 2005).

Conclusion

As I have gotten older, I have learned to value the time and effort spent going above and beyond as absolutely essential to my one day becoming a fully actualized individual. For now, I am fulfilling more basic needs and striving to reach higher order goals by being the best person I can be. If intrinsic motivation is the interest in an activity for its own sake, the minute some extrinsic reward or punishment enters the mix, it is no longer intrinsic motivation. As "an important component of achievement goal theory" intrinsic motivational theorists have found that one's personal mastery goals facilitate intrinsic motivation and all mental processes and performance goals though not always with positive effects (Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996; Gallowitzer, 1996).

References

Bandura, A. (1992) Exercise of personal agency through the self-efficacy mechanisms. In R. Schwarzer (Ed.), Self-efficacy: Thought control of action. Washington, DC: Hemisphere.

Berger, R. (1997). Building a School Culture of High Standards. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins, Center for Arts in the Basic Curriculum.

Elliot, A. J., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (1996). Approach and avoidance achievement goals and intrinsic motivation: A mediational analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 461-475.

Kanazawa, S. (2010). Common Misconceptions about Science VI: "Negative Reinforcement." Psychology Today. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201001/common-misconceptions-about-science-vi-negative-reinforcem

Ozturk, M. & Debelak, C. (2005). Setting Realistically High Academic Standards and Expectations. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State University.

Skinner, B.F. (1953). Science and Human Behavior. New York, NY: Macmillan.