Motivation, is part of the drive to get people to be more hardworking, more persistent to work out towards his or her goal. Learning behaviours is a product of either intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Hayamizu, 2007). Just thinking of how Thomas Edison able to keep on trying to invent light bulb after failed for uncountable times. His famous quote:” "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration" might reveal his belief on hard work contributing success, and what is motivating him to be the great inventor in history? Motivation is an interesting topic to explore.
Concerning the question in studying university, I would think that studying a degree is like a culture norm. It is a trend in Malaysia, and Singapore. If someone finishes his or her secondary school education, it is almost inevitably to further studies to specialise in a particular field unless the result is too poor. Without a good qualification, it is hard to negotiate with the boss to get higher pay, and demand for promotion. However, in olden days, there were fewer university graduates, and very few women getting higher education. The olden society doesn’t take university certificate as a requirement to get into job market, especially before industry revolution. Woman was not encouraged to study smart in school as well. As globalisation supports knowledge economy, the modern culture trend needs more high skill people with specialisation to have a university degree.
Initially, taking psychology course was not my first choice. Previously I studied Computer Science, and my degree is an external US degree that required to study liberal arts subjects: Sociology and Drama. From there, I started to grow interest into Psychology as I learnt to analyse personality in the different drama plots , and got to know more about social knowledge and human behaviour. “A Streetcar Named Desire” drama script caught my attention by contrasting the culture clash of two social class. A so-called high-class lady who developed personality problem and got into schizophrenia eventually. This drama is not just a movie, but it reflexes the culture, social and psychological problems. Few years later, I came to Singapore to work and decided to study part time in Psychology. I study psychology as an interest, and this motivation is closed to Abraham Maslow’s self-actualisation needs. Self-actualisation is associated with human fulfillment and personal satisfaction (Shiraev & Levy, 2007). Psychology is meaningfulness, with depth sense of critical thinking. I appreciate psychology knowledge that allows me to be a better person and improve my English too. Personally, I always stumble in English as it is not as good as my first language, Mandarin. This motivates me to improve my English language by reading and writing more.
Should motivation be an important factor to be considered in designing our curricula (schooling system in general)? Yes, definitely. Without motivation, it is harder to get a better achievement and improvement in studies. Facilitating motivation and success in school is strongly encouraged. For instance, a Self-Regulation Empowerment Program (SREP), that school professionals can use to allow adolescent students to take on in more positive, self-motivating way of learning. Consequently, students learn to set goals, select and monitor strategy effectiveness, make strategic attributions, and adjust their goals and strategies (Cleary & Zimmerman, 2004). In fact, students who learned self-regulation processes during learning such as goal setting, self-monitoring, and self-reflection processes have better achievement and motivation (Schunk as cited in Cleary & Zimmerman, 2004).
This is not surprising fact as self-control people might have better intrinsic motivation but not comes from external environment. For example, students who only study harder when the parents offers reward. In my personal experience in teaching secondary students, those who score good marks are typically have full concentration in lesson, teacher’s attitude in rewarding seems does not affect much in their motivation to get good result. In contrast, poorer results were associated with poor class students who only get motivated to pay more attention in class if I promised some rewards or showed a fierce look. Hayamizu (2007) supported this situation. It was stated that intrinsic reasons were significantly not related to attributions of external causes and ability.
Understanding motivation also helps to know more about student behaviour. It was found that students who had more extrinsic motivation, such as external reasons, inclined to explain their failure is due to external causes. They tend to use maladaptive coping behaviour as well. However, for the students who scores lower than the means for all types of motivation were classified into the amotivational group. Amotivational group were motivated nether extrinsically nor intrinsically. The self-awareness of amotivational persons is lower, thus do not have self-evaluation (Hayamizu, 2007). It is necessarily to explore more on the amotivational students who are not motivated easily by other persons,. This is especially crucial to motivate amotivational students who scores less satisfactory academic result.
References:
Cleary, T. J., & Zimmerman, B. J. (2004). Self-regulation empowerment program: A school-based program to enhance self-regulated and self-motivated cycles of student learning. Psychology in the Schools, 41, 537-550.
Hayamizu, T. (2007). Between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: Examination of reasons for academic study based on the theory of internazation. Journal Psychological Research, 39, 98-108.
Shiraev, E., & Levy, D. (2007). Cross-cultural psychology: Critical thinking and comtemporary applications (3rd ed.). Boston: Ally and Bacon.
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