A Culture of Extrinsically Motivated Students: Chemistry

Abstract

Recent research indicates that students are adopting a consumerist approach to education, while data shows that the best academic outcomes are associated with intrinsic motivation. The goal of the study was to explore student academic motivation in an undergraduate Principles of Chemistry I class. The study targeted 432 students enrolled in 9 sections of the class over two semesters at a mid-sized, public four year university. Student academic motivation was measured using the adapted Academic Motivation Scale (AMS). A total of 311 students returned the survey (response rate = 72 %). The results indicated that students enrolled in IntroductionA significant number of scholarly reports on student motivation comes from the college classroom environment and indicates that student motivation is vital for success at the university level (Astin, 1984;Howey, 1999;Pintrich, 1988aPintrich, , 1988bRyan et al., 1985). Student motivation has been shown to be a determinant of academic performance and achievement (Pintrich, 2004) with motivated students having better class attendance (Moore et al., 2008) and course grades (Wilson and Wilson, 2007), including a higher first-year academic performance (Allen et al. 2007). Historically, psychologists have viewed motivation as a unitary concept-one that differs in amount rather than type. In contrast, Self Determination Theory (SDT) (Deci and Ryan, 2008) considers motivation to be a differentiated concept that differs in type and exists along an underlying continuum of autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 2000): amotivation (AM), extrinsic motivation (EM) and intrinsic motivation (IM). The Academic Motivation Scale (AMS; Figure 1) (Vallerand et al., 1992), a well-tested metric for exploring academic motivation within the SDT perspective, further subdivides IM and EM into three subscales each.With amotivation, the person perceives (1) a lack of contingency between behavior and the attainment of desired outcomes and/or (2) a lack of ability to perform the behavior that is necessary to attain desired outcomes. As a result, the person experiences passivity and an absence of autonomy.With extrinsic motivation, the person does an activity, because it leads to a separable outcome or consequence, such as obtaining a reward or avoiding a punishment. SDT specifies three types of extrinsic motivation that vary in the degree to which they are internalized into the self and, therefore, autonomous. The least internalized type of extrinsic motivation is external regulation (EM-External Regulation; EM-ER), in which the person is motivated by the salience of external rewards or punishments. The next type of extrinsic motivation is introjected regulation (EM-Introjected Regulation; EM-IN), in which the person is motivated by the salience of internal rewards (e.g., pride) or punishments (e.g., guilt). Both external regulation and introjected regulation are experienced as relatively controlled forms of extrinsic motivation. As the process of internalization proceeds, the next type of extrinsic motivation is identif...

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