October 20, 2016 / By David Steele-Figueredo /

This article cites SDT to explain how motivation for attending college relates to academic success or struggle.

“According to a study conducted by two members of the American Counseling Association, the reason that certain students excel in college while others flounder might relate back to their motivations for attending in the first place. Doug Guiffrida and Martin Lynch, professors at the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester, used the concept of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to reveal that a student’s motivation for attending college is directly related to his or her level of academic success. According to Lynch, SDT is “a theory of motivation, personality and development that proposes that intrinsic motivation, or motivation derived purely from the satisfaction inherent in the activity itself,” and is more advantageous to learning than extrinsic motivation, or “motivation to achieve an external reward or to avoid a punishment.””

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