2021 // by Stephen Tonks, PH.D.

In this Achieve Magazine article, Stephen Tonks present how teachers can use SDT for organizing and remembering how to encourage high-quality motivation in their students.

Importantly, SDT researchers talk about intrinsic motivation as “high-quality,” because it leads to deeper learning, retention of knowledge, curiosity, a love for learning, and positive emotions. The other low-quality kind of motivation is extrinsic motivation, which includes things like rewards, threats, and punishments. Although extrinsic motivation can be powerful, it produces short-lived motivation, surface learning, and the feeling that, “I have to do this.” Our education system relies too heavily on extrinsic motivators, and this reality was laid bare early in the pandemic, as teachers had to pivot quickly to online instruction.

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