Motivation versus my personal study life

In our daily life, we see many people starting to pursue their goals with great excitement. But why do many of them leave pursuing their goals in the middle? Some people are very good starters. But when they face any stress, discomfort or resistance in their path, they drop off. Some people are good starters and they are also good at keeping it going. But after a while, when they do not see the desired results, they are tempted to drop it off. Motivation is the key to this scenario. Motivation is the activation or energisation of goal-oriented behavior. Two general forms of motivation are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from rewards inherent to a task or activity itself whereas extrinsic motivation comes from outside of the performer.

The intrinsic motivation is relevant to many social realms, including education. It can be observed in the interaction between students and teachers. I personally experienced and went through the application of intrinsic motivation to study throughout my secondary school study life to university level.

Back in high school, I remember I did pretty well in one of the crucial examinations, part of the reason was because I was lucky as I did most of the questions similar to those came out in the examination paper earlier. I scored high mark and impressed my classmates as well as my teacher. Starting from there, my classmates as well as the teacher perceived me as special one. From there on, my classmates will come to me whenever they have problems or difficulties in their study. Initially, I could not really help them to solve the problems as I was just like one of them. I merely did well in that particular examination. Those questions prompted by them somehow motivated me to learn more and study more in order to be able to answer them. This was when the intrinsic motivation came into play. Due to the high score I achieved earlier, and the enjoyment of being addressed ‘special’ by fellow classmates, a strong motivation has formed within me.

In addition to this, my teacher tended to point questions to me as the result of that examination paper especially when nobody can answer it. My teacher expected I know the answer or I just meant to be able to get the answer easily compared to the rest of my classmates. This further made me pay more effort in my study because I do not want to fail to fulfil my teacher’s expectation. Gradually, I showed a significant gain over the other. I displayed this intellectual growth as a result of teacher’s greater expectation. Eventually, I fulfilled the role as a higher ability student.

As the years go by, like most things, motivation is not constant. In general, people may start out things enthusiastically and then the interest diminishes with time. Maintaining motivation is crucial in this context. I am aware of this scenario and hence, I am setting goal from time to time when I set a new goal once I have achieved one. When I was in high school, I set my goal to enter the prestigious university that I wish to get it and placed the goal at much higher than the minimum entry requirement. I managed to get in unconditionally as an international student status. During my undergraduate studies, I knew I can achieve much more and I want to further my Philosophy of Doctorate degree, I set the goal to be the top 5 percent in terms of academic achievement in the degree I was doing and targeted for First class honours. I made it at the end as well as awarded a scholarship to do my postgraduate research. The driving force is all came from goals I have set from time to time which then maintained the motivation within myself. Setting goals have added emotional commitment to my study, a commitment that increase motivation and make my study more meaningful and relevant.

Apart from individual case, such psychological effect came into play to my secondary school too. There was grouping or categorising of students based on the academic performance in my school. Students were divided into different classrooms according to academic ability. Students with good results will be allocated to the best class, and vice versa. Such grouping system was said to provide more individualised instruction for individual differences. Good teachers were assigned to good academic performance class whereas less experienced teachers were assigned to poor academic performance class. For poor academic performance class students, teachers tended to pay less attention and expectation on them. Teacher’s expectations definitely affected low achievers. Teachers’ interaction with students perceived as low achievers is less motivating and less supportive than interaction with students perceived as high achievers. Most often, teachers in poor academic performance class never bother if the students understand on what they have taught.
In the good academic performance class which was consisted of high achievers, they received more time to respond to questions. When high achievers experienced difficulties in study, teachers tended to give clues, or rephrase the question more frequently than with low achievers. This placed low achievers at a considerable disadvantage to high achievers because they do not have an equal opportunity to develop their answers and voice out their responses. By not acknowledging the responses of low achieving students, teachers reinforced the students’ feelings of inadequacy and lessen their desire to learn.

My personal experience based on the achievement level I exhibited hypothesise that consistent positive reinforcement has an effect on a student’s perception of his or her academic potential. Same thing happens if consistent negative reinforcement is taken place. As for my case, I was consistently receiving a certain message from my teacher during my secondary school, and I began to internalise these message as well as accept the teacher’s signals as a reflection of reality. If teachers consistently use actions and language to reinforce what they believe to be a student’s potential, students will begin to put limits on their own possibilities based on the teachers’ messages of expected achievement.

It is more beneficial to set high expectations for students to reach rather than low expectations, which they can reach with little effort. I strongly believe that students have greater interest in a subject if they feel challenged. If there are no appropriate expectations placed upon them, they would not have the motivation to strive for success.

As a conclusion, motivation plays a relatively important role in education either in the form of intrinsic or extrinsic. My personal experience and background have demonstrated how intrinsic motivation can help to build up oneself. Teachers play a vital role in stimulating and fostering students’ intrinsic motivation. Teachers have the responsibility to provide an inclusive classroom environment where everyone is valued, respected and included. Students will then participate more fully in the process of learning. Students should be provided with tasks that are challenging but achievable. Defining tasks in terms of short term goals can further assist students to associate effort with success. Lastly, continuous goals setting either short term or long term is important in order to maintain one self’s motivation.