Self-Determination Theory. A prominent example is the self- determination theory of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (1985, 2002). When people are motivated, they intend to accomplish something and undertake goal-oriented action to do so. Motivated action may be either self-determined or controlled. To the extent that it is self-determined, it is experienced as freely chosen and emanating from one’s self, not done under pressure from some internal need or external force.
The prototype of self-determined behavior is intrinsically motivated action that we engage in because we want to. Intrinsically motivated actions require no separate motivating consequences; the only necessary “reward” for them is the interest and enjoyment that we experience as we do them.
Self-determination theory specifies that social settings promote intrinsic motivation when they satisfy three innate psychological needs: autonomy (self-determination in deciding what to do and how to do it), competence (developing and exercising skills for manipulating and controlling the environment), and relatedness (affiliation with others through prosocial relationships). In other words, people are inherently motivated to feel connected to others within a social milieu, to function effectively in that milieu, and to feel a sense of personal initiative while doing so. Students are likely to experience intrinsic motivation in classrooms that support satisfaction of these autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs. Where such support is lacking, students will feel controlled rather than self-determined, so their motivation will be primarily extrinsic
rather than intrinsic.
Flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1993) captured what peak experiences of intrinsic motivation feel like in his concept of fl ow. He interviewed people about their subjective experiences during times when they were absorbed in activities they enjoyed. He expected to fi nd that most fl ow experiences occur during relaxing moments of leisure and entertainment. Instead, he found that they usually occur when we are actively involved in challenging tasks that stretch our physical or mental abilities. He listed eight characteristic dimensions of the fl ow experience:
- The activity has clear goals and provides immediate feedback about the effectiveness of our responses to it.
- There are frequent opportunities for acting decisively, and these are matched by our perceived ability to do so effectively. In other words, our personal skills are well suited to the activity’s challenges.
- Action and awareness merge; we experience one-pointedness of mind.
- Concentration on the task at hand; irrelevant stimuli disappear from consciousness and worries and concerns are temporarily suspended.
- A sense of potential control.
- Loss of self-consciousness, transcendence of ego boundaries, a sense of growth and of being part of some greater entity.
- Altered sense of time, which usually seems to pass faster.
- Experience becomes autotelic: the activity becomes worth doing for its own sake.
Flow potential differs across both persons and situations. Some people develop a “flow personality.” Th ey seek out challenges and relish stretching their limits. When required to engage in a routine activity (e.g., mowing a lawn or working on a practice assignment), they tend to “complexify” it by trying to do it artistically, seeking to increase their efficiency, or in other ways setting goals that will make the activity more challenging
and interesting for them. Other people rarely experience fl ow because they fear failure and therefore try to avoid challenging situations, or because they lack the general action orientation and ability to sustain concentration that are needed to maintain oneself in a state of fl ow (Keller & Bless, 2008; Shernoff , Csikszentmihalyi, Schneider, & Shernoff , 2003).
In the original fl ow research, people reported fl ow experiences most frequently during activities that off ered high degrees of challenge in areas in which they possessed high degrees of skill. Other situations produced diff erent experiences. When skill was high but the activity was not challenging, they experienced boredom; when both challenge and skill levels were low, they experienced apathy, and when they faced a challenge for which they possessed low levels of skill, they experienced anxiety.
The original fl ow fi ndings seemed to imply that people would always prefer situations that offered challenges well matched to their current skill levels. However, subsequent work has shown that this is true primarily for situations in which we are engaging in activities voluntarily and with the understanding that no high-stakes consequences are attached to the quality of our performance. If our participation is mandatory, and especially if we need to meet challenges successfully for reasons that are important to us, we are likely to prefer situations in which our skills exceed the challenges. Although we appreciate opportunities for fl ow-like experiences as we engage in an activity, we also want to experience the satisfaction of successful closure upon completing it. Because it is so important to succeed in these situations, we are more likely to experience fl ow and related forms of intrinsic motivation when we can succeed with relative ease (whereas having to sustain effort at the limits of our capacities is exhausting and anxiety-producing).
Findings like these, including many in school situations, led to recognition that fl ow can also be experienced when skills exceed task challenges, and these situations are oft en better characterized as relaxing than as boring (Ainley, Enger, & Kennedy, 2008; Csikszentmihalyi, 1997a; Engeser & Rheinberg, 2008; Schweinle, Turner, & Meyer, 2009; ).
In school, anxiety is the chief threat to fl ow potential. If students are routinely faced with performance demands that they cannot handle, they may come to prefer the boredom of “safe” routines to the fl ow opportunities embodied in challenges. Eventually, their potential for experiencing fl ow in the classroom will erode away. Insuffi cient challenge also can be a problem, however: Students report low involvement in classes where activity demands are well below their current knowledge and skill levels (Turner et al., 1998).
Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, & Whalen (1993) suggested that teachers can encourage flow experiences in three ways:
- being knowledgeable about their subjects, teaching them enthusiastically, and acting as models pursuing the intrinsic rewards of learning;
- maintaining an optimal match between what is demanded and what students are prepared to accomplish (urging but also helping students to achieve challenging but reasonable goals); and
- providing a combination of instructional and emotional support that enables students to approach learning tasks confidently and without anxiety. Subsequently, Csikszentmihalyi (1997b) singled out modeling as the key to stimulating students’ intrinsic motivation to learn. Ideal teachers are intrinsically motivated to both learn and teach their subjects. They display this enthusiasm in ways that encourage students to view the content as relevant and to enjoy and look forward to learning about it themselves.
