Motivation Upon Learning

This section provides a synopsis on several details on the indicators of students’ motivation upon learning.

Motivation

As cited by Stephen Babu (2014, p.109) motivation can be defined as something that compels or energizes an individual to behave in a particular manner in a particular time, in order to achieve to satisfy the individual goal or purpose. But motivation can be categorized into two types: intrinsic and extrinsic.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic

According to Di Domenico and Ryan (2017), intrinsic motivation energizes and sustains activities through the spontaneous satisfactions inherent in effective volitional action. It is manifest in behaviors such as play, exploration, and challenges seeking that people often do for external rewards

525). On the other hand, in a study of Kumar (2016), Turner (1995) considers motivation to be synonymous with cognitive engagement, which he defines as “voluntary uses of high-level self-regulated learning strategies, such as paying attention, connection, planning, and monitoring” (p. 413). Motivation is one of the factors that affect a student upon learning. Motivation determines the specific goals toward which learners strive (Pintrich et al.,

Zanjan’s study (as cited in Turner 1995) has noted several trials in assessing motivation, particularly in children. First, cognitive aspects of motivation, such as achievement affect, interests, and goals, are not directly observable. Second, self-report measures of motivation tend to produce generalized responses rather than responses relating to specific instructional events or tasks. For example, children may be asked to respond to a statement such as I like work that is hard. Children often have difficulty providing the type of generalized response that is commonly sought in self-report instruments. Children tend to instead interpret just-experienced events rather than summarize across a range of situations and content areas. Third, self-report measures may be developmentally inappropriate for children, who have a tendency toward positive response bias because they are more inclined than older students to be optimistic. As Turner explains, children hardly separate their efforts and intentions from their actual behavior due to its difficulty. Thus, children who intend to exert a lot of effort may mistakenly believe that they have actually done so. Another source of positive response bias is social desirability to which children are highly