2+Motivation+in+Education

As teachers, our professional goals may include mastering the ability to motivate and inspire our students. We first need to understand what motivation is and how it works. In this way, we as educators can create circumstances in which people motivate themselves to higher achievement.

**Motivation** is the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way. There are a wide variety of reasons that motivate people, but they usually fall into two categories: intrinsic and extrinsic.

//Intrinsic motivation//: comes from within us.
 * Make meaning from our experiences
 * Initiating thought and behaviour
 * Curiosity

//Extrinsic motivation//: comes from other sources.
 * Higher rate of pay for completing a course
 * Reward for a job well-done
 * Competition for achievement

** Praise  ** is a form of extrinsic motivation. Most teachers use praise in an attempt to create a positive, supportive classroom environment. However, some forms of praise may do more harm than good.

This [|video] would be a form of extrinsic motivation for the audience, in the hopes that each person would develop an intrinsic motivation to persevere.

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