What is motivation, theories of motivation and role of
motivation in education

What is motivation?

                According to the definition of PMBOK:

                          “Motivation is, powering people to achieve high levels of performance and   overcoming barriers in order to change”

·         Motivation is the guidance driver. It controls and persist human behavior.

Motivation is derived from a Latin term ‘Move’. It is a force that induces a particular behavior in humans to get a desired benefit. It directs the behavior and empowers a person to achieve the goals. In fact, any agent or factor that produces a positive behavioral change, may be internal or external is referred as a kind of motivation.

It is an internal state of mind that activates, directs, energizes and sustains a specific or desired behavior.

Drives and Desires

These terms can be defined as need or deficiency that tends to activate a particular behavior to cope with that deficiency. Drives and desires originate from inside the individual and may be external stimuli is not required to induce the behavior.

They can be basic needs including hunger or thirst that leads to food/ water seeking behavior or they can be more subtle including desire for approval and praise.

Characteristics of Motivation

Motivation has several theories but the most common characteristics of Motivation are Activation and Direction.

Activation:

Overt behavior and vigor persistence are important points in activation properly of motivation. Overt behavior is a condition where physiological activity is high but the individual may physically show no activity. For example, if a person stops moving suddenly by seeking a snake in his path. His stop does not mean lack of motivation. His heart beats faster, and breathing increases. Persistence is continuous motivation for some reward. But in the case of multiple rewards, persistence does not work, the person will be motivated to behavior leading to the most attractive award.Same is the case with vigor, higher the motivation, higher is activation of vigorous response.

Direction:

Preference is the most important point of focus in directing characteristic of motivation. It can be explained with the given example, if a student has to learn two subjects, he may be motivated to prefer easy one or interesting but relatively difficult one. Here, innate motivation also matters. He may prefer difficult one, as he feels it interesting.

Types of Motivation

Following are the types of motivation.

·         Integrative and Instrumental Motivation

Gardener and Lamber(1972) suggested that motivation has two types. Integrative motivation and Instrumental Motivation.

Integrative motivation:It is defined as a learning enforcement in order to participate in social activities according to the culture. It leads a person to the will of being member of a certain culture.

Instrumental Motivation:It refers to behavior towards certain benefits/ rewards or further useful motives.According to Ellis (1994), integrative is the best and perfect while Instrumental is relatively more competent.

·         Intrinsic and Extrnsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation:It is the internal motivation or self-determination. It may include interest and eagerness to engage in certain activity. All the physiological needs and biological drives are intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic Motivation: It includes the external reasons to engage in some activity. It includes anticipation of praise, rewards or punishment.

 

Theories of Motivation:

      In the very early times of the establishment of human organizations, various thinkers started to ponder about the thing that motivates the people to do work. They applied different approaches to get the answer of ‘What motivates people?’ These approaches resulted in different theories about motivation.

 Following are some important theories of motivation:

                                i.            Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory

                              ii.            Herzberg’s Motivation Hygiene Theory

                            iii.            McClelland’s Need Theory

                            iv.            McGregor’s Participation Theory

                              v.            Urwick’s Theory Z

                            vi.            Argyris’s Theory

                          vii.            Vroom’s Expectancy Theory

                        viii.            Porter and Lawler’s Expectancy Theory

Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory:

             The Maslow’s need hierarchy theory, the most well-known theory of motivation, is based on the Human needs. Maslow classified all of the human needs and arranged in hierarchical manner in the order of lower to higher. He proposed that when a given level of need is satisfied, it is no more source of motivation. The five levels of need identified by Maslow are given below.

1.      Physiological Needs:

These are the basic needs of human life and include air, water, clothing, shelter, food and other necessities of life. These are the needs that are necessary for the survival and maintenance of human life. These needs have a tremendous impact on human behavior. These are the lowest level needs and must be fulfilled first before moving to the above level. These needs, once satisfied, no longer serve as motivation for a person.

2.      Safety Needs:

Once the physiological needs have met, next security or safety needs are felt to be satisfied. Such needs includes protection from physical danger to economic security. As money is required to meet these needs, they motivate a person to engage in more and more work. Like physiological needs, safety needs, once satisfied become inactive.

3.      Social Needs:

Humans are social being. They cannot survive without social interaction, belongingness and companionship. A person cannot live alone for a long time. He prefers to work in the form of groups.

4.      Esteem Needs

Self-Esteem and self-respect are included in such type of needs. Esteem needs lead to competence, self-confidence, knowledge achievement and independence. The needs give a person strength, self-confidence and capability of an efficient worker in society. However, if there needs are not fulfilled it results in feeling of inferiority, helplessness and weakness.

5.      Self-Actualization Needs

This level is the conclusion of all higher, intermediate and lower needs of human. It is the final step/level of Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Model. It refers to completion.

Kurt Goldstein coined the term Self-actualization and it refers to become actualized. Infect, self-actualization is a force that motivates a person to convert his self-perception into reality.

 

Herzberg’s Hygiene Theory of Motivation

The Maslow’s work was extended by Fredrick Herzberg that lead him to a new theory commonly known as Two Factor Theory of Herzberg or Herzberg Motivation Hygiene Theory. He conducted research on 200 people in and around western Pennsylvania.

His research included two questions.When particularly pleasant feelings, arise during job?When particularly unpleasant feelings arise during job?He applied the critical incidence method to obtain data.Very interesting results were obtained from the research. Herzberg labelled job satisfiers (good feelings) motivators while job dis-satisfiers (bad feelings, unpleasant feelings) were termed as Hygiene factors may be called “Maintenance Factors”.

These factors are given below.

Herzberg suggested that dual continuum exists meaning that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not opposite of each other. While, satisfaction and no satisfaction are opposite of each other and dissatisfaction and no dissatisfaction are opposite of each other.

According to Herzberg, factors that are motivators now will be hygiene then, because hygiene no longer influence the person’s behavior once they are met. Likewise, one’s hygiene can act as motivator for others.

McClelland’s Need Theory

The theory was proposed by McClelland and his colleagues. The theory was based on HenryMurray’s list of motives and manifest needs, from his early personality studies. It is closely related to learning theory.

According to him, needs are acquired or learned by various events that a person experience in the society or by culture. He suggested that different people acquire different needs, so they behave accordingly different.The theory puts focus on Murray’s three needs.

1.      Need for Achievement

“It is a drive to excel, to achieve with relation to a set of standard and to struggle to succeed”

It means, it is a behavior that directs to competition in order to reach excellent standard McClelland found that people who have high level need for achievement will behave or work better than those having low or moderate need for achievement.

Following are some characteristics of people with high need level proposed by McClelland:

1)      They have a strong will to behave in order to find the solution of problems and have feeling of personal responsibility.

2)      They set different goals and accept challenges.

3)      They have strong will for performance feedback.

2.      Need for power

Need for power is related to put an impact on other people, influence others, power to change the people. They tend to control people and events. This leads them to satisfaction.

People having high need for power have following characteristics.

1)      Desire to have control over others.

2)      Will to inspire and direct others.

3)      Care for keeping leader-follower relations.

3.      Need for Affiliation

It is defined as a desire to maintain and establish warm and friendly relationships with others. It is much like Maslow’s social needs in several ways.

Following are the characteristics of such people.

1)      Strong will to be accepted and approved by others.

2)      They tend to fulfil the expectations of their beloved ones and value their companionship and friendship.

3)      They value other’s feelings.

McGregor’s Participation Theory

A psychologist Douglas McGregor, proposed the theory by formulating two different views about humans. First, labelled as X-Theory was basically negative view point while, Y-Theory, basically positive one.

Assumptions of X-Theory

1.      People are naturally slothful. They tend to avoid working as much as possible.

2.      People lake sense of responsibility. They have no ambition and prefer to be guided by others.

3.      People are instinctively self-centered and are unknown to goals and needs of an organization.

4.      People are not sharp and smart but gullible.

Assumptions of Y-Theory

1.      People are not resistant or passive to the goals of organizations.

2.      They have desire to assume the sense of responsibility.

3.      They want to make their organization successful.

4.      People have capability to direct their own behavior.

5.     They have strong Need for achievement.

Urwick’s Theory Z

As an extension to McGregor X and Y theories, three theorists named Rangnekar, Urwick and Ouchi proposed another theory known as Z Theory.

Two propositions that Urwick’s theory suggests are:

1.      Each person must know the goals of organization precisely and his contribution towards the goals through his efforts.

2.      Each individual must also know that these goal relations will lead him to satisfaction of his needs positively.

According to Urwick’s, these propositions people are ready to show positive behavior to complete both personal and organizational goals.

Postulates of Z Theory

1.      There is a strong bond between employees and organization.

2.      Participation and involvement of employees.

3.      There is no formal structure of organization.

4.      Human Resource Development.

Argyris’s Theory

The Argyris’s Theory is based on the statement that how does management practices influence the person’s behavior and growth. According to him, there are seven factors that lead a person to maturity or we can say the personality develops.

According to him, the immaturity is due to management practices like unity of direction, task specialization span of management, chain of command and organizational settings. He suggested that as an individual grows mature, his existing management system (Organization Structure) shifts to participative and more flexible management (Humanistic system).

He states that as maturity develops, it not only satisfy the physiological and safety needs of a person, rather it motivates him to use his potential at his best to meet the organization goals by more and more usage of safety and physiological needs.

 

Vroom’s Expectancy Theory

This theory, proposed by Vroom is most widely recognized theory for explanation of motivation. It is based on Cognitive Processes. The theory is particularly founded on the idea that if a person believes in relation among his efforts, his performance and the outcomes of his work, he will be motivated to show more efforts.

The relationship among the above mentioned factors is given below:

·         Valence

It means the strength or force that a person uses for some particular outcome.

·         Expectancy

It is relationship between efforts and performance.

·         Instrumentality

Vroom suggested that it refers to believe in relation between performances and rewards.A single equation can also express the Vroom’s Theory:

Motivation = valence x Expectancy x instrumentality

For motivated performance all these three variables should have high positive value, any one of these reaching zero will lead to zero motivation level as the model has multiplicative nature.

 

Porter and Lawler’s Expectancy Theory

This theory is actually improvement in Vroom’s theory. According to Porter and Lawler, motivation and satisfaction are not equal. They suggested a multi-variable model to describe complex relation between performance and satisfaction.To encounter this relationship, the theory suggests some traditional assumptions.The key point of theory is that motivation does not directly lead a person to performance. There are multiple factors involved including capabilities, personality traits and role perceptions. And then, performance will ultimately lead to satisfaction.

The three main elements in the model are:

·         Effort

Effort is the amount of energy used to accomplish a task. This amount/ degree of effort is determined by:

        i.            Value of outcome/ reward

      ii.            Perception of effort-reward probability

·         Performance

 

Performance is succeeded by efforts. Performance and efforts may or may not be equal level Setting positive role perception will lead to great efforts and better performance and wrong role perception will lead to low performance.

·         Satisfaction

Next to performance is satisfaction. If a person receives awards in amount as he perceived or more, he becomes satisfied. On the other hand, if he receives smaller number of rewards than his perception, he will be dissatisfied.

Rewards can be:          1. Intrinsic                               2.  Extrinsic

Intrinsic are the internal and include self-actualization and a sense of accomplishment.

Extrinsic are external ones including awards, performance certificates, prizes etc.This theory gives an account to a person’s self-control to accomplish a particular task.

Motivation in Education

Educational psychologists give a particular importance to motivation because of it's crucial role in student learning. Specifc motivation for socialized educational setting differs from general motivation forms for other fields.

In Education, motivation influence the student's learning process and behavior towards subject in several ways.

Motivation can:

1.      Direct behavior to certain goals.

2.      Leads to increased level of effort and energy.

3.      Improve the cognitive processing.

4.      Leads to better performance.

The innate motivational factors i-e curiosity and motivation make students capable to grasp the intellectual and experiential novelty and encourages them to encounter the challenging situations. But the student's do not always have internal motivation, they sometimes need external motivation from environment that teachers provide.