Intrinsic Motivation
By: Jessica Jordan, MS, OTR/L
Intrinsic motivation refers to the behavior that is driven by internal rewards. In other words, the motivation to engage in a behavior that arises from within the individual because it is naturally satisfying to you. As a school based occupational therapist, I see intrinsic motivation come into question so very often. Whether it is for a treatment session or when the IEP team is determining a student's goals and level of service. For the first time ever as an OT practitioner, one of the positives of this pandemic was seeing student’s be more involved in their IEP process. Many of my student’s I worked with sat in on their virtual IEP meetings from home offering their perspective. I was able to share their progress with them, their parents/guardians/learning coaches, and the rest of the team. At times it was actually quite playful to speak directly to my student’s asking them about their progress in front of the team. In previous years this hasn’t been the case, as student’s are not always present for these meetings. I felt as if this was pivotal because parents specifically got to see what intrinsically motivates their child (i.e. writing vs mathematics, etc.) because the student’s were able to voice it themselves during the meeting.
As an occupational therapist at SUNRISE therapies, this is what we strive to focus on to get to know you as an individual and family FIRST. In occupational therapy, this is coined as the term the “occupational profile”. The occupational profile is a summary of a client’s (person’s, group’s, or population’s) occupational history and experiences, patterns of daily living, interests, values, needs, and relevant contexts (AOTA, 2017a). With that information known, we target those goals that YOU are intrinsically motivated to reach.
So often intrinsic motivation is forgotten about and extrinsic rewards/incentives are used to enhance or maintain a student’s interest in activities of some initial interest to the child. I heard about a study done with preschoolers and it immediately drew my attention as I primarily work with preschoolers in my school based OT position.
In a study by (Lepper et al., 1973) preschool students (that were previously determined to be intrinsically motivated by drawing) were told to draw a picture and in turn would receive a ribbon/award. This went on for several weeks. There was also a group of preschools who did not receive an award and those who received a surprise reward. The study found that those who had previously liked drawing (i.e.intrinsically motivated) were less motivated to draw once they were expected to be rewarded for the activity. I often see this to be true in some classrooms that I consult and collaborate with. The authors of the study pointed out that this is a central problem with our educational system and its inability to preserve intrinsic interest in learning and exploration for the students.
I think this speaks so much to what we do as occupational therapists because we make sure that in order to target whatever goals we are working on, that it has to be intrinsically motivating for our clients. I am writing this blog post as a mom to two little girls (Sidney and Ellie). Sidney, my almost two year old, reminds me often about what intrinsically motivates her. Whether it is an episode of CoCoMelon or wearing her rain boots everywhere (with no rain here in California) I try to remember that these small things fill her cup up and need to be acknowledged and honored.
