Self-Determination Theory: Motivating Students

This is one of my reflections from my class, Leading Change: Go Beyond Gamification with Gameful Learning.

Prompt:
Reflect on your own experiences as a learner, and think of a time when you felt extremely engaged. Use one or more of the motivation theories we described to decode and explain why this experience was so engaging for you.


Response:
One experience in which I felt extremely engaged was in my AP US Government and Politics class in high school. The teacher assigned a Supreme Court Case project, which I have adopted for use in my classroom and is still my favorite project to work through with my government students.

The Self-Determination Theory (appealing to students' Autonomy, Belonging, and Competence in order to engage them) thoroughly explains why I was so motivated to succeed during this activity.

Autonomy:

I was a junior that was already interested in government, so I was already intrinsically motivated to learn about the course content. The topic of our Supreme Court Case was a case about physician-assisted suicide, meaning the constitutionality of the “Death with Dignity Act.” The Supreme Court Case activity was structured in a way that there were three roles: lawyer, justice, or spectator/reporter. This provided students with a choice; which role would we take on for the activity? There could only be four lawyers and nine justices. All other students had to be spectators/reporters. Each role had different tasks to complete. The part that unnerved me the most as a high-achieving student was that each role had a certain grade threshold. For example, the lawyers, if meeting all requirements, could earn an A. Justices, if meeting all requirements, would earn a B. Justices could earn an A if they went greatly above and beyond. Spectators/Reporters could earn a C unless they went above and beyond. This scared me as a student because I was not chosen to be a lawyer and didn’t want a B - but this provided a challenge for me that I will describe when I discuss “competence.” This sort of “layered” approach to grading the activity also helped students see the grade that their effort would earn them.

Belonging:

In the Supreme Court Case activity, there was a sense of belonging because each student had a role to play. The lawyers needed to provide a brief and argue the case. The justices had to take notes and write an opinion once the case was over. The spectators/reporters had to write a newspaper article or create a newscast to describe the case and its importance. Each lawyer and justice also had to present their findings to the class, so there was accountability in that. The reporters did not present their findings, but their articles were peer-reviewed by other students.

Competence:

The Supreme Court Case activity gave all students an opportunity to be challenged. Even students who chose to be spectators (at the C-level) had an opportunity to earn an A, given that they challenged themselves to write a thought-provoking article. In my case, I was very engaged by the topic of the case and wrote a justice opinion that earned me an A on the project, instead of the B-level that would have been earned from just meeting the requirements. The challenge for me was writing a justice opinion that was backed up by facts, the U.S. Constitution, and prior cases that had been tried in other states. I had to do a great deal of external research to find information that would support my decision as a justice, and this created an opportunity for me to deliver a justice opinion that impressed my teacher.