Student Motivation: Future Directions of SOCIAL-CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES ON STUDENTS

From the outline of self-determination theory and the preceding review of research on intrinsic motivation and internalization, several important directions for future research are apparent. Let us consider a few.

Valuing. For students to be actively engaged in the educational endeavor, they must value learning, achievement, and accomplishment even with respect to topics and activities they do not find interesting. Valuing comes from internalization and integration (Ryan & Stiller, 1991). Unlike most theorists, we assume people are motivated to internalize the regulation of uninteresting behaviors that are valuable for effective functioning. An initial laboratory experiment (Deci et al., 1991) and an initial field study (Grolnick & Ryan, 1989) have shown that internalization will proceed most effectively toward self-determined forms of regulation if (a) children understand the personal utility of the activity, (b) they are provided choices about the activity with a minimum of pressure, and (c) their feelings and perspective are acknowledged. These factors support their selfdetermination. When the value of an activity is internalized, people do not necessarily become more interested in the activity or more intrinsically motivated to do it, but they do become willing to do it because of its personal value.

We suggest that the issue of valuing educational activities cannot be fully understood in terms of providing information about expectancies and outcomes because the key to acquiring values is feeling free enough to accept them as one's own. Valuing results from internalization and integration, which require that students are able to feel competent, related, and autonomous while doing the activities.

Development, Earlier in this article we discussed four regulatory processes relevant to extrinsically motivated behavior (external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, and integration) and we discussed them i n terms of the different degrees of self-determination reflected therein. In our empirical work thus far, we have treated these concepts as individual difference variables, assessing the degree to which each person expresses each type of regulatory style. We have done very little work on the developmental emergence of these styles. It is unclear, for example, whether there is a relatively invariant sequence in the emergence of these regulatory styles or whether one style predominates over the others at particular ages. It is surely the case that in older children and adults, internalization of a particular regulation need not pass from one type to another. A person can either introjeat or integrate a particular new regulation directly, in a short amount of time, because of a readiness to do so. However, the development of such a readiness may itself be part of a developmental sequence.

Competence and autonomy. The concept of competence is central to several current theories of motivation in education and has been formulated in terms of having control over outcomes (Crandall, Katkovsky, & Crandall, 1965), being self-efficacious (Bandura, 1977), having confidence (Dweck, 1986), and having the strategies and capacities for success (Skinner, Wellborn, & Connell, 1990). Our view also gives importance to competence as a prerequisite for motivation, but we believe it is not a sufficient condition for intrinsic motivation, self-initiation, and integration. One can be highly competent and highly motivated, but be regulated externally or by introjects and thus not be autonomous or self-determined. In such cases, the person would be, in the words of deCharms (1976), an efficacious "pawn." Ryan and Connell(1989) reported that, in late elementary school students, both the level of introjection and the level of identification correlated positively and similarly with children's reports of how hard they try in school and also with their parents' ratings of how motivated they are. However, the two styles had other very different correlations. Children who expressed more introjection also expressed more school anxiety and self-blaming, whereas children who expressed more identification also expressed more enjoyment of school and more positive coping with failures. This points to the importance of looking beyond competence and control over outcomes to the sources of initiation and regulation in order to understand effective motivation in school. It points to the importance of autonomy (Ryan, 1982).

Relatedness and autonomy. Ryan (1991; Ryan & Belmont, 1991; Ryan & Lynch,, 1989) has suggested that autonomy develops most effectively in situations where children and teenagers feel a sense of relatedness and closeness to, rather than disaffiliation from, significant adults. A great deal remains to be done to sort out the interaction between adults' being involved with and related to children, on the one hand, and encouraging the autonomy and self-initiation of those children, on the other. An understanding of the independent and interactive contributions of supports for relatedness and autonomy to the development of motivation and selfdetermination will require considerable empirical work.