A self-determination approach to understanding students' motivation in project work

A self-determination approach to understanding students' motivation in project work

Woon Chia Liu ⁎, C.K. John Wang, Oon Seng Tan, Caroline Koh, Jessie Ee

This article highlighted the benefits of project-based education. It showed that a low-controlled environment high motivation is best way to satisfy students needs. How satisfy is defined is another question altogether. The bad news was that low self-determination and high controlled lead to less enjoyment and less improvement. Its still a question of how they define value over time. What aspects are going into value?

This information did not surprise me as I teach senior project and the kids who I can give the most self-determination are having the most fun. However, its not just as easy to do that, when the students do not have any base motivation skills before the class. I feel as if I spend 50 percent of my time just motivating these kids to do their work. Project based work depends on personal responsibility, something that many in my class simply lack. I think this might be an idealized situation as you don’t know what kind of school they are in. It could be one like the slab school, where the needed skills and mindset are already conducive to learning. Or it could be like Campbell where I have to ride them in order to get the work in. This could be just because I have terrible investment, but this whole article seems like it was written in an ivory tower.