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Understanding student motivation Timothy Seifert

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Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada Published online: 04 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Timothy Seifert (2004) Understanding student motivation, Educational Research, 46:2, 137-149, DOI: 10.1080/0013188042000222421 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0013188042000222421

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Educational Research,Vol. 46, No. 2, Summer 2004

Understanding student motivation Timothy L. Seifert*

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Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Contemporary theories of academic motivation seek to explain students’ behaviours in academic settings. While each theory seems to possess its own constructs and unique explanations, these theories are actually closely tied together. In this theoretical study of motivation, several theories of motivation were described and an underlying theme of the influence of emotions was used to unify the theories. In these theories, emotions and beliefs are thought to elicit different patterns of behaviour such as pursuit of mastery, failure avoidance, learned helplessness and passive aggression. Implications emerged which focused upon creating classroom contexts that foster feelings of autonomy, competence and meaning as the catalysts for developing adaptive, constructive learning.

Keywords: Motivation; Attributions; Self-efficacy; Self-worth; Goal theory; Emotions Psychologists have spent considerable effort trying to construct theories of motivation, particularly in the academic context. Currently, four theories are prominent in contemporary educational psychology: self-efficacy theory, attribution theory, selfworth theory and achievement goal theory. While each is most often presented alone, these theories are more tightly entangled than the literature suggests. In considering these entanglements and arguing each theory in light of the others, it is possible to weave them together. In doing so, a coherent view of student motivation emerges which has students’ emotions and beliefs at its heart. Self-efficacy theory Self-efficacy is a construct synonymous with confidence and refers to a person’s judgement about his/her capability to perform a task at a specified level of performance. Self-efficacy is the person’s belief that he/she is able (or unable) to perform the task at hand and is correlated with achievement-related behaviours, including cognitive processing, achievement performance, motivation, self-worth and choice of activities (Bandura, 1977, 1993). Students who are efficacious (perceive themselves as capable) are more likely to be self-regulating, strategic and metacognitive than students who do not feel efficacious. Students who are not confident or perceive themselves incapable may avoid tasks *Faculty of Education, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John’s, Newfoundland, NF A1B 3X8, Canada. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 0013-1881 (print)/ISSN 1469-5847 (online)/04/020137-13 © 2004 NFER DOI: 10.1080/0013188042000222421

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138 T. Seifert that are seen as challenging or difficult, while those who are highly efficacious will be more willing to face difficult or challenging problems (Schunk, 1984, 1985; Bandura, 1993). Students who see themselves as capable are more likely to display adaptive, mastery behaviours, while those who are less efficacious are likely to behave in an ego, performance-oriented manner (Dweck, 1986). It also enables them to exercise control over stressors that may provoke anxiety (Bandura, 1993).

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Attribution theory An attribution refers to the perceived cause of an outcome; it is a person’s explanation of why a particular event turned out as it did (e.g. pass or fail a test, win or lose a game). In an academic setting, typical attributions might include effort, skills and knowledge, strategies, ability, luck, the teacher’s mood or mistakes by the teacher. According to Weiner (1984, 1985), attributions give rise to emotions, which, in turn, have consequences for future behaviours (motivation). Weiner has specified a particular mechanism to explain how attributions influence motivation (see Figure 1). This mechanism starts with an outcome which could be passing or failing a test, do better or worse than expected, winning or losing a game, or social situations such as being accepted or rejected for a date. Following the outcome is a general emotional reaction to the outcome, which tends to be positive or negative according to the outcome. Thus, something happens and we react to it in a general way. It is after this emotional response that attributions occur. These are the actual explanations given for the outcome which are formed given particular casual antecedents. Causal antecedents refer to factors that may influence which particular attribution is formed and may include personal characteristics (history of failure or success), circumstances (e.g. feeling ill, fire-alarm sounded) or comparison to others. For example, a person who has a history of failure and fails a test may make a different attribution (such as inability) than a student who has a history of success and fails a test (such as lack of study). Likewise, being ill or not having a chance to study may predispose students to explain failures differently than successes, and students who do well while others do poorly may form attributions that are different than students who fail when others do well. Bandura (1993) has noted that self-efficacy may influence the attribution formed. Highly efficacious people will ascribe the outcome to their own agency, while less confident individuals will attribute the outcome to inability. While students may cite specific factors as attributions (e.g. ability or effort), it is the students’ perceptions of the characteristics of those attributions which actually influence motivation through emotions. That is, attributions possess characteristics and those characteristics affect motivation. For example, two students may attribute an outcome to ability. However, for one student ability may be a fixed characteristic of the person (I’m smart or I’m stupid), while the second student may see ability as referring to what he or she knows (I knew my stuff or I need to learn more) rather than a fixed entity (entity versus incremental/instrumental theorists; Dweck, 1986).

General emotional response

Positive or negative affect happy or sad relief or dejection

Outcome

Pass or fail Win or lose Acceptance or rejection

Ability Effort Skill and knowledge Teacher Luck

Attribution

Locus of causality Stability Controllability

Attribution characteristics

Shame, humiliation

Hopefulness, hopelessness, helplessness

Pride, confidence, satisfaction self -esteem

Behavioural consequences (affect)

Figure 1. The mechanism underlying the attribution–motivation process

Causal Antecedants

Personal characteristics Circumstances Comparison to others

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Choice of tasks Persistence Quality Cognitive Engagement

Psychological consequences

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Understanding student motivation 139

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140 T. Seifert Weiner (1984, 1985) defines attributions in terms of three characteristics or dimensions: locus of causality (does the cause originate within the individual?; e.g. effort), stability (is the cause stable and enduring or changing?; e.g. illness) and controllability (is the individual able to affect the cause?; e.g. amount of study). How students perceive causes in terms of these characteristics gives rise to emotions and those emotions have behavioural consequences. Failure attributed to stable causes might lead to expectations of continued failure and thus feelings of hopelessness, while failure attributed to unstable causes might lead to uncertain expectations for future outcomes and thus result in feelings of hopefulness. Students who attribute success and failure to internal, controllable causes are more likely to feel pride, satisfaction, confidence and have a higher sense of self-esteem. Consequently, these students will choose to work on more difficult tasks, persist longer in the face of failure, display higher levels of cognitive engagement and produce work that is of higher quality. Students who attribute failure to internal, uncontrollable stable factors (inability) are more likely to feel shame and humiliation and will show little effort or cognitive engagement. Students who attribute success to external factors are not going to experience the self-enhancing emotions of pride, satisfaction, confidence or self-esteem. Self-worth theory The self-worth theory of achievement motivation attempts to explain the motivation of some students as attempts to maintain or enhance self-worth (Covington, 1984) and students’ behaviours can be understood in terms of protecting self-worth. Figure 2 depicts the major premises of self-worth theory as an attempt to explain the thinking of the failure-avoidant student. The theory begins by postulating that people possess a sense of self-worth, and that self-worth is a critical dimension of human functioning. Self-worth refers to the judgement one makes about one’s sense of worth and dignity as a person. A person who has a sense of self-worth knows that he or she is loved and respected by others and is valued as a person. On the other hand, a person who feels unworthy is a person Ability

Self -Worth Performance

Perceived effort Affect

Figure 2. The central premises of self-worth theory

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Understanding student motivation 141 who does not feel respected or valued by others and may feel unloved. A person experiencing major depression may feel that he or she is utterly loathsome and repugnant as a person, that he or she is unlovable, and may be filled with selfcontempt. A sense of self-worth is positively correlated with well-being and is essential to the functioning of the human. Many behaviour and personality disorders are related to loss of self-worth and most teenage suicides are precipitated by a perceived loss in self-worth. According to Covington (1984), there is a belief in Western culture that self-worth is inherently connected to performance. That is, the worth of the individual is connected to his or her ability to do something well. People who are good at something are people who are worthy; people who are valued by others are good at tasks that are important. In the context of school, students who can get top grades (are smart) are deemed more worthy than those who do not do well. What counts is being able to do really well. In the mind of the failure-avoidant student, performance is a source of self-worth and ability is the source of performance. High-ability students do well, low-ability students do not. Often, the failure-avoidant student is not able to perform (that is, do well). In the absence of actual performance, perceived ability becomes linked to self-worth. Thus, while performance leads to self-worth and performance results from ability, looking like one has the capability to perform becomes the means of protecting self-worth if successful performance is not forthcoming. Perceived ability results in self-worth and perceived inability is a threat to self-worth. In other words, the failureavoidant student will strive to look competent or avoid looking competent as a means of protecting self-worth. Perceived effort becomes important because the failureavoidant student believes that effort is an index of ability. Smart people do not have to try hard and people who try hard are not smart. Therefore, like ability perceptions, effort perceptions are important. Yet, while these perceptions are important, it is the resulting affect that is the key to understanding motivation. Success which comes from high ability will result in feelings of pride and self-esteem. Success which comes from low effort implies high ability and will result in feelings of pride and self-esteem. Failure that is the result of low effort may lead to feelings of guilt. Failure that is the result of low ability may lead to feelings of shame and humiliation. Consequently, in self-worth theory the critical affect mechanism is that: high effort which results in failure implies low ability leading to feelings of shame and humiliation. According to Covington (1984), given the choice between feeling guilty by not working and feeling shamed by working hard and failing, students would rather feel guilty than feel shamed. The result of this mechanism is that failure avoiding students expend a great deal of effort trying not to look stupid by engaging in failure avoiding strategies. A failure avoiding strategy is not, as the name suggests, a strategy designed to avoid failure. Rather, it is a strategy designed to avoid the implication of failure, namely inability. Failure avoiding strategies are excuses students use to protect ability perceptions in the event of failure. They are defence mechanisms students use to protect their selfworth (Seifert, 1997) and include such behaviours as effort withdrawal (not trying), procrastination, maintaining a state of disorganization, setting goals too high, setting

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142 T. Seifert goals too low, cheating or asking for help. By engaging in these behaviours, students have a ready excuse to explain poor performance should it occur, an excuse other than inability (e.g. I could have done better if I had more time to study).

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Achievement goal theory Achievement goal theory posits that students’ academic motivation can be understood as attempts to achieve goals (Dweck, 1986; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Nicholls et al., 1990; Pintrich & Garcia, 1991). The premise of goal theory is that students’ behaviours are a function of desires to achieve particular goals, and research has focused primarily upon the two dominant goals of learning (also called mastery, task) and performance (also called ego-oriented, see Figure 3). Students pursuing mastery goals have been described as self-regulating and self-determining (Seifert, 1997) and their dispositions foster cognitive development. They believe that effort (or more importantly, some internal, controllable factor) is the cause of success or failure and intelligence is malleable (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). They also indicate a greater preference for challenge (Seifert, 1995a), engage in more strategy use, especially deep strategy processing (Meece et al., 1988; Pintrich & de Groot, 1990; Pintrich & Garcia, 1991; Seifert, 1995b), make more positive selfstatements (Diener & Dweck, 1978), report more positive affect and less negative affect, and are more likely to take responsibility for success and less likely to deny responsibility for failure (Seifert, 1995b). The learning goal student is task and Intelligence is a fixed entity

Avoid task

Performance Goal Pursuit

Maladaptive Behaviours

Negative self -talk

Negative affect

Anxiety Boredom Dislike task

Desire to prove ability Desire to avoid looking incompetent Failure is a threat

Intelligence is malleable Task-focused, problem-oriented self -talk

Adaptive Behaviours

Learning Goal Pursuit

Positive affect

Desire to acquire knowledge Difficult problems are a challenge Failure means knowledge is insufficient Effort is a means of manifesting knowledge

Optimism

Figure 3. Characteristics of performance and learning goal-pursuit students

Pride Satisfaction Confidence Self -worth

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Understanding student motivation 143 learning orientated, processing tasks and situations in terms of challenges to be overcome, demonstrating competence and learning new skills and knowledge. Students pursuing performance goals, on the other hand, have been described as being preoccupied with ability concerns. They are more concerned about how well they perform relative to others and how others will perceive them. They are more likely to believe that ability is the cause of success and failure, that intelligence is a fixed entity, view difficulty problems as failure (Dweck & Leggett, 1988), engage in less sophisticated strategy use (Nolen, 1988; Seifert, 1995b), make more negative self-statements, attribute success to uncontrollable factors (Seifert, 1995b) and are less likely to process information relative to previous success (Diener & Dweck, 1978). In other words, the performance goal student is self, other and failure focused, processing information in terms of self and others. Specifically, pursuit of a performance goal is a self-protective process in which the student seeks to gain a favourable judgement of competence or avoid an unfavourable judgement of competence (Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Seifert & O’Keefe, 2001) and to be, or appear to be, superior to others (Nicholls et al., 1990) or achieve an extrinsic reward such as a high grade (Pintrich & Garcia, 1991). However, what is worth noting is that the performance goal student will display adaptive behaviours if confidence is high, but will display maladaptive behaviours if confidence is low (Dweck, 1986). Sporadically, researchers have suggested the possibility of a work avoidance goal as distinct from learning and performance goals (Nicholls et al., 1990; Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996; Seifert et al., 1996; Seifert & O’Keefe, 2001; Jarvis & Seifert, 2002). Students pursuing a work avoidance goal have been described as those who consistently avoid putting in effort to do well, do only the minimum necessary to get by and avoid challenging tasks. Recent research suggests that students pursuing work avoidance goals tend to perceive their work as lacking meaning, may feel less competent than students pursuing learning goals and may have a greater tendency to make external attributions than learning goal students (Seifert & O’Keefe, 2001). Several reasons why students may be work avoidant have been suggested (Jarvis & Seifert, 2002). One reason students may engage in work avoidance is that they are failure-avoidant or learned-helplessness students (Covington, 1984; Jarvis & Seifert, 2002). Failure-avoidant students do not do the work because the work is a threat to ability perceptions or self-worth. Students who are learned helpless do not do the work because they do not feel capable of doing the work. Students may also be work avoidant if they feel capable of doing the work but see no reason for doing it. They find little challenge, stimulation, satisfaction or meaning in the work they do and, consequently, only do enough work to get by. Work avoidance may also emerge as a passive-aggressive mechanism (Jarvis & Seifert, 2002). In this mechanism, students do not perform the work for the teacher because the student is withholding effort as a means of seeking revenge. The student is harbouring feelings of resentment and hostility towards the teacher because he/she feels embarrassed by the teacher or has been treated unfairly by the teacher, or for some other reason the student does not like the teacher. Consequently, the student withholds effort as an attempt to either seek revenge or otherwise exert some sort of control over the teacher by foiling the teacher’s plans by not cooperating.

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144 T. Seifert

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Reconstructing motivation theory Self-efficacy theory posits that students who believe themselves to be capable are more likely to be motivated; those who believe themselves incapable will not be motivated. This explanation is apparent when we witness a child exclaim ‘I can do that!’ and readily attack the task at hand, or when we witness a child proclaim ‘I can’t do that’ and refuse to attempt the task. Yet, we must also admit that the self-efficacy explanation is unsatisfactory on two accounts. First, while it may seem sensible enough to say that students who perceive themselves incapable will not be motivated to learn, it is not necessarily the case that students who are not motivated to learn see themselves as incapable. This point is evidenced by the bright but bored underachieving student who does the minimum amount of work necessary to achieve some minimally acceptable standard. Such a student may feel capable but attaches no value to effort beyond the minimum. Second, we may have witnessed children proclaim ‘I can’t do that’, but proceed to attempt the problem anyway. A child may state that they do not know how to do something, but that perception of incapability may not necessarily hinder the child, perhaps because that child is using the claim as a self-protective mechanism or sees the problem as a challenge to be tackled. However, if we view motivation as an attempt to protect self-worth, then we can provide a more powerful explanation than self-efficacy theory. Self-worth is intimately connected with performance for many students and doing well is important to one’s sense of worth and dignity. Yet, if students cannot perform well, they seek ways to make it appear as though they could have succeeded. In other words, no matter what else occurs, they do not wish to look incompetent. Consequently, if students perceive themselves incapable of performing well (low self-efficacy), they may become motivated to protect perceptions of competency, for if they can convince themselves and others they could do well, they will be able to maintain some sense of worth or dignity. For example, imagine the situation in which a student has been given a test to complete. After reading the questions, the student realizes that the test is difficult. Instead of trying to answer the questions, the student fools around, failing the test. Afterwards, the teacher admonishes the student by saying that with some effort the student could have passed. This is a highly desirable outcome because the student and the teacher have blamed the failure on lack of effort, leaving the student’s perception of competency and self-worth unthreatened (for now). Thus, rather than exert a direct influence, self-efficacy interacts with other characteristics to influence motivation. Yet, if some students are acting to protect self-worth, are they also pursuing performance goals? The definitions and descriptions of performance goal pursuit suggest that students pursuing performance goals (e.g. Dweck, 1986) are essentially the same as the failure-avoidant student, described by Covington (1984). The student is motivated by a desire to protect ability perceptions by proving one’s self or avoiding appearances of incompetence, and both types of students engage in similar behaviours to achieve those ends. What underlies performance goal pursuit and failure-avoidant behaviour is the

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Understanding student motivation 145 belief that success and failure are the result of ability as a fixed entity. In other words, students believe that academic outcomes are the result of an internal, stable, uncontrollable entity and their own judgements of that entity give rise to emotions and behaviours. Thus, while many see attributions as occurring after the outcome and are products of tasks and circumstances, it is constructive also to consider attributions as beliefs students hold about the causes of success and failure prior to commencing a task. Beliefs about ability, both its nature (Dweck, 1986) and levels of competence (Bandura, 1993), influence goal pursuit. From the preceding argument, it would appear that self-perceptions of competence and a sense of agency (attribution patterns) are central to understanding motivation, and self-assuredness and agency are the cornerstones of students’ behaviour (Seifert, 1996, 1997). Recent work has shown that perceptions of competence and control are predictive of learning goal, performance goal and work-avoidant pursuit (Seifert, 1996, 1997; Seifert & O’Keefe, 2001). Students who feel confident, have a sense of agency and perceive meaning in their academic work will pursue learning goals. As confidence and sense of agency begin to wane, students may begin to engage in failure or work-avoidant behaviours (Seifert, 1997; Seifert & O’Keefe, 2001). If perceived meaning drops, work avoidance behaviours may increase (Seifert & O’Keefe, 2001; Jarvis & Seifert, 2002). This line of work is based upon the premise that students’ behaviours are, in part, guided by emotional responses to tasks and task conditions. Given a particular task in some situation, students generate an affective response prompting them to engage in certain behaviours. In other words, students exhibit patterns of beliefs and emotions which serve to direct behaviour. When presented with a task, students make judgements about the task and respond emotionally based upon task and personal characteristics. It is those emotions which dictate subsequent behaviour or motivation (Boekarts, 1993; Seifert, 1997; Seifert & O’Keefe, 2001). Emotions have played an important role in major, contemporary cognitive psychological theories of motivation. Weiner (1984, 1985) argued that emotions are motivational catalysts—feelings of helplessness, hopefulness, pride, guilt—which arise from attributions and influence subsequent behaviour. Bandura’s self-efficacy theory (1977) postulates that feelings of competency or agency determine the quality of task engagement—i.e. high levels of self-efficacy lead to high-quality task engagement, while threats to perceived competence give rise to failure-avoidant behaviour (Covington, 1984). Dweck (1986) pointed out that students who feel confident will engage in mastery-like behaviour, while a perceived threat to competency will lead to performance-oriented, helpless behaviours. While research suggests that affect may, in part, drive students’ behaviours, research has also consistently described recurring patterns of beliefs, affect and behaviours. In trying to understand motivation, these patterns of behaviour may be central to advancing our understanding of human behaviour in the academic context, and it seems that affect does play a central role in these patterns. For most of these patterns, perceptions of competence, agency and perceived meaning are critical. The first pattern evident from research is the mastery pattern. This pattern is synonymous with Dweck’s (1986) mastery goal-pursuit pattern and Covington’s

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146 T. Seifert (1984) success orientation or intrinsic motivation. Students characterized by this pattern tend to display positive affect, flexible and adaptive strategy use, and deep cognitive engagement in the task. They will tend to persist at difficult problems and learn from their mistakes. What drives the mastery pattern is a strong sense of self. Mastery students have a sense of competence and self-determination that gives rise to mastery goal pursuit (Bandura, 1993; Seifert, 1997; Seifert & O’Keefe, 2001). These students are confident in their capabilities to do the work (high self-efficacy) and believe that they are ‘masters of their fate’. That is, they have a strong sense of control and tend to make internal, controllable attributions for success and failure and are unlikely to make external attributions for success or failure. A second pattern of behaviour is that of failure avoidance. This pattern, synonymous with Dweck’s (1986) performance orientation, is characterized by less sophisticated strategy use, a tendency not to process information related to success and to make more negative self-statements. What drives the failure avoidance behaviour appears to be a desire to maintain ability perceptions and protect self-worth. These students are self, other and failure focused as they try to maintain ability perceptions. Also, these students tend to make internal, stable, uncontrollable attributions for success and failure. Consequently, they tend to believe that outcomes are beyond their control. As students experience a decline in confidence and agency they begin to adopt failure avoiding behaviours in an attempt to minimize threats to self-worth. A third pattern is that of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is characterized by an unwillingness on the part of the student to engage in tasks because he or she believes that effort is futile and failure is imminent. The student believes that the outcomes are beyond his or her control, and, regardless of one’s actions, the outcome is the same. Helpless students tend to make internal, stable, uncontrollable attributions for failure but tend to make external attributions for success. They blame themselves for failure but do not take credit for success. They experience much shame and humiliation, boredom and hopelessness. At the heart of learned helplessness is a conviction that one is totally incompetent, and a loss of any sense of agency. The learned helpless person is convinced that he/ she is utterly useless and incapable of effecting any positive change. Unlike the mastery student who sees himself or herself as an agent, life just happens to the learned helpless student. Students who are work avoidant because they are bright but bored constitute a fourth pattern. While students who are failure avoidant or learned helpless may find their work boring, students who are in the bright but bored group tend to believe themselves capable of doing the work. However, these students perceive their work to have little meaning. Consequently, the bright but bored student is work avoidant and will do only the work necessary to get by. Compared to mastery students, students who are bright but bored feel themselves capable of doing the work but exhibit greater externality. That is, while they are confident they take less control over their learning. This could, in part, be one reason why they are bored. The mastery student might seek out ways to make academic

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content meaningful, while the bright but bored work-avoidant student expects the content to be made meaningful for them. A fifth pattern of behaviour could be called the passive-aggressive or hostile work-avoidant patterns. This pattern has received little or no attention in the motivational literature, but some evidence has emerged which suggests that it does exist (Jarvis & Seifert, 2002). The hostile work-avoidant student is characterized by minimal or no effort as an attempt to seek revenge on the teacher. For some reason, the student is angry with the teacher and is withholding effort as a means of expressing that wrath. While little is understood about this type of student in the academic context, literature from clinical studies of passive aggression suggest that these students may tend to make external attributions and, therefore, feel they have little control. Conclusion It is suggested that students’ motivation may be thought of as patterns of behaviour and affect. Although five patterns have been described, undoubtedly more exist. However, these five patterns would probably describe most students and address the concerns of many teachers. It should also be pointed out that these patterns are in addition to, and do not take account of, problems that may arise because of personality or behaviour disorders. Of interest to teachers and researchers would be the pivotal role that feelings of competence and control play. The patterns of behaviour described in this paper may be characterized in terms of those feelings, or loss of those feelings. While it is reasonable to expect that other emotions may influence behaviour, competence and autonomy (control, self-determination) are critical. For students to develop into healthy, adaptive and constructive individuals, it is imperative to foster feelings of competence and control. Previous research has suggested that the teacher–student interaction is the critical factor in fostering a sense of competence and autonomy (Seifert & O’Keefe, 2001; Deci & Ryan, 2000). Perceived meaning is important in motivated behaviour. The mastery student is able to find meaning in the work. If students do not find the work meaningful and tend to make external attributions, then work avoidance may develop. To this point, however, little attention has been paid to meaning in studies of academic motivation. Yet, we can make a couple of claims about meaning. If students do not understand what it is they are supposed to do, then they may not be able to find meaning in their work. If the topic does not make sense, they may not be able to discern the relevance of the topic. Likewise, if students do not feel capable of understanding the topic, they may not find the work meaningful. Consequently, there are a number of implications for teachers. First, teachers need to communicate to students the objectives of the lesson—what it is the students should learn. Doing so may enhance the students’ self-efficacy for the task at hand by helping students feel confident in their work (Schunk, 1982; Ames, 1994). Teachers may also consider how to promote autonomy and self-direction in the classroom because how teachers construct classroom environments may impact on

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148 T. Seifert students’ perceptions of competence and autonomy in the classroom (Boggianno & Katz, 1991; Ames, 1993; Ryan & Deci, 2000). Ultimately, though, the critical factor in the learning process may be how the teacher and students interact. Teachers who are perceived as being nurturing, supportive and helpful will be developing in students a sense of confidence and selfdetermination which will be translated into the learning-oriented behaviours of the intrinsically motivated student (Seifert & O’Keefe, 2001).

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