Concepts Of Motivation In Education

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION: BACKGROUND TO THE PROBLEM

The study of motivation in relation to one’s level of achievement has been a topical

issue in educational forums worldwide. Despite the theories, interpretations, and applications, man is still in pursuit of discovering ways of using the motivational concept to solve educational problems. Trying to define motivation is a little like trying to define psychology itself. Taking as a starting point the layman’s view of psychology as the study of ‘what makes people tick’, motivation is concerned with why people act and behave the way they do. According to Rubin and McNeil (1983), Motives are a special kind of cause which energize, direct and sustain a person’s behaviour (including hunger, thirst, sex and curiosity). Motivation therefore refers in a general sense, to the processes involved in the initiation, direction and energisation of individual behaviour (Geen, 1995). Motivation is perhaps one of the most essential ingredients for effective learning to occur, however, it has proven to be a rather difficult element to measure. The word ‘motive’ comes from the Latin for ‘move’ (movere). ‘The study of motivation is the study of all those pushes and prods- biological, social and psychological- that defeat our laziness and moves us either eagerly or reluctantly, to action’ (Miller, 1962). At the heart of each approach to studying motivation, lies an image of human