Making learning fun: A taxonomy of intrinsic motivations for learning

  • Lepper M
  • Malone T
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Abstract

Over the past 2 decades, great strides have been made in analyzing the cognitive processes involved in learning and instruction. During the same period, however, attention to motivational issues has been minimal. It is now time to redress this imbalance. As Bruner (1966) has put the case: The will to learn is an intrinsic motive, one that finds both its source and its reward in its own exercise. The will to learn becomes the problem only under specialized circumstances like those of a school, where a curriculum is set, students confined and a path fixed. The problem exists not so much in learning itself, but in the fact that what the school imposes often fails to enlist the natural energies that sustain spontaneous learning. (p. 127) In fact, it seems a frequent assumption about schools that learning is boring and unpleasant drudgery-somethingone endures only to avoid punishment or to achieve some external goal, such as a good grade-point average or a high-paying job (Jackson, 1968; Lepper, 1983). This need not be the case. In this chapter, we summarize and extend earlier work by Malone (1981a, 1981b) concerning the design of instructional environments that are intrinsically motivating, that is, environments in which people are motivated to learn in the absence of obvious external rewards or punishments.

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Lepper, M. R., & Malone, T. W. (1987). Making learning fun: A taxonomy of intrinsic motivations for learning. In Aptitude, Learning and Instruction III: Conative and Affective Process Analyses (Vol. 98, pp. 223–253). Retrieved from http://ha1.www.mendeley.com/groups/534661/engagement/papers/

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