Self Determination Theory Present by: Brady Kocher Deci and Ryan Self Determination Theory Present by: Brady Kocher

Edward Deci Edward L Deci is a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology from Carnegie-Mellon University. Edward Deci has been involved with research on human motivation for over 40 years. During this time, Deci has published 10 books and several journal articles

Richard M. Ryan Richard M Ryan is also a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. Richard Ryan holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Rochester. Ryan has over 30 years experience researching human motivation.

Self Determination Theory During the early 1970’s Richard Ryan attended graduate school at the University of Rochester. It was during this time that Deci and Ryan developed a close working relationship that even produced some published work. Shortly after Ryan received his PhD, Deci and Ryan combined studies comparing intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and the roll it played on human behavior to introduce the Self Determination Theory (SDT).

SDT Humans are faced with ongoing challenges that impact the way in which we assimilate and adapt to social environments. Of those challenges, intrinsic motivation or the inherent drive to seek out challenges and new possibilities supports the basic psychological needs that must be satisfied to foster well-being. Competence, autonomy and psychological relatedness are three psychological needs that motivate the self to initiate behavior essential for psychological health and well-being of an individual.

Psychological Needs Competency refers to successfully completing a task. Intrinsic motivation increases with the feeling of competency. Autonomy refers to free choice and is formally defined as “internally perceived locus of causality” (Deci & Ryan,). Intrinsic motivation decreases as autonomy decreases. Relatedness is the need to feel connected to others and to feel like you belong. It involves caring about others as well as being cared for. When each of these needs are satisfied, people will experience enhanced self motivation and mental health.

SDT and Literacy According to Tracy Morrow (2007), “Intrinsic motivation is at the core of information literacy, the foundation for a desire to learn and find information independently.” Intrinsic motivation is important to a child’s desire to engage with text. According to Morrow (2007), the intrinsic motivation to learn starts to decrease around third grade and continues to decline through eight grade. Self determination theory be used to explain how and why a child decides to pick up that book to read and learn.

SDT and Literacy Chizik (2008) reported that, “students’ feelings of autonomy, competence, and belonging should lead to improved self-determined motivation and perseverance in writing that is necessary for development of literacy skills”. Using mix methods, Chizik (2008) documented the impact a playwriting program implemented within a middle school comprised mainly of a low socio-economic Latino students had on their confidence with writing and reading

Playwriting Chizik found that language arts curriculum can be modified to include opportunities for playwriting to meet each student’s psychological need for autonomy, relatedness and belonging. Playwriting can create opportunities to provide students with individual ownership within their own writing.

Teacher Support Perceived confidence, or the belief in one’s ability to complete a task can be affected by ability labeling. Schools use ability-labeling reading material such as accelerated reader, which can give students mixed messages regarding their competence in reading certain level texts Teachers can increase student confidence through scaffolding to support the student at their ability level. This can be done by helping kids build structure to organize thought’s and ideas.

SDT Self-Determination Theory represents a broad framework for the study of human motivation and personality. Included within this framework are meta theories for motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation, role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on cognitive and social development as well as social and cultural factors that affect an individuals quality of performance. SDT framework has both broad and behavior-specific implications for understanding practices and structures that enhance versus diminish need satisfaction