In this blog post I begin describing the forces that nurture intrinsic motivation.  There are ten of them, and I will describe one per post over the next few months.  Focusing on and emphasizing these forces helps teachers create an engaging, productive classroom environment that brings out the best in students.  For teachers who may be a bit nervous about the prospect of managing a group of children without relying on rewards and punishments, these forces offer a far more powerful, far more genuine alternative to traditional classroom management approaches that are rooted in Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and rely on extrinsic motivation.

 Because of the many problems associated with using rewards and punishments in the classroom, it becomes clear that neither rewarding nor punishing students offers teachers a management approach consistent with quality principles.  The choice that so many educators face of whether to emphasize punishments or rewards in their classrooms is not really a choice at all.  Both methods are extrinsic.  Both seek to control the actions of students based on the promise that if you do this, this will happen to you, and, as a result, present a similar array of problems.  Both rest on the assumptions of Theory X put forth by Douglas McGregor (described in Blog Post #5), and both exist because they are believed to be necessary to maintain order and effort.