Accelerated Reader By George Gardiner

Motivation is a complex construct, but in it’s simplest form motivation can be broken into two main components: intrinsic and extrinsic. When a person is intrinsically motivated to do something, the desire emanates from within. Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, involves completing a task for an external reason. By encouraging children through rewards, their intrinsic motivation is destroyed. When the focus of an activity becomes gaining a reward, intrinsic motivation is reduced. Students learn that it’s often easier to find shortcuts to reach the reward rather than taking the intended route. Steve Gardiner gives an example of this characteristic when looking at the Accelerated Reader program, “ Each boy read one book, then using the other boys’ passwords, took the quiz …show more content…
Gardiner explains that rewarding the child only motivated the child to reach the reward as quick as possible. Supporting this claim Gardiner also states, “While there may be an initial increase in desired behavior, in most cases, these attempts to buy performance won’t last long. Eventually they may do serious damage to students’ intrinsic motivation” (Gardiner, 1). This statement just further stresses the fact that in the future children will only work hard to receive rewards, but once those rewards are not present the child will stop their hard work. This issue occurs most often in school when teaching a child. Most teachers have at one point or another tried some reward systems; charts on the wall with stars, stickers, or candy. Not only does this occur in school, but most parents try similar tricks, such as, extended curfews, presents, and money. Although given with good intentions, these rewards only assist in the destruction of the child’s intrinsic motivation. Now with the expectation of rewards the children have become extrinsically motivated rather than intrinsically motivated. A child who intrinsically motivated undertakes a task for very