Detail Action Research

Action Research Project:

Intrinsic versus Extrinsic motivation: What motivates students in the classroom, both in the special education and the regular education classrooms?

Setting of your study:

The population at my school consists of approximately 1000 students in grades PreK - 5, included Early Childhood, attend our elementary school. This population is ethnically divided into 77% Hispanic, 9% Asian/Pacific Islanders, 12% African-American, and 3% White. Approximately 81% of our students qualify for the free or reduced breakfast/lunch program. Due to the high percentage of students qualifying for the free or reduced breakfast and lunch programs, our school continues to qualify as a schoolwide Title I school. Our instructional programs include special education (ECH, Resource, & Speech), bilingual, ESL, gifted and talented classes (including gifted bilingual programs) and after-school tutorials and clubs.

Operational definition of your target population:

As educators, I believe it is a constant struggle to motivate our students. For this reason, I think we turn to external motivators to get our students to acquire some desire to complete tasks. During my study, I want compare data with other teachers and determine who are the intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivated students and research ways of moving our extrinsic students to intrinsic motivators. I also believe that there is a correlation to intrinsic motivated students to parent involvement, and I would like to research this believe some more.

Sample:
My sample will include students in the regular ed and special ed and parent data. My class consists of grades 3-5 Life Skills and I would like to include one 1st grade class and one 5th grade class as well in the study. I will provide the involved teachers with a handout summarizing my action research project. I will provide them with a checklist that they will use when identifying the intrinsic and extrinsic motivated students and a list of motivation strategies to apply during instruction. During the process of data collection, I will ask the teachers to keep a journal on what they observe during the action research project. We will have periodic meetings to review our collected data.

Description of how I will conduct my data:

The main questions I would like to have answered at the end of my study are:
1. Is there long-term positive or negative results in applying extrinsic motivation?
2. How can we change the desire from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation?
3. Are intrinsic and extrinsic motivated students given the same opportunities in the classroom?
4. Is there a correlation between the intrinsic or extrinsic motivated student and demonstrating appropriate behavior in the classroom?
5. Will the expectation of a reward that is contingent upon performance decrease intrinsic motivation?

The selected teachers and I will use a checklist and a daily journal to document our findings during the action research project study. I would also like to determine if there is a correlation in students grades and whether they are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated.