1. Task Engagement mediates the relationship between
Perceived Competence and Intrinsic Motivation of Students
Nancy Habib

2. How to save the world?
• ‘Education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to
save the world.’ – Nelson Mandela
• ‘With guns you can kill terrorists. With education you can kill
terrorism.’ – Malala Yousafzai
• ‘Education is a vaccine for violence.’ – Edward James Olmos
• ‘We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love for
reading.’ – B.F. Skinner

3. Many students
lack motivation
and withdraw from
school
engagement
nowadays
(Babcock &
Marks, 2011).
Why?

4. The Importance of Motivation
• Motivation energizes, maintains, and
directs behavior.
• Motivation involves a constellation of
beliefs, perceptions, values, interests,
and actions that are all closely related.
• Academic motivation is the “enjoyment
of school learning characterized by a
mastery orientation; curiosity;
persistence; task-endogenous; and the
learning of challenging, difficult, and
novel tasks” (Gottfried,1990).

5. Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic Motivation
Extrinsic Motivation
Amotivation
• Intrinsic motivation energizes and sustains
activities through the spontaneous
satisfactions inherent in effective volitional
action (Deci et al., 1999).
• Intrinsic motivation is the inherent
propensity to seek out novelty and optimal
challenges, to extend and exercise one’s
capacities, to explore, and to learn (Deci &
Ryan, 1985a).
• Traditionally, educators consider intrinsic
motivation to be more desirable and to
result in better learning outcomes than
extrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 1999).

6. Self-Determination Theory
Needs for autonomy, relatedness/belonging, and competence

7. Self-perceived Competence
Also known as perceived Control
• A personal characteristic that reflects
one's global expectation or belief in
his/her ability to accomplish tasks
(Eccles and Gootman, 2002, Lerner et
al., 2005 and Schunk and Pajares,
2005).
• Competence involves feelings of
effectiveness, self-efficacy, or confidence
in one’s efforts to intentionally impact the
environment (Bandura, 1993; Elliott et
al., 2002; White, 1959).
Predictor of academic motivation and
performance
• As students, children and adolescents
need experiences with competence,
relatedness, and autonomy in order to
nurture a self-directed level of motivation
for social development and academic
achievement (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000;
Deci, Vallerand, Pelletier, & Ryan, 1991;
Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2002).

8. Satisfying the Need for Competence
Empowerment refers to the amount of
perceived control that students have over their
learning
• Students must believe that they have
some control over some aspect of their
learning (Jones, B. D. 2009).
• An individual’s beliefs about controllability
may influence the degree of effort
expended to master a skill or change an
environment versus a decision to tolerate
an adverse situation (Compas, Banez,
Malcarne, & Worsham, 1991).
• Perceived control is influenced by social
relationships and by environmental
contexts, and can facilitate goal
achievement.
Social agents
• Academic attitudes and behaviors are
strongly influenced by key social agents
in the student’s environment, whether
these be teachers, parents, or friends.

9. Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET)
• Social contexts that promote autonomy,
competence, and relatedness will
facilitate intrinsic and internalized
motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2002).
• The effects on intrinsic motivation of
external events such as the offering of
rewards, the delivery of evaluations, the
setting of deadlines, and other
motivational inputs are a function of how
these events influence a person’s
perceptions of competence and self-
determination.
• Events that increase perceived
competence will enhance intrinsic
motivation so long as they are
accompanied by perceived self-
determination (e.g., Ryan, 1982), and
those that decrease perceived
competence will diminish intrinsic
motivation.
• Perceived competence and motivation
are positively associated.

10. Reinforcing
Intrinsic
Motivation
• Rewards (and other external events) have two
aspects:
• The informational aspect conveys self-determined
competence and thus enhances intrinsic motivation.
• In contrast, the controlling aspect prompts an external
perceived locus of causality (i.e., low perceived self-
determination) and thus undermines intrinsic motivation.
Overjustification Effect
When individuals are given tangible rewards for
engaging in initially-interesting tasks, subsequent interest
in those activities has been found to decline (Lepper &
Greene, 1978).
While the overjustification effect has been
consistently obtained with tangible rewards, verbal rewards
tend to enhance rather than decrease interest (Deci, 1971,
1972; Anderson et al., 1976; Swann & Pittman, 1977).
Verbal Rewards!

11. Justify Value and Develop Interest
• Cognitive evaluation theory (CET) explains
changes in people’s intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation on interesting activities – on
activities that are inherently interesting,
fun, novel, optimally challenging,
enjoyable, and intrinsically appealing.
• This theory does not apply, however, to
inherently uninteresting activities (Deci &
Ryan, 1985).
• Nurturing inner motivational resources is a
helpful motivational strategy when the task
at hand is a potentially interesting thing to
do, but sometimes we ask students to do
relatively uninteresting things.
• Mossholder (1981) reported that initial task
interest moderated the effects of goal
setting on both intrinsic motivation and
task satisfaction.
• Specifically, he reported that assigned
goals reduced individuals' intrinsic
motivation to work on an interesting task
and increased individuals' intrinsic
motivation to work on a boring task.

12. Goal Setting
Why Set Goals?
• People with goals outperform those
without goals (Locke, 1996; Locke and
Latham, 1990, 2002).
• Generally speaking, the same person
performs better when she has a goal
than when she does not have a goal.
• Goal setting aids performance on
uninteresting, straightforward tasks by
generating motivation that the task itself
cannot generate.
Type of Goal
• Goals do not always enhance
performance. Only those goals that are
difficult, specific, and self-congruent do
so (Koestner, Lekes, Powers, &
Chicoine, 2002; Locke et al., 1981).
• Difficult goals energize behavior.
• Specific goals direct attention and strategic
planning.
• Self-concordant goals energize behavior,
maintain persistence, direct attention, and
inspire strategic planning.

13. Self-concordant
goals
• Internalization is motivated by the need for competence
and once the students internalize a future-focused
cognitive representation of a desired end state goal,
they pursue goals that are congruent or ‘concordant’
with their core self, they pursue ‘self-concordant’ goals.
• The offering of explanatory rationales allows the
students the opportunity to internalize and voluntarily
accept the externally imposed expectancies.
• Self-concordant goals generate and sustain greater
effort (i.e., greater ‘agency’) than do self-discordant
goals (Sheldon & Elliot, 1999). Once internalized,
people voluntarily (autonomously) put forth effort on
even uninteresting (but important) activities (Jang,
2008; Reeve et al., 2002).
• The desire to pursue self-concordant goals is
embedded in a context of positive affect and ‘wanting
to.’
A student needs both a goal and
feedback to maximize performance.

14. Goal Setting: Moderator variable between Perceived
Competence and Task Engagement
Predictor of Motivation?
• Motivation can be described in terms of
the individual’s values in relation to the
task at hand. It has been noted that the
consideration of values permits the
prediction of behavior (Landy & Becker,
1987).
• It is necessary to have students involved
to keep them engaged in school.
Task Engagement
• Active, goal-directed, flexible,
constructive, persistent, focused,
emotionally positive interactions with the
social and physical environments”
(Skinner, Furrer, Marchand, &
Kindermann, 2008, p. 766), is one type
of action outlined in models of academic
motivation.
• Engagement is reflective of student
motivation, but is distinct from
motivational constructs, such as
competence or relatedness.

15. Task
Engagement
• Although school engagement and
motivation are closely related
(Jimerson, Campos, & Greif, 2003), as
of yet no theory driven framework,
which subsumes both motivation and
school engagement, has been
developed.
• A person’s motivation cannot be
separated from the social context in
which it is embedded (Keyes, 2007;
Ryan & Deci, 2000).
• Students who perceive their
environment as more supportive will be
more autonomously motivated toward
their studies. In turn, they will perceive
themselves as more competent and will
be less likely to abandon a task.
Engagement encompasses
behavioral, emotional, and cognitive
states present during the act of
participating in academic tasks
(Blumenfeld et al., 2005).

16. Hypotheses
• Primary aims are,
• (1) to observe perceived academic competence and
intrinsic academic motivation to be positively correlated,
as has been found in prior research,
• (2) to detect an association among the three variables
and,
• (3) to identify task engagement as a direct mediator
between perceived competence and intrinsic motivation.
• I expect that individuals that score highly on perceived
competence and school engagement will be have an
intrinsic orientation to academic motivation.
Mediation Analysis
Task
Engagement in
School
Intrinsic
Academic
Motivation
Perceived
Academic
Competence

17. Methods
Participants
• Cross-sectional design examines third-,
fourth-, and fifth-grade students’
perceptions of competence and levels of
intrinsic motivation in relation to their
engagement in school.
• N = 200
• Heritage Elementary, Tampa Bay’s most
diverse elementary school (based on
statistics and district reviews on ethnic,
economic, and cultural diversity).
Measures
• We have chosen a quantitative research
approach to acquire a better insight into
the relationship among the various factors
influencing students’ motivation.
• The concepts in this study are
operationalized and measured using
existing scales.
• We conduct a series of regression
analyses (using SPSS 16.0) to investigate
the hypotheses that the level of perceived
competence on student motivation is
mediated by their task engagement.

18. Measures
• Perception of Competence: Sheldon and Hilpert
(2012) Balanced Measure of Psychological Needs (BMPN)
scale assesses the three needs. It contains six items, three
assessing satisfaction (e.g., “I was successfully completing
difficult tasks and projects”) and three assessing
dissatisfaction (e.g., “I struggled doing something I should be
good at”).
• Task Engagement: Skinner’s Engagement vs. Disaffection
with Learning (EDL; Skinner, Furrer, Marchand, &
Kindermann, 2008). The EDL is a 20-item instrument that
measures both behavioral engagement and emotional
engagement. “In class, I work as hard as I can.” (behavioral
engagement); “In class, I do just enough to get by.”
(behavioral disaffection); “When I’m in class, I feel good.”
(emotional engagement); and “When I’m doing work in this
class, I feel bored.” (emotional disaffection).
• Intrinsic Motivation: Harter’s (1980, 1981) scale of intrinsic
versus extrinsic orientation in the classroom provides the
basis for our separate measures of students’ reported intrinsic
and extrinsic motivation: preference for challenge (i.e., a
desire for challenging vs. easy tasks), curiosity (i.e., a focus
on personal curiosity/interest vs. a focus on pleasing the
teacher and/or getting a good grade), and independent
mastery (i.e., a desire for independent mastery vs. a
dependence on the teacher for guidance and direction).
Adolescents are evaluated on all
measures using a Likert Scale.
Some items on the scales are
positively worded and others are
negatively worded.

19. Results
School engagement reveals a significant influence on motivation orientation

20. Results
• Perceived competence is associated with intrinsic
motivation, as well as being linked to task engagement.
• Task engagement is a mediator between perceived
competence and intrinsic motivation.
• The students who participated in this study and scored
very highly on both perceived competence and task
engagement reported an intrinsic motivation to learn,
which focuses on mastery goals.
• Students who scored lower on perceived competence,
indicated lower task engagement and an orientation
toward extrinsic motivation.
• The overall pattern of associations supports the
hypotheses, such as, task engagement directly
mediates the relationship between perceived
competence and motivation.
• No gender differences were observed.
The internal validity of data
collection and analysis was
strengthened by using triangulation.

21. DISCUSSION
• The question of what motivates students to
achieve is central to education and educational
psychology.
• Accordingly, factors that influence academic
success and motivation of students have often
been the focus of educators and policy makers.
• If no child is to be left behind, motivation to learn
must be a focus of teachers.
• Psychological need constructs are enjoying a
renaissance in contemporary motivation research,
especially within the self-determination theory
tradition (SDT; Deci and Ryan 1985).
• When an individual does not develop a strong
sense of competence, there is a higher risk of
experiencing anxiety, depression, or withdrawal
from the environment (Bandura 1993; Patrick et
al., 1993) and less likelihood of self-determined
motivation being in play (Bandura, 1993; Elliott et
al., 2002).

22. DISCUSSION
• A dominant explanation for a decrease in
motivation for school is the lack of
“person–environment” fit, that is, poor
integration of students’ personal world
into the school environment (Eccles and
Midgley 1989).
• A school environment that is not well
tuned to the interests, needs and values
of students will adversely affect their
identification with school and, as a
consequence, will lead to a decrease in
their motivation and efforts in the long
run.
• An understanding of motivation
can be applied to promote
students’ classroom
engagement, to foster the
motivation to learn and develop
talent, to support the desire to
stay in school rather than to
drop out, and to inform teachers
how to provide a motivationally
supportive classroom climate.
• The model posits that
perceived competence plays a
role in dropout intentions, and
that task engagement, which is
facilitated through goal setting
and feedback, is a mediator
between perceived competence
and motivation.

23. DISCUSSION
• The 21st century and the growing dominance of
knowledge-based societies in the Western world
have coincided with increased importance for
education.
• Teachers, administrators, and other adults in the
lives of adolescents can support positive academic
outcomes for students by promoting opportunities for
enhanced perceptions of competence, while
strengthening intrinsic motivation to broaden the
students’ horizons.
• Analyzing the association between perceptions of
competence in intrinsically motivated adolescents,
productivity can be improved, enriched and valued.
• This proposal might generalize to other areas
beyond the classroom, including the workplace as
well as our personal lives, such as generating
intrinsic motivation to workout.
Expanded understanding of the link
between goal setting and
perceptions of competence,
engagement and motivation can be
predicted, thus improving students’
learning experience.

24. Limitations
• Most research on engagement is concerned with its
ability to predict academic achievement using more
general, summative measures of achievement (such
as student grades).
• As any teacher could attest, students differ widely in
how they participate in school and the rate at which
new academic skills are acquired.
• For example, when teachers consider engagement they
may think of students who are compliant with rules as
engaged. Whereas students may think more about how
they feel during learning activities and the extent to
which they participate with enthusiasm.
• Teacher and student reports of engagement may be
focusing on different, but equally important nuances
of engagement, it seems critical to include data from
both teachers and students.
Task Engagement

25. Limitations
• Motivation is a dynamic process – always changing,
always rising and falling. Not only do motive strengths
continually rise and fall, but people also harbor a
multitude of different motives at any one point in time.
• How students deal with the consequences of getting
poor grades or negative feedback is a crucial
determinant of their persistence in, versus their drop-
out from, the school context (Major et al., 1998;
Nussbaum & Steele, 2007).
• A first caution associated with goal setting is that it
works best when tasks are relatively uninteresting and
require only a straightforward procedure (Wood, Mento,
& Locke, 1987).
• A second caution associated with goal setting is goal
conflict. People rarely pursue only one goal at a time
and instead pursue goals that sometimes conflict with
one another (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996).
Goal Setting

26. Education is an
essential means to
empower individuals as
well as a source of
tremendous potential
for the social,
economic, and cultural
development of the
world.
The development of this proposal has inspired me to
continue upholding the significance of education
because it is the enabler that allows individuals to
reach their potential, to dream bigger dreams and to be
more fully engaged with a much bigger world.
I anticipate fostered psychological needs will promote a
proactive willingness to seek out and to engage in an
environment that we expect will be able to nurture our
psychological needs.
Education will make a difference in the world