Effects of Motivation on the Learning Activity

A concept with a broad resonance in the history of human behavior, motivation expresses the fact that "the basis of human behavior either by knowledge or by practice and actions is always a set of incentives needs, attractions, emotions, actions, deeds, attitudes". A product of the encounter between the biologic and the social, motivation operates as a dynamic and plastic system providing the social adaptive program of the subject. Genetically, this program exists in primal forms and at pre-human levels. By learning and education, some of these mechanisms are enhanced and reconstructed, others are suspended and therefore, at a certain level of subject's development, they bear the mark of high subjectivity, uniqueness and originality. Having relative autonomy, these are capable to mobilize, to interrupt, to actively transform the external causes, to mediate the infinite variability of the relationships of human with the environment, with him/herself and to provide the energy and the constellation of meanings which he or she gives to reality. The general objective of this study is to investigate the motivation of pre-university students from the perspective of self/determination. Since this perspective is very broad, we focused only on the analysis of the relationship between the evaluation (self-evaluation) of school related tasks and the types of motivation (according to a specific typology). The emphasis will be on the intrinsic motivation taking also into account the debates in recent times according to which we are witnessing a constant decrease of this type of motivation.