Teachers' Perceptions of Academic Intrinsic Motivation for Students with Disabilities

• In Event: 2-009 - Using Secondary Data to Identify Educational Outcomes among Special Populations

Abstract

An individual's innate desire to engage in an activity has been referred to as intrinsic motivation (IM). The term IM describes an individual's disposition to complete a task for the sake of internal rewards such as satisfaction or pleasure (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Several positive effects of IM on the academic outcomes of students in grades K-12 have been reported. Students with higher IM have better academic achievement (Taboada et al., 2009), take a more favorable outlook toward challenges (Wigfield et al., 2004), spend more time with academic tasks, and gain a deeper understanding of the content (Schiefele, 1999). While researchers have extensively studied the effects of IM on typically developing children, there is less information on IM for students with disabilities (SWD).

The purpose of this study was to use a nationally representative sample of students with disabilities from the Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study (SEELS, Holden-Pitt, 2005) to measure academic IM variability in different student disability categories. We chose to use a proxy measure of student academic IM because research to date has not explored how teachers perceive IM in SWD. It is important to identify how teachers perceive their students because teachers play an influential role in enhancing and promoting students' academic IM (Furrer & Skinner, 2003). An additional reason for choosing to study a proxy measure of academic IM in SWD was the availability of teacher report on observable classroom behaviors attributed to academic IM in the SEELS dataset. Furthermore, for students requiring substantial support, such as those with severe intellectual disability or students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), it may not have been possible for participants to respond to cognitively complex questions regarding academic IM. We also created regression models to explore if predictor variables such as parental expectations, teacher pedagogical competence, and frequency of student classroom collaboration help explain factors that influence and predict teachers' ratings of academic IM for SWD.

Teachers perceived students diagnosed with ASD to have the lowest academic IM. Controlling for external factors, such as parental expectations and teachers' pedagogical competence, attenuated gaps in teacher perception of student IM between students with intellectual disability and learning disability. Additionally, including student classroom collaboration variables, such as frequency of participation in peer work and classroom discussion, to the model reduced disparities in teacher perceived academic IM between students with ASD and learning disabilities.

Authors

• Johny Daniel, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• North Cooc, University of Texas at Austin