A desire to be taught: Instructional consequences of intrinsic motivation

This paper summarizes the results from a series of studies designed to test the hypothesis that making learning more fun will produce corresponding increases both in learning and retention and in subsequent interest in the subject matter itself. Each study examined the effects of two or more versions of an educational activity, each designed to involve identical instructional content, but to differ in motivational appeal The data from the studies presented provide good general support for the hypothesized cognitive and motivational benefits of appropriately designed motivational embellishments of educational activ#ies. Exceptions to this rule, however, and a more general theoretical analysis of the conditions under which such positive effects are (and are not) expected to occur, are also discussed. [When teaching a child] great care must be taken that it never be made a business to him, nor he look on it as a task.... I have always had a fancy that learning might be made a play and a recreation to children; and that they might be brought o a desire to be taught, if only learning were proposed to them as a thing of delight and recreation, and not a business or a task. John Locke (1693) In his Some Thoughts Concerning Education, published nearly thre