The impacts of motivation on learning

There are two types of students: those of which who can be heard saying, “I love the book we are reading in English, I can’t wait to discuss it in class”, as opposed to their classmates, “Will this be on the test?”

Students can be intrinsically motivated—wanting to learn in order to satisfy their curiosity—or extrinsically motivated—interested in achievement more than the content being delivered to them.

Being intrinsically or extrinsically motivated does not mean one student is superior to another, it simply means they are driven by different things, as Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teac...