(2) Extrinsic rewards generally pay off in the coin of someone else’s realm. While merit increases in salary,
for instance, may be valuable to some--usually, | should add, for momentary satisfaction rather than long-term
motivation--they undoubtedly will not be as valuable to others. Rewards need to be self-selected to be per-
manently valued, and external reward systems designed for an entire faculty do not provide currency which
everyone enjoys spending. The better solution is to individualize rewards.

(3) Extrinsic rewards must be forever increased. McKeachie asks those who wish to use promotion as an
incentive, for instance, “What happens when all faculty are full professors; what motivates then?” Will this
year’s merit scholar with a $500 increase be willing to do more or even the same next year for a similar amount?
The ante must be continually raised. Although McKeachie is quick to add, as I am, that “low salaries are bad,”
good salaries simply prime the pump. They do not pump the water. That comes through intrinsic motivation.

We can learn much about an intrinsic reward system by watching it work in the lives of intrinsically
motivated individuals. Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, Professor of Behavior Sciences and Education at the University
of Chicago, has done that systematically and has found that, whether climbing mountains or teaching a class,
the intrinsically motivated person regularly experiences great enjoyment in the midst of the activity, what
Czikszentmihalyi terms “flow.” Flow is characterized by a “deep, spontaneous involvement with the task at
hand,” a condition in which hours seem like minutes and where the motivation for the activity is the activity
itself. How might this apply to teaching?

The choice and structuring of teaching activity is to a large degree our own. According to
Czikszentmihalyi, if we build teaching projects, as intrinsically motivated persons do, to meet the following five
requirements, we can generate flow experiences and enjoy an increase in personal motivation:

1. Control the challenges you offer yourself so that the degree of challenge is matched with the same level of
skill.

Isolate the activity from others which might distract your involvement.

Using criteria clear to you, be able to evaluate performance at any time.

Design the activity so it provides “concrete feedback” to which your criteria can be applied.

Create activities with a broad range of challenges so that you can gain “increasingly complex information”
about yourself and about your project.

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Given this viewpoint, we are more the creators of our own satisfactions and motivations than we may imagine.
Certainly, institutional factors influence the general climate, but continued reliance upon extrinsic rewards for
motivation simply puts off the day when the classroom and other related activities come alive in their own right.
Who will be the last to learn this lesson--faculty or students?

Dwight Oberholtzer
Department of Sociology
Pacific Lutheran University

Reprinted with permission from The Teaching-Learning Forum, Fall, 1983.
For further information, contact the author at Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington 98447. He

wishes to acknowledge that the stimulation for much of this article comes from James L. Bess, ed., Motivating
Professors to Teach Effectively (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1982).

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Suanne D. Roueche, Editor
November 30, 1984, Vol. VI, No. 33
INNOVATION ABSTRACTS is a publication of the National institute for Staff and Organizational Development, EDB 348, The University of Texas at Austin,

Austin, Texas 78712, (512) 471-7545. Subscriptions are available to nonconsortium members for $35 per year. Funding in part by the W. K. Kellogg
Foundation and Sid W. Richardson Foundation. Issued weekly when classes are in session during fall and spring terms and monthly during the summer.

© The University of Texas at Austin, 1984
Further duplication is permitted only by MEMBER institutions for their own personnel. ISSN 0199-106

 

 

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