Motivation

Motivation

Enhancing motivation of a secondary school student to participate in physical activity: An integrated psychological intervention

Introduction to the client

My client was a 15 year-old secondary school child. According to his school, he did not always participate in physical activity during PE lessons, and his level of performance and fitness was well below average. His parents said he did not participate in physical activity outside of school. His parents were concerned that his low level of physical activity would negatively impact his emotional and physical well-being

This case study documents my intervention, including background research, method and implementation, and results up until 2 weeks after the initial meeting.Motivation Literature

In the field of motivational literature, I identified several common strategies shared by the various theories that I studied, and chose to incorporate these strategies into my proposed intervention.Self-determination theory (SDT)

The theory of self-determination is a macro-theory of human motivation relates to the development and performance of personality within social contexts. This theory tells us that the same person may react very differently in the social context. SDT attempts to explain the why of this. Investigates the conditions generally increase or decrease the natural enthusiasm of the people.

It is this theory needs are defined as innate, rather than a source obtained by external factors, SDT needs innate psychological point nutrients that are essential for continued growth, integrity and psychological wellbeing.

SDT proposes that people's actions are guided by three basic needs:

•The need for autonomy: this refers to the need for people to make their own decisions.

•The need to be competent: he means to the human need we have to exercise our skills and improve them.

•The need to relate, with this in regard to the need to connect with other human beings and to feel socially accepted.

It is very important to take into account these three needs that are essential for humans based on SDT, especially for people that their role is to motivate others, such as teachers, coaches, managers and even parents. When these basic needs are frustrated in some way, motivation and performance are affected in different ways.

In other words, SDT proposes that human needs point to the necessary conditions for mental health and welfare of human beings, then to be psychologically healthy is important to maintain a balance between these three basic needs, it is not possible to be in good condition but keep these three needs met.

The importance of autonomy for the motivation was demonstrated in several experiments, for example, was paid a few students to do a puzzle, other students did the same but did not offer any reward, when he told the group that had offered a payment no longer going to give more rewards no longer wished to continue with the puzzle, however their colleagues who had not been offered anything I enjoyed more. By introducing a reward, it reduced the motivation to solve the puzzle just for the fun involved.

These studies established that motivation can be undermined when they are offered incentives for people to do activities that people may have decided for themselves to do anyway. This is called the "effect of ...