The Influence of Needs and Motivation to Learn

Talking about needs will remain us to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs which divided into big two parts, deficiency needs and growth needs. The deficiency need will energize people to get it as long as if they are unfulfilled yet. Naturally, people will not move their concentrate to growth needs yet before all of the deficiency needs can be fulfilled. After they can meet all of the deficiency need they will start to think about the growth needs. Maslow’s theories about belonging and self-esteem needs are related to the theory in motivation which is discussed below.

                The need for self determination is the need to act on and control one’s environment (R. Ryan & Deci, 2000)according to self-determination theory, one of intrinsic motivation is having choices and making decision. Self determination theory assumes that people have three innate psychological needs. There are competence, autonomy and relatedness. The need of competence is people will be like to compete to get what they need or to get the satisfaction when they can reach their goal after struggle in the competition with others.

                The need of autonomy is the need for independence and the ability to alter the environment when necessary. This is also source of the intrinsic motivation for students. It means that if the students have little control of their environment can cause them stress. The most effective way to make the students increase their perception of autonomy is by gives them the choice. For example ask them to decide the rules in the class during the learning process, encourage students to set and monitor their learning goals, create high levels of students’ participations in classroom activities and use assessment which provide feedback and focus on learning progress.

                The need for relatedness is the feeling of being related with each other in one’s social environment and feeling worthy of love and respects. The need of relatedness can gives impact in students’ developing a strong need for approval, the desire to be accepted and judged positively by others ( Urdan & Maehr, 1995). Usually in elementary school, the students with high need for relatedness is students with high self-esteem, but in higher level of education in can be vice versa. What the teacher can do in order to help the students with need for relatedness is by communicating unconditional positive regard and a genuine commitment to students and their learning (Cornelius-White, 2007)