Content area
Full Text
Parenting in the 21st century is not an easy task. This is especially true when parents try to facilitate academic moti- vation at home. With advances in tech- nology, many young people face distractions at home that can sidetrack their engagement in and enjoyment of school-based learning. For example, choosing from hundreds of television channels, watching movies on demand, navigating the Internet, or playing video games are just a few examples of how technology can divert a child's motivation for school-based learning. Gifted children are no different. In fact, seminal research by McCoach and Siegle (2003) suggests that motivation is a key factor in determining the level of achievement in gifted popula- tions. Parents who understand the intricate nature of motivation can help maximize the learning potential of their gifted child. Therefore, the purposes of this article are to: (a) inform parents about different types of academic motivation relevant to gifted chil- dren, and (b) provide strategies that parents can use to support the academic motivation of their gifted child.
Understanding Different Types of Motivation
Before highlighting specific parental strat- egies for supporting academic motivation, it is important to clarify what motivation is and why it is so crucial to learning and school achievement. In simple terms, mo- tivation is the inspiration that regulates ac- tion and behavior. One of the major rea- sons why motivation is considered to be so important in any context is because it helps explain why people act and behave in certain ways. For example, motivation can help parents understand why their child sometimes does his or her homework with- out being asked while other times he or she must be forced to complete it. Motivation is thought to be highly complex because there are numerous reasons that inspire one into action. Therefore, motivation is gen- erally divided into categories based on the underlying reasons of inspiration: (a) in- trinsic motivation, (b) extrinsic motivation, and (c) amotivation (Ryan & Deci, 2009).
Intrinsic motivation occurs when the un- derlying inspiration of behavior is based on the internal satisfaction, pleasure, and en- joyment that one feels from engaging in that particular action or behavior. For example, a gifted child may read a book because he or she enjoys the story and...