Children's love of learning: Home schooling and intrinsic motivation for learning

Self determination (SD) theory was used to investigate psychological need fulfillment and intrinsic motivation for learning in a sample of sixty homeschooling families in New England. SD theory argues for the existence of three fundamental psychological needs—Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness, as well as for the importance of environments being supportive of fundamental need fulfillment. According to SD theory, behaviors tend toward an intrinsic rather than extrinsic or external motivational orientation when the fundamental psychological needs are perceived as being fulfilled.; Previous research has noticed a decline in children's intrinsic motivation as they proceed through the school age years. The current research investigated whether this pattern of older children being less intrinsically motivated pertains in homeschooling settings. Homeschooling was chosen as the phenomenon to be studied because of an expectation of a wider range of learning environments than is found in traditional schools with the possibility of extremely high levels of supportiveness of basic needs. Demographic and child personality information was obtained to address potential confounds.; Sixty families who homeschooled at least one child between ages six and sixteen participated in the study. Participating families were recruited directly at meetings of homeschooling groups in Massachusetts. In the cases where a family homeschooled more than one child, the single child participant per family was chosen by the researcher based on age and sex of the child.; Participants were seen in their homes by the researcher and an assistant. A structured interview was conducted with the parent, and the parent and child separately completed questionnaires. The child questionnaires were read to the younger child participants by the research assistant. The structured interviews were coded for supportiveness of fundamental psychological needs with generally high interrater reliabilities.; Higher levels of parental Autonomy Supportiveness were associated with numerous positive child outcomes including higher levels of Intrinsic Motivation, Perceived Autonomy, and Perceived Competence. Notably, age was positively associated with Overall Intrinsic Motivation for the entire sample, meaning that the older children tended toward higher levels of Intrinsic Motivation than did the younger children.; Study limitations and implications were then discussed.