Self-determination theory: An approach to motivation in music education

ANNOTATION: Evans, Paul (2015). Self-determination theory: An approach to motivation in music education. Musicae Scientiae, 19(1), 65-83. doi: 10.1177/10298649/4568044.

Though numerous motivational models have been previously applied to understand motivation in music learning, no theoretical framework has been universally accepted. In this article, Evans provides an argument for Self-Determination Theory as an ideal theoretical model for understanding and describing why students take up an instrument, how they persist through the many challenges encountered over the long time required to acquire competence, and how they either achieve success or quit.

Deci and Ryan’s widely cited self-determination theory (SDT) suggests that motivation arises from a tendency towards personal growth and a unified sense of self (Maslow’s “self-actualization” comes to mind), supported by three universal psychological needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Evans provides an SDT-based conceptual overview of motivation in music learning by presenting a wide variety of research projects that have applied it successfully to issues in music education.

His conclusion is that many of the typical ways that teachers and parents have encouraged their students and children to practice are misguided, in that they use external reward/punishment, coercion, excessive praise, and competition, all of which have been shown repeatedly in research to be demotivating over the long term. The best solution, he writes, is for parents and teachers to create social environments in music where students are more apt to generate their own interest and enjoyment by identifying the value of musical practice, aligning it with their sense of self, and finding intrinsic motivation in music making for the enjoyment of the activity in and of itself.

This article is worthy of a deeper read and would serve as a helpful launch point for further study, as its theoretical framework and literature review point to a rich treasure trove of research on motivation in instrumental education. The most interesting ideas I culled from this confirmed my own observations as a teacher:

1. Achievement “star charts” are demotivating for many students, and for the highest achieving “star gatherers,” the motivation to continue achieving declines rapidly the moment the final star is achieved. I witnessed over and over that especially young boys were eager to reach the final star at the end of the chart, and then their interest dropped almost immediately once they finished the “final star.” Likewise, students who did not achieve as quickly typically dropped out, not because they were not interested in music but because their relative slower pace on the star chart made them question their self-efficacy.
2. Kindness matters in early music education. Under the SDT motivator of “relatedness,” Bloom (1985) found three stages to teacher relationships, and that in the early years, students enjoy and thus persist with teachers whose lessons are fun, informal, and enjoyable; slightly more demanding in middle years; and holding much higher standards in later years where the teacher and student engage together in a pursuit of mastery.
3. Students who could choose their repertoire typically showed higher motivation.

Evans’ application of self-determination theory to music learning has some implications for teaching an instrument in an online context. Because motivation is so central to instrument learning in general, then online instrumental teachers might consider the following: 1) pay triple attention to activities that can build relationships to support the “relatedness” factor, 2) provide support and carefully scaffolded lessons (not just effusive praise) to continually build students’ confidence through their growing sense of competence, 3) provide choice, self-direction, and autonomy in creative projects.