Schiefele, U. (1991). Interest, Learning, and Motivation. Education Psychologist, 26(3 & 4), 299-323. Lawerence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Defined by Schiefele, interest is a content-specific motivational characteristic composed of intrinsic feeling-related and value-related initiatives with an organized force. There were many studies presented in this article that indicated the importance of interest for the intensity of text comprehension, the use of learning strategies, and the quality of the emotional experience while learning. Researchers of achievement motivation, in general, ignored the possibility that students come to like their subjects and learn because they value being connected with their learning.
Schiefele’s work focuses on the relations among interest, text comprehension, learning strategies and quality of experience. Interest has been studied with a focus on individual and situational interest. The focus of this article in on the two forms of individual interest: latent characteristics and actualized characteristics. As a latent characteristic, individual interest is understood here as a long-term direction of an individual toward a type of object, activity, or area of knowledge. Schiefele continues with his two components of interest being feeling-related and value-related; both of which are intrinsic characteristics. Another form of individual interest explained here is actualized interest described as content-specific intrinsic motivation or learning a topic for its own sake. He later assumes that general motivation orientations and specific interests are not jointly exclusive and that a person can have both a general direction toward academic tasks and content-specific interests.
Schiefele conducted six studies designed to compare high-interest and low-interest students with regard to different indicators of comprehension. His goal was to imitate changeable degrees of depth processing. Each study had subjects read a text and then complete a test of comprehension, which was either open-ended questions, free recall, or recognition tests. In all students, the control variables were a measure of intelligence or prior knowledge. Studies 1, 2, and 4 provided evidence for importance of topic-specific interest for comprehension learning material. Interest did not simply enhance the quantity of recalled text info, but had different effects on different indicators of comprehension. The results suggested that interest motivates the reader to go beyond text’s exterior to try to understand it’s meaning and main ideas. It also suggests that subject matter interest has a stronger and more consistent impact on the quality of experience in the classroom than achievement motivation or the student’s ability.
As teachers or facilitators, it is our job to explain all subject matter in a way that each student can relate. If the subject matter were of interest to the student, the chances of them being motivated to learn the material would be greater. Students wouldn’t necessarily have to be mastery learners if the subject material was of interest to them or was made interesting.
Questions:
Would the quality of learning be affected more by interest or extrinsic motivations?
Do you believe interest alone can increase the process of learning?
How do you think emotions would affect interest?
How would you, as an instructor, stimulate subject-matter-specific interest?