Theory 6: "When people feel that their freedom to choose an action is threatened, they get an unpleasant feeling called 'reactance'" (Straker 2008).
Unfortunately, it is built into the learning process that teachers must make some demands of their students, and thus curtail the student's freedom which can produce reactance. However, by introducing some flexibility and choice in the assignments (such as allowing students to choose a topic for a research paper) this reactance may be curtailed.
Theory 7: Opponent process theory suggests that most individuals feel mixed emotions about things: "We have pairs of emotions that act in opposing pairs, such as happiness and sadness, fear and relief, pleasure and pain. When one of these is experienced, the other is temporarily suppressed. This opposite emotion, however, is likely to re-emerge strongly and may curtail or interact with the initial emotion" (Straker 2008).
To guard against this, teachers must interject variety into the classroom. Even if students like a particular task, such as a using 'teams' in class, teachers must counterbalance that with other types of formats (preserving individual work assignments...
No singular motivational theory can explain all of human behavior, but all of these theories are useful to better understand different individual and class responses to teaching.
Reference
Straker, David. (2008). Motivation theories. Changing minds. Retrieved October 2, 2010 at http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/a_motivation.htm
