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Choice Theory

Choice theory suggests that humans have four basic psychological needs that must be satisfied to be emotionally healthy: belonging, power/competence, freedom, and fun. To motivate students for learning, teachers should satisfy these needs by creating a sense of community, helping students achieve mastery and recognition, giving students choices, and incorporating fun into lessons. Satisfying these needs will drive students to learn as their natural genetic instructions are to belong, achieve, choose freely, and enjoy learning.

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542 views2 pages

Choice Theory

Choice theory suggests that humans have four basic psychological needs that must be satisfied to be emotionally healthy: belonging, power/competence, freedom, and fun. To motivate students for learning, teachers should satisfy these needs by creating a sense of community, helping students achieve mastery and recognition, giving students choices, and incorporating fun into lessons. Satisfying these needs will drive students to learn as their natural genetic instructions are to belong, achieve, choose freely, and enjoy learning.

Uploaded by

ginabonieve
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Choice theory

It is a biological theory that suggests that we are born with specific needs that we are genetically
instructed to satisfy. All our behavior represents our best attempt at any moment to satisfy our basic
needs or genetic instructions. In addition to the physical need for survival, we have four basic
psychological needs that must be satisfied to be emotionally healthy:

• Belonging or connecting
o The need for belonging or connecting motivates us to develop relationships and
cooperate with others. Without the need for belonging and cooperating, we would only
strive to be independent.
• Power or competence
o The need for power is more than just a drive to dominate. Power is gained through
competence, achievement and master. Our genetic instruction is to achieve, master ne
skills and to be recognized for our accomplishments.
• Freedom
o As humans, we are also motivated to be free, to choose. Having choices is part of what it
means to be human and is one reason our species has been able to evolve, adapt and
thrive
• Fun
o Each time we learn something new, we are having fun, another universal human
motivation. It is playfulness and our sense of discovery that allow us to learn as much as
we do.

What do these imply to our task to facilitate learning? We have to come up with a need-
satisfying. To motivate our students for learning, we should satisfy their need to belong, their need to
have power by being competent, the need to have a free choice, and the need to enjoy learning and
have fun.

How can these be done?

If we create a sense of community in the classroom and make every student feel he/she belongs
to that classroom community, he/she will more likely love to go to school. By making use of cooperative
learning structures, we strengthen the spirit of cooperation and collaboration and therefore reduce, If
not eliminate, the spirit of cut-throat competition. In a non-threatening atmosphere, students are more
likely to perform.

To satisfy our students` need for power, let us help them acquire it by making them achieve, by
making them master their lessons and end up very competent. As a result of their competence and
excellent achievement, they get recognized and experience genuine power.

When our students are made to feel that they have a lot of free choices, they are driven to
satisfy this need for freedom. On the other hand, when our students perceive themselves to be so
suffocated by our impositions and limits, they are most likely to behave in ways, even irresponsible
ways, to get them the freedom they believe is not satisfied.

Fun is a universal human motivator. If our students` need for fun is satisfied, they are most likely
to learn much. Glasser (1990) claims “fun is the genetic payoff for learning.” A joyless classroom does
not motivate students to perform. Let`s have fun while we teach. Without our knowing, our students are
learning and mastering what we are teaching while we are having fun.

“what happens outside of us has a lot to do with what we choose to do but the outside event
does not cause our behavior. What we get, and all we ever get from the outside is information; ho we
choose to act on that information is up to us. (William Glasser, 1990 quoted by Bob Sullo, p.6)

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