A Conversation with Dr. Gina Riley on Self-Determination Theory & Motivation

Debbie:

Hey Gina, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Gina Riley:

Hi, thank you for having me.

Debbie:

Thank you for responding to my cold email pitch to you. I really appreciate it. And I’m really looking forward to exploring a self-determination theory and motivation with you today. This is one of your areas of expertise. But would you take a few minutes to introduce yourself and kind of your personal why in doing the work that you do in this space?

Dr. Gina Riley:

Sure. So my name is Dr. Gina Riley. I am program director and clinical professor of adolescent special education at CUNY Hunter College. I mainly study self-determination and cognitive evaluation theory within the homeschooling and unschooling realms, although my day job is teaching public school teachers in New York City. So I am in schools all the time. I always believe that homeschooling and unschooling is one of the myriad of choices that you can make for your child’s education. So I love public schooling and private schooling and charter schooling and everything. I always think it’s a parent’s choice. I love flexible learning environments, study them often. And I truly, truly dive deep in my work in the theories of self-determination theory and intrinsic motivation. So I’m so excited to talk about that today.

Debbie:

That’s awesome. And I just have to ask, when you say you’re teaching public school teachers, are you teaching them about how to incorporate the tenants of what we’ll be discussing today in the classroom?

Dr. Gina Riley:

So, you know, it’s interesting, right? A lot of my work is preparing New York City public school teachers to teach in the schools that they teach in, which are mainly extrinsic-based, right? A lot of my research is intrinsic-based. A lot of my actual teaching is very clinical and more extrinsic-based, although certainly we talk about the power of intrinsic motivation in education all the time.

Debbie:

Okay, thank you. So, all right, so let’s just get into it. So before I hit record, I was saying that I haven’t done an episode on self-determination theory. It’s something that when Johnson and Bill Stixrud, who wrote, you know, I talk about this book probably every five episodes, The Self-Driven Child, they talk about self-determination theory in there. I kind of know what it is without knowing exactly what it is. So, and I’m assuming my listeners are somewhere in that range as well. So would you just take a few minutes and really define what self-determination theory is?

Dr. Gina Riley:

Sure. So self-determination theory is really defining intrinsic motivation. And intrinsic motivation is the opposite of extrinsic motivation. And so when we talk about intrinsic motivation, it’s doing things for the love of it. It’s doing things for the joy of it. It’s the internal passion and curiosity we feel about things. I specifically talk about its sub-theory, cognitive evaluation theory, which talks about ways we can facilitate intrinsic motivation both within ourselves and others. Of course, intrinsic motivation can’t be forced, it always has to be facilitated. And cognitive evaluation theory really outlines the environmental tenets that facilitate intrinsic motivation.

Debbie:

So you mentioned cognitive evaluation theory, so as a sub theory of this. So can you kind of go into that for us? It’s super interesting.

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, so cognitive evaluation theory, again, is just a sub theory of self-determination theory that really outlines the environmental tenets that facilitate intrinsic motivation in others and within ourselves. And those three tenets are a sense of competence, a sense of autonomy, and a sense of relatedness. And the more we have these in our lives, the more intrinsically motivated we feel, the more we could facilitate these in the lives of others, the more intrinsically motivated they feel. And we could dive deep into each one if that’s helpful.

Debbie:

I would love that. Yeah. So would we start them with competence? What does that actually look like when we’re talking about a student?

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, I think that makes sense, right? So it’s really, really important that students feel internally a sense of competence. And I always say like, it’s really important they feel a sense of authentic competence, right? That they know their strengths, they know what they’re good at, they know what they love and what they’re interested in, right? They know they can do things. And when students know that they can do things and optimally challenge themselves, then they end up doing more things. Right? So a sense of competence, or you could say confidence, is really, really important. The second tenet is a sense of autonomy, which really lies in freedom and choice. So the more freedom and choice a student has, the better, right? It’s really, really important that kids and teens and individuals feel like they have autonomy, feel like they have choices in their lives. And sometimes in school, that looks like a choice text or a choice book or a choice homework assignment. Sometimes out of school, that looks like planning their day or planning their afternoon themselves.

I’ve been putting a lot of research into this concept of autonomy support, right, as parents, because it’s one thing for a kid or a teen to feel like they have choice and freedom. And it’s really quite another for the parents or the people around them to provide that student with a sense of autonomy support or support for their choices and their freedoms and their decisions. So that’s what a lot of my research has focused on recently. And then the third tenant is the tenant of relatedness, of having one person who believes in you no matter what, right? Students feel related to many people. They might feel related to their teachers or their peers or their families or their parents. It’s just really important that a student has one person that really supports them and their autonomy no matter what.

Debbie:

It’s so fascinating. There’s so many kinds of directions we could take this in and just, you know, to pull it back to the audience of this show and the Tilt community, our parents have neurodivergent kits, right? And so I think when we’re talking about self-determination, it is especially for kids who, first of all, probably are getting a lot of feedback that’s focusing on relative weaknesses or things that they aren’t doing right. Maybe we should even just start there, because we do talk a lot here about a strength-based approach to parenting and to teaching. And you work within the special education system as well. So can you talk specifically about how kids with learning disabilities and other kinds of neurodevelopmental differences and self-determination, like that Venn diagram of why it can be such a good match for them?

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, mean, right, like we all have strengths and we all have, you know, differences. And none of this is just like this is for kids with disabilities or this is for kids without, right? All of this is just, we all have strengths and to give a student, especially a student who has been struggling with knowing their strengths, the opportunity to really, you know, show off their strengths or to really dive deep into their specific interest is a really, really powerful tool. Students should spend most of their day doing what they love and doing what interests them and doing what they really feel strong with. You know, when we talk about a sense of competence and we talk about students with neurodiversity, that sense of competence is so important because if you know you are strong, and you know you have strengths in a particular subject or topic or activity, then it gives you a little bit more leverage to do the hard things, right? So if I know I’m a great artist, but I also know I struggle with reading, like, hey, I can take on the challenge of reading or decoding because I know I do art well. I’m a great artist. I just struggle in this area and everyone struggles in some area, right, so I think that competence and that facilitation of competence is so important, especially in kids with neurodiversity, who might hear a lot about the things that they need to work on. Right, so we need to sort of shift from a feedback perspective to a feed forward perspective, really focusing on their competence and having that competence be a strength that leads them to be able to challenge themselves in other things that they might, you know, they might need assistance with.

Debbie:

So I’m thinking of an interview I did with Jules Edwards and Megan Ashburn, and they wrote a wonderful book called I Will Die on this Hill. And we were talking about this goal of independence, right, that so many of us talk about, we want our kids to be independent. And, you know, we actually discussed that that’s not the goal. We’re all dependent on other people. And the goal is a self-determined life. Are we kind of all working towards the same thing here? And I guess as part of that, I’d love to know, what does the science say about self-determination and why is it, what does that look like as an adult as our kids grow up if they’ve been able to really kind of learn in this way and kind of highlight this cognitive approach that we just discussed?

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, sure. Happy to expand. So when we talk about self-determination theory, right, when we talk about intrinsic motivation, and when you have students that live a more intrinsically motivated life, their academic outcomes tend to increase, their social outcomes tend to increase, their emotional outcomes tend to increase. You know, I love that you talked about the fact that like, no one makes decisions in a bubble, right? I do a lot of work on something called supported decision-making, which is an alternative to guardianship for students with disabilities. And one of the large projects I’ve been working on is a decision-making curriculum for those within New York State. And so it’s public, it’s newyorkstatedecisionmakingcurriculum.org. And it’s really a curriculum that focuses on self-determination theory, but also on independent decision-making. We know that students that are more autonomous decision-makers, that have great self-advocacy skills, that really live a truly self-determined life, go on to be adults who can make informed autonomous decisions on their own and have confidence with regards to those decisions because they’ve always had practice with them.

And so, you know, decision making is a muscle. The more you practice it, the better you get at it. And it’s just like autonomy support for parents is a muscle, right? The more support you give for your child’s autonomous decisions, the better you get at it. And of course, there’s always that concept of dignity of risk, right? Where, you know, one day your kid will make a bad decision and haven’t we all, right? But by giving, right, like me, you know, I am the queen of poor decisions. honestly, right, like one day your child’s gonna make a decision that you don’t agree with, or that is considered a poor decision, but we all have done that, right? And so providing autonomy support, even for those decisions we don’t love, is as important as providing autonomy support for the decisions that we do love as parents. It’s less easy.

Debbie:

Yeah. Gosh, again, I have so many directions I want to take this conversation in because I’ve got a 20 year old and in university in another country at the moment. And this is a conversation my husband and I have been having constantly because we really are observing from afar, supporting scaffolding from afar, this autonomous decision making. it’s kind of like, Okay. We just have to see how this plays out, and it’s so uncomfortable. So I’m curious to know, and I know, again, you work in the unschooling space, too. In my hunches, you encounter a lot of parents who are kind of navigating what this actually looks like to support my child with this autonomous decision making. So can you tell us a little bit about that, parents who might have resistance to what this actually looks like when we lean into it.

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, I love that. Autonomy support is probably the best way to parent, right? A teen or an adult, right? Because you’re looking at a person who’s truly independent, right? And that’s the whole purpose and the joy of parenting, right? To grow this autonomous human being to make their own decisions. Autonomy support doesn’t always mean that you have to agree with the decision your child or teen or young adult has made. It just means that you are there, right? You are there if they fall, you are there if they have made a mistake, you are there to talk things out in a truly non-judgmental way. It just means your presence is there no matter what. And what autonomy support does is it allows individuals to make mistakes.

And we all know that we learn by making mistakes, right? We learn how to be. And no one’s gonna have the truly perfect life, even though that’s what we wish for everybody, right? And especially for our children, mistakes are a part of life. And that’s why we give them dignity of risk. We give them autonomy support. We give them the freedom and autonomy to make their own decisions. Hopefully they will be informed decisions. Hopefully they have grown that decision-making muscle so they know the steps to decision-making and how to make great choices and decisions. But when they fall, we are also there to not support the decision per se, but to support the person.

Debbie:

I love that idea too. And I’m thinking about the terms. I think again, it’s Ned and Bill who talk about being a guide for our kids. And Chris Balme, who wrote this book, Finding the Magic in Middle School, talks about being a companion for our kids. And so I really like that. And that is more of, I think, the teen and adolescent that we’re talking about. I’m wondering what parenting you know, younger kids, say we’re I’m just thinking of listeners who are maybe homeschooling their younger kids. And actually, maybe I’ll kind of weave in another aspect to this. So there are a lot of parents in this community who have kids who may have a high drive for autonomy, right? They may have a presentation of autism known as PDA. And so they’re embracing this low demand parenting. So do you I guess how familiar are you with low demand parenting and do you see that as also kind of relating to or working well with autonomy, what is it, autonomy supportive parenting?

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, so I probably use another term. I don’t use the term low demand parenting. I will say with regards to this discussion, I tell my teachers all this time this. Teaching is a one up, one down relationship. And facilitation is a more equal relationship. And so when you talk about things like being companions on the journey, facilitating, that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about intrinsic motivation and autonomy support. It’s sort of like you’re not one up, one down. You’re not the judger, right? Instead, you’re working with your child instead of making rules for your child. And so when you’re working with your child, that enables you to be able to facilitate that sense of competence and that sense of autonomy and that sense of relatedness a little bit more in a real way, in a deeper way.

Debbie:

Okay, so we’ve discussed intrinsic motivation quite a bit. I’m also, I’m just gonna always give a shout out to Dan Pink’s book, Drive, which I think is such a great book to read about kind of the research he’s found about what really motivates humans. And we know that with, again, kids who are maybe in traditional classrooms or settings where the way that they are showing up to those environments can be disruptive or it might be exhibited in ways that might not work for that environment. There are a lot of behavior plans happening, which all is extrinsic motivation. And so I’m just wondering your thoughts on, is there a time and a place for extrinsic motivation? Love to know your thoughts on that.

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, just shout out to Dan Pink, but also shout out to Deci and Ryan, because what Dan Pink did was he took Deci and Ryan’s research and summarized it in his book. When we talk about intrinsic versus extrinsic, it’s not a versus. It’s really a spectrum. And I always joke that I am the intrinsic motivation researcher who loves stickers and stars, right? And who really thrives on getting an A +, right? And I will never say, you know, that extrinsic motivation doesn’t work, right? Because I think for some kids, it might work really well. I also tend to veer against giving parents advice on this because, again, every kid is different. Some kids are more extrinsically orientated. They will really respond to behavior charts and stickers and stars. And some kids are just more intrinsically motivated. And so it’s a spectrum. As a parent, you kind of have to find the balance that’s right for yourself and your child. And I don’t think that intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation can’t exist in the same space. I think you can be, you know, a parent who facilitates intrinsic motivation and has an intrinsically motivated kid that still enjoys extrinsic motivators, right, like stickers or stars or grades. I think we get in trouble when there is a dependence on the extrinsic motivators. So when there’s the dependence upon the reward, right, it just takes away a little bit of that intrinsic motivation or a lot of that intrinsic motivation. So again, everything in a balance and everything that fits the kid, but you just, you don’t want to get dependent on extrinsic motivators.

Debbie:

Yeah. Yeah. And I too, I thrive on rewards. I, and my kid who, you know, has ADHD and, you know, struggles kind of like staying on task a lot. That’s something we’ve discussed. And what I like about it is now it’s like when I have control of the reward and I know that it is something that dopamine or whatever like works for me but it’s still me deciding that I’m gonna do this for myself as opposed to somebody else or me doing it for somebody else’s approval or whatever. yeah, so I like, that’s something I really tried to instill in my child is understanding, what do you need? What works for you? Are you a reward person or not? Some people are, some people aren’t.

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, and I think the more specificity we put to the reward, right? We talk about praise all the time and how a good job is great, but it’s not informative, right? So positive specific praise can actually increase levels of competence, right? If it’s a good job, my gosh, I can’t believe that you drew that or I can’t believe that you’re playing that piece. That’s a different sort of good job than, hey, that sounds great. It’s just a different sort of praise piece. So thinking about specificity, thinking about how feed forward weaves into all of this.

Debbie:

Yeah, absolutely. I’m thinking about kids who may have these kinds of traits, this competency, this autonomy and relatedness. And maybe that is the culture of our family, and they do kind of have that embodied within them. And then they transition maybe to a high school that is really competitive, or they move on to a university that has a whole different culture. And that extrinsic mode, like all of a sudden, you know, it’s like that competition kicks in or I’m just wondering how do we kind of help kids maintain that sense of deep intrinsic motivation or what matters to them in those environments?

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, again, I don’t think those environments would erase anything, right? I think then the student becomes in competition with themselves. And that’s like an interesting concept, right? Like I wanna get the A, because I know I can get the A. I’m confident that I can. And so, you I want to become more learned in this or I want to do this. And so, yeah, I don’t think the two, again, exist in separate forms. I think a student can come in really intrinsically motivated. And the best students do, right? They come in with a lot of competence, a lot of confidence. They come in knowing that they can make autonomous decisions. And that makes them a great student. And so the two can coexist peacefully. Again, there’s a little bit of like, how can I be the best person I can be? How can I really utilize the concept of intrinsic motivation, the joy and passion and love I feel about learning, and really take it into this environment, right? Most people in those Ivy League schools or most people that are CEOs, like really love what they do, right? They spend a ton of time on it because they love what they do. And that all is within that intrinsic motivation realm, although they may get a lot of extrinsic rewards for doing so.

Debbie:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I’m wondering, what about kids who don’t have a strong pull towards something? I’m thinking of the word passion or purpose and those words are used a lot. And sometimes a kid doesn’t have a clear passion. You know, how do you advise parents with kids of really any age to kind of really discover what it is that lights them up. Do you have any ideas for them of how to pay attention or what they should be looking for?

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, I’ve never met a non-passionate kid, right? Every kid has an interest in something. I think though, we kind of always kind of like as parents, if they have interest in screens, maybe that’s not the interest that we want them to have. Or if they have an interest in, you know, a specific like thing, maybe that’s not, you know, that’s a non academic interest they have. And I really, you know, I don’t give a lot of parenting advice, but one piece I will give is to really not judge a child’s interests, right? I often talk about my own son. We had a year where he was obsessed with bowling and I was like, my gosh, bowling. We had a year when he was obsessed with Nintendo and I’m thinking, my gosh, I’m never gonna get through this year. If this is what inspires joy and passion, I don’t know if I’m in. And really thinking as parents that it’s really not about us. That joy that a student finds in Nintendo can later lead to a career in coding and that amazingness that the student finds in bowling or whatever other sport can really lead to some really great opportunities. And so just thinking about that and trying not to judge our child’s interests and instead be on the journey with them. It might not be our interest, and that’s okay, right? Our kids are supposed to be independent people. And so, yeah, that’s my one piece of parenting advice, right? To really look and see what our kids are inspired by and not judge that, even though it might seem at the time like, maybe that’s not the thing I want my kid to love.

Debbie:

Yeah, no, I think that’s great advice. And that’s something I also had to learn with my husband, who is a gamer. I had to learn not to judge it. was like, which I, you know, had to do my own work on that. But I really appreciate that. And just to bring it back to this idea of relatedness. And, you know, we’ve talked about this on the show before. We don’t have to love what our kids are doing to show interest in it. You know, and I’ve spent many an hour, many, many, many, many an hour sitting next to my child and saying, like, can I watch you do a playthrough of this game? What are you doing? Why did you build that? Like, teach me how to do this or teach me how to play this riff on your bass or whatever it is, even if it’s not my thing. But when we’re talking about relatedness, that can be I’m assuming really anyone who can share that passion with them. Is that right?

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, I mean, it’s really, it’s not even the sharing of passion, right? It’s just someone who’s there no matter what, for the good and for the bad, right? For some kids, it’s their peers, for some kids, it’s their parents, for some kids, it’s a neighbor, right? But really just someone to be there when they fall is really what it is. I love the sharing of passions and I think it’s great. And I think sometimes it’s also okay, you know, not to try so hard, right? I guess that’s what you were talking about when you were talking about low demand parenting. It’s okay to really just watch your kid do the things that they love. You don’t have to be super interested in it. You just kind of have to be there sometimes. And so really thinking about that and taking the pressure off us as parents and really finding joy. And I could say this now as the mother of an adult child, because I have the hindsight, right? But really finding joy in that every day and really finding joy in just watching and learning from our kids. I think we sometimes forget to step back and really watch our kids and learn from them, not in an active way, but in a really passive way. Like I’m watching this being grow and how cool.

Debbie:

Yes. so good. I’m feeling that right now so much. And I’m also going to give a shout out to Leslie Martino, who wrote a book called The Joy of Slow, which we had her on a few months ago. Listeners, it was a wonderful conversation and it really ties in nicely with what we’re discussing today. So before we wrap up, we’ve I thank you, first of all, because I’ve asked you a bunch of questions all over the place. But is there anything regarding self-determination theory that you think would be that that you didn’t get to mention that you typically share with people and that you think would be especially relevant for my audience.

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, I mean, I think I really dig deep in the theory, right? A lot of us look to, you know, the articles we read on the internet and all of the parenting stuff we read just generally. I think that the actual theory, and I say this as an academic, but I also just think it’s good to know where things come from, right? Dietschy and Ryan are such brilliant, brilliant psychologists. So really digging deep into that actual theory, I think is really helpful, learning about the spectrum of extrinsic through intrinsic, really digging deep into cognitive evaluation theory and what’s so amazing about facilitating that sense of competence and autonomy and relatedness in your kids. Sometimes looking to theory really helps us better understand.

Debbie:

Yeah. Yeah, and I think I will just add to just the importance when I have this conversation just makes me think about the importance of just zooming out always. And that’s another thing we talk a lot about on this show is just remembering what we’re actually doing here. You know, no matter how old our kids are, they are their own person on their own journey. And our job is to support them and being self actualized humans who can live a life that they love. And you know, I think this is so perfectly in alignment with that. And I love this idea of going back to the theory because it is so grounded in science. And it’s like a nice anchor foundation for doing this work as parents. So that’s great. Is there any place that you would like listeners to go? I know you’ve written some books like how would you like listeners who want to explore your work more deeply? Where would you like them to go?

Dr. Gina Riley:

Yeah, I have a website, it’s jenerellephd.com. If they’re interested in homeschooling, Homeschooling Starter Guide is available everywhere. I’ve done some real strong academic research on unschooling. So if that’s an interest, you can find my research on ResearchGate, as well as my book, Unschooling, Exploring Learning Beyond the Classroom. I’m on social media. So yeah, come find me, let’s have a conversation. And I always enjoy email, so any questions listeners have, feel free to email or however. I’m so excited and I thank you so much for having me. It’s been such a great conversation.

Debbie:

Gosh, thank you. Thank you so much for everything you shared, for the work that you do. Listeners, I will have links to all of the places to connect with Gina, including her books, because they’re a great resource. And I know many of you guys are unschooling. And actually, I’ll just say I learned about Dr. Raleigh through Blake Bowles, who is, you know, we’ve had on the show a couple of times about unschooling. So much overlap in our spaces. So thank you, thank you so much for today and yeah, I’d love to stay in touch.

Dr. Gina Riley:

Thanks so much. Have the best day.