For many students, school is a forward-looking endeavor, with implications for future educational opportunity, job prospects, and financial success. How does believing that school is linked to a desired future outcome—known as an instrumentality belief—influence motivation? A number of studies have indicated that rewards, or other concerns that are external to the task at hand, can diminish the intrinsic motivation to engage in that task, a fact that would call into question the adaptive nature of these instrumentality beliefs. In a recent study, Miller, DeBacker, and Greene (1999) indicated that instrumentality beliefs about school not only increase extrinsic motivation, but also increase intrinsic motivation. Miller et al. examined college students; the current study replicated their study in a population of high-achieving high school students. In the current study, the positive influence of instrumentality beliefs on intrinsic motivation was not found. Given these findings, we discuss the ways in which the future goals of high-achieving high school students may differ from those of students in a college population and offer directions for further research in this area that might elucidate these differences. Research of this sort may ultimately have important implications for how educators frame for students the relationship between schooling and their future goals.
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