The Book Instructional Illusions Attacks Self-Determination Theory, But Kirschner, Hendrick, and Heal Are Just Shadow Boxing

Bizarro Style - The Beatings Will Continue and I Will Make You Achieve

The book Instructional Illusions by Paul A. Kirschner, Carl Hendrick, and Jim Heal is an imminently readable book that deserves to be read. 

However, there is one chapter that inspired me to create the two AI generated comics above.


The premise of the galley slaves comic on the left is an intuitively obvious motivational idea that everyone in dysfunctional organizations knows is an absurdly plausible attitude that some managers seem to have. 

Misunderstanding motivation can and does lead to the perpetuation of dysfunctional patterns even when the proposed actions for improving motivation were well-intended. 


The comic on the right is a slight variation, but of course, no teacher would say it that way. 

However, that is a plausible interpretation of Chapter 6: The Motivation Illusion. 

This misunderstanding, unlike the first, is not intuitively obvious and, because children are being affected in the real world, its consequences are far from amusing.


To give the authors of Instructional Illusions the benefit of the doubt, education folks have a hard time keeping up with psychology. 

This is not a surprise, they have their own literature to stay on top of so it would be truly impressive if anyone could keep up with both.  

In this instance I know that the authors’ views on motivation and engagement have evolved over time because I have previously critiqued How Learning Happens by Kirschner and Hendrick. 

I hope they can continue to refine their understanding.

Instructional Illusions: Motivation Isn’t Real?

The Motivation Illusion chapter is premised on lumping all motivation theories together as mere linguistic constructions that do not have a cognitive reality, which is derived from esoteric criticisms by an academic named Kuo Murayama published in 2023. 

The paper cited in Instructional Illusions is entitled, “Motivation resides only in our language, not in our mental processes.” 

Based on a combination of a single cherry-picked study and the idea that Murayama has presented a devastating critique of the concept of motivation, the authors proceed to make some otherwise valid points about a variety of motivational phenomena that have nothing to do with that critique. 

I will return to Murayama’s critique later. 

They are correct to be critical of “interventions aimed at fostering a ‘global’ sense of motivation.” 

They are correct to point out that over-generalizing a construct like growth mindset is not helpful. 

But then they target Self-Determination Theory with their concluding remarks, a theoretical framework with an extensive research literature that I have been studying intensively for over a decade. 

Their limited take on SDT suggests they misunderstand it. 


Based on the title, Instructional Illusions, the communicative goal of this book is to expose illusions that have the practical effect of misguiding instructors. 

What practitioners need to be disillusioned about with regards to SDT is how psychological needs are the sources of psychological well-being which, when those needs are NOT being satisfied, will have detrimental effects on learning. 

We would never put up with a school that compromised the well-being of children by suffocating, starving, dehydrating, or recklessly exposing them to the elements. 

Front line teachers need to understand that if the children are failing to satisfy their psychological needs at school, that school is failing to meet the moral (and legal) duty of care that they owe to the children they serve. 

It is true that the psychological needs have effects on motivation, as SDT researchers have proven over the last several decades, but that is a minor technical point. 

The motivational effects are peripheral while the effects on well-being are central. 

The practical application of SDT is not about intervening to improve instructional efficacy by improving student’s motivations. 

The practical application of SDT arises from fulfilling the most foundational obligation of a school. 

A school’s duty of care requires them to support children in satisfying their primary psychological needs, which merely by coincidence happens to have positive effects on patterns of motivation. 


Notice that when I talk about needs I am no longer referring to instruction, but rather to the school experience as a whole. 

This is why books like Instructional Illusions, that focus exclusively on instruction, are often problematic. 

Focusing on a narrow area in which they can elucidate important details usually reflects good methodology in academia. 

But, whenever instruction is talked about in this narrow way the authors always assume that the psychological well-being of the students is a given. 

However, that is not a safe assumption given the long-standing well-replicated data on pervasive disengagement among both teachers and students. 

But to properly understand why the pattern of disengagement matters so much you have to understand SDT and why SDT is not like other theories of motivation.


The core of SDT is the claim that humans have primary psychological needs for relatedness, autonomy, and competence that must be satisfied in order to have mental well-being. 

That claim was made in the process of trying to understand the causal sources of motivation. 

SDT has worked out a detailed model of motivation as a spectrum with six components, though there is no evidence of the spectrum in Instructional Illusions. 

The authors of Instructional Illusions chose to focus on intrinsic motivation without any acknowledgement of the existence of the other five aspects of the motivation construct. 

For their understanding of that one component they appear to have relied on a piece of work from 1985 by the founders of SDT, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. 

Both the model and the research into it have evolved substantially since then. 

For instance, in 2021 the journal Motivation Science published a whole set of articles about the legacy of Self-Determination Theory. 

It is probably one of the best resources for getting a handle on a more current version of SDT, including some critical remarks about it (the lead and final papers in the series are Ryan, Deci, Vansteenkiste, & Soenens, 2021a and Ryan, Deci, Vansteenkiste, & Soenens, 2021b). 

Since needs are the core of the theory, the details of motivation are not as important as the authors of Instructional Illusions think they are (though there are academic researchers still working hard to delineate the esoteric details). 

What they have failed to grasp is that the myriad ways that schools propagate psychological ill-being is the root of many problems that teachers face, but before I explore that idea further allow me to explain how I understand SDT. 


Rooted in Behaviorism

An historical perspective on SDT is relevant. Back in the early 1970s behaviorism was the dominant model in psychology. 

The fundamental assumption of behaviorism is that behaviors that get reinforced (lay people usually say “rewarded”) increase in frequency. B.F. Skinner, considered one of the founders of behaviorism, was adamant that psychology adhere strictly to the scientific assumption that systematic “objective” observation be the basis for clear explanations. 

He insisted that the mind is a “black box” that we cannot observe directly, therefore we should not refer to anything inside that black box, such as a process like motivation or an entity like a self, unless we have eliminated all the explanations that are more objectively satisfying. 

There are plenty of subtle nuances but at that time external reinforcement was the core of behavioral research and theorizing. 


Research from that time on preschool children examined what happens if you reinforce behaviors that the children do spontaneously, in the absence of prior reinforcement; behaviors such as drawing, painting, and other creative expressions (e.g. Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973). 

The children’s artistic behaviors under reinforcement should have increased according to the central tenet of behaviorism, but what was observed was a decrease. 

This was a big deal because it went against the model. 

There were a variety of other findings along the same lines with different populations and different activities but the crucial point is that external reinforcement alone was found to be an inadequate explanation of some specific human behaviors.


In that context Edward Deci (who did some of that research, see Deci, 1971) partnered up with Richard Ryan and they started to formulate Self-Determination Theory by synthesizing a vast literature on related ideas. 

Importantly, they did not reject the fundamental premise of behaviorism. 

They merely posited the existence of one single entity inside the black box, a self that serves as a nexus around which motivational processes are organized. 

The self is used to explain the oddity of how those children behaved, given how powerfully the behavioral model had successfully predicted the behavior of other animals and humans in other types of situations. 


The child’s self takes in situational information outside of consciousness and based on that information alters how the child will respond to reinforcement. 

When the activity that is being done by the child is endorsed by the self (like spontaneous artistic expressions usually are), then there is maximum investment of psychic energy in that activity. 

The extreme version of this is known as intrinsic motivation, but in current usage within the SDT community the broader category of motivations that have positive effects on well-being are called autonomous motivations. 

When the activity is not endorsed by the self then there will be less investment. 

The broad category of motivations that have negative effects on well-being are called controlled motivations. 

The key evaluative criteria that the self uses to judge situations is whether or not supports for the individual’s psychological needs are expected to be available. 

The more the self expects needs to be satisfied, the more psychic energy is invested; when those needs are actually satisfied the activity is reinforced and the self is even more willing to endorse participation in that activity. 

It’s a positive feedback loop. 

When needs are thwarted then the inverse happens, forming a negative feedback loop.


Today, in SDT we understand the self-system to be responsible for the generation of psychic energy through satisfaction of needs, the transformation of energy into psychic power through motivation, and the application of psychic power to work through engagement. 

The human needs for relatedness, autonomy, competence, and beneficence are presumed to be universal since cross-cultural research has been done across many societies, though more remains to be done. 

The first three needs are called primary since they cause well-being to be boosted when they are satisfied and diminished when they are thwarted; there are about eight other criteria to establish a need as primary. 

The fourth need, beneficence, is secondary because it boosts well-being when satisfied, but there is no effect on well-being when it is thwarted (Martela & Ryan, 2016). 

Derivative needs are a mixture of primary and secondary needs. 

The first need to be clearly established as derivative was meaningfulness (Martela, Ryan, & Steger, 2017). 

There are also particular needs that are unique to an individual, group, or culture. 

For example, if I were hit by a car and put on life support in the hospital I would have a whole set of needs that are based on my particular constellation of injuries. 


The self takes what it expects to happen with regard to the needs and uses the energy it produces to generate some psychic power. 

If the needs are expected to be neglected or thwarted then the psychic power will be applied to psychological defenses. 

That defensive posture exacts a cost to psychological well-being. 

The motivations that result are called controlled. 

When the needs are expected to be satisfied then the psychic power will be devoted to investing in either improving the mental maps of this type of situation, taking effective action in that situation, or most likely both. 

The motivations that result are called autonomous. 


In the scientific SDT literature motivation is usually presented as the six part spectrum I mentioned before. 

Motivation has recently been suggested to include the constructs of emotion and cognition that were previously studied as forms of engagement (Reeve, Cheon, & Jang, 2020). 

This is where the authors of Instructional Illusions were close to agreeing with SDT researchers when they suggested “reconceptualizing engagement not as an observable state but as an internal cognitive process.” 

In SDT, where agentic engagement has been validated as an additional external social process which I will explain below, it makes more sense to put cognitive processes into the motivation category since that category is, by definition, internal. 


Engagement, the application of psychic power to the situation in which the individual is embedded, has two components: behavior and agency. 

Behavioral engagement is when the person is objectively participating in learning situations; however, it is generally recognized that mere behavior can be a trivial form of engagement. 

Trivial engagement is most likely when the person is on the controlled end of the motivation spectrum.

Their defensive posture means they are not willing to risk investing their identity, feelings, thoughts, emotions, etc. in the social situation. 

Engaging more fully as an agent means inserting one’s identity, feelings, thoughts, emotions, etc. into the situation in publicly observable ways. 


In the English language, being an agent means both acting effectively as an individual and as an authorized representative of a collective. 

I believe the psychological meaning should be understood as having both meanings simultaneously due to the inescapability of having multiple levels of influence on behavior ranging from cellular to societal. 

We cannot escape the reality of our embeddedness in larger systems (dyads, groups, organizations, societies, etc.) and embodiment as smaller systems (cells, molecules, atoms, etc.). 

Therefore we are agents both individually and collectively at the same time. 

I suggest Robert Sapolsky’s 2017 book Behave for a thorough exploration of this holistic view of behavior. 

Motivation Is Fiction, But Not Fantasy

Let’s be clear that SDT is a linguistic construct; Murayama’s pointing that out is completely unremarkable. 

It is constructed on scientific practices that mitigate against naive realism, the idea that we perceive the world exactly as it is, which was discussed in chapter 2 of the Instructional Illusions book. 

As a scientific enterprise SDT does not presume to be final nor complete; it has evolved with the accumulation of new information. 

In particular Deci and Ryan might have posited the idea that motivation is prior to achievement back in 1985, as citation number 47 in the book seems to indicate, but the SDT community cannot be said to hold to that view any longer based on the mixed research results since then. 

There are research findings that indicate motivation predicts achievement, vice versa, and that they have a reciprocal relationship. 

It is more accurate to say that this is an on-going open debate in the SDT community.


The real foundation of their critique, however, is the philosophical speculation by Kuo Murayama (2023) about the relationship between the reality of brain functions and the linguistic construct of motivation. 

Calling up this philosophical speculation is why I explained SDT from the historical context in which it arose as a thorn in the side of then-dominant behaviorism. 

Murayama’s (2023) speculation coupled with the findings from Garon-Carrier, Guay, Dionne, et.al. (2016), which supports the authors’ view that achievement causes motivation, is presented as if it were a devastating one-two punch that calls into question the whole of SDT. 

There is no controversy over the fact that the construct of “motivation” is not a description of brain activity. 

That construct was only posited in response to the inadequacy of using only externally observable contingencies to account for human behavior (a.k.a. behaviorism). 

Unfortunately for the authors of Instructional Illusions their argument is in a fight with their own shadow. 


I reject Murayama’s idea that motivation is epiphenomenal or causally inert based on my reading of the dialogue about this controversy that was published in 2025. 

It is at a psychological level that the notions of self, needs, and other constructs are useful. 

There remains work to be done to connect the psychology-level dots with neurological-level dots, but that does not negate the usefulness of the psychological level. 

In my reading of Murayama and Jach (2025) they took pains to recognize the utility of the psychological level constructs even though they take the position that the psychological phenomena must be caused by events at the mental computational process level. 

Thus, they assert that psychological phenomena are phenomena that must emerge out of mental computational processes. 

Taking my lead from one of their critics, I take the fictionalist position that psychological phenomena are real in the same way that a center of gravity, the equator, an average person, or the ideal gas law are real. 

Those words and phrases designate things that are real in the sense of being useful, but there is no physical instantiation of those “things.” 

To me those things are fictional but, because they are useful in the real world, not fantastical. 

Whereas a hippogryph from the Harry Potter universe is both fictional and fantastical. 

Motivation constructs fit right into the list of useful ideas, though their utility is at least partly dependent on having an adequately nuanced model to encompass the spectrum of ways motivation occurs in human experiences. 


Neither Murayama (2023) nor the findings from Garon-Carrier, et.al. (2016) make any meaningful challenge to the core of SDT. 

Garon-Carrier, et.al. (2016) noted in their literature review that there were findings in support of all three possible relations. 

Their cited findings clearly indicated, however, that achievement predicted intrinsic motivation in mathematics in grades 1-4. 

There are more recent findings, for instance in a study by Santana-Monagas, Núñez-Regueiro, & Núñez, et. al. (2025), that finds the opposite to be true in a population of secondary school students. 

While Garon-Carrier, et.al. (2016) undoubtedly contradicts some SDT folks' ideas from decades past, that does not warrant the notion that the causal order of achievement and motivation is somehow important to the core of SDT, even though it might be an on-going debate. 


As I said before, the core of SDT is that the primary human needs are causal sources of psychological well-being. 

The causal order of needs, motivation, and engagement are irrelevant to that core idea. 

In my own work I present the idea that for practical purposes they can be considered a non-linear system in which all three are mutually reinforcing each other (which does not preclude the possibility that one might lead to the others under some circumstances or at certain developmental stages). 

The more important point is that psychological needs are the foundation of well-being. 

Ensuring the well-being of the children in their custody is a long established moral duty and officially recognized legal obligation of schools. 

And if that well-being is being undermined by the conditions in which the school places children, then it is a violation of their moral and legal duties. 


I have no problem with the idea that motivation and engagement could be thought of as outcomes of instruction. 

But that does not relieve school teachers of the problems they have with unmotivated and disengaged children, recalling the teacher comic above. 

The answer to this problem does not lie with instructional techniques, it lies with setting the conditions in the school to make children’s well-being a higher priority than providing them with instruction, no matter how skillfully delivered it might be. 

Instructors should have their professional expertise respected by being provided with students who are in an optimal state of mind to benefit from instruction. 

It might be helpful to consider separating the supervision and instructional functions of school in order to achieve an appropriate degree of professional respect based on how the school is organized. 

The Difference SDT Makes

SDT is different from all other motivation models because the SDT community has proceeded to build its models up from the research data more than on their excitement about what they think their findings might mean. 

SDT does not make bold claims about learning because they are not studying it, per se. 

Their work started with motivation which led them to study the role of needs. 

They have accumulated a variety of insights into various related phenomena, but the center of the intellectual enterprise of SDT at this point is the needs. 

The pattern of disengagement that I mentioned earlier is important because it implies the systematic thwarting or at least neglect of the psychological needs of both children and their teachers. 


Here’s my central frustration: focusing exclusively on instruction does not take into account the most basic foundation upon which any instruction must be built: the in loco parentis duty of care for the children the school is serving. 

For those who are committed to raising the professional standards of instruction it would be helpful to include a brief caveat that strongly states the fact that achieving professional grade instructional outcomes is dependent on having students (and instructors) who have their primary human needs systematically satisfied. 


The construct of needs is critically important to setting the stage for instruction. 

If schools were organized to better satisfy the psychological needs of children then instructors would have a much easier time with their instructional duties. 

When children are more unconsciously focused on pursuing their needs than they are being obedient to an instructor, that instructor has had one of their hands tied behind their back. 

Research has shown that autonomy support reduces the cognitive load of students (Evans, Vansteenkiste, Parker, et.al. 2024). 

I suggest that Kirschner,  Hendrick, and Heal should stop trying to dismiss SDT, they should take it seriously as a scientific contribution to understanding the necessary context in which instruction will be optimally successful. 


When everyone enters the classroom with full confidence that their needs will be satisfied, or that they have the power to change that situation to better align with their needs, everyone will be arriving with the kind of open minds that can accept that challenging work of learning and facilitating the learning of others. 


In conclusion, the psychological needs, as presented in Self-Determination Theory, are the best framework we have to account for the causal sources of psychological well-being. 

By articulating what they all need as humans prior to being relegated to an instructional situation, SDT provides the leverage that can enable instructors to instruct more rigorously. 

That can only happen when the organization of the school in which that instructor will do their professional work takes the humanity of their teachers and students into account. 

A school that wants to do that should regularly assess the degree of need satisfaction, patterns of motivation, and the degree of engagement. 

Not just once or twice a year, but every month or at least a couple of times each semester. 

These kinds of measures will let them know how well they are fulfilling their duty to care for the children. 

This is their basic moral and legal obligation as agents acting in the place of the children’s parents. 

Their interventions should be aimed at ensuring the satisfaction of the human need as a matter of their in loco parentis duty of care towards children. 

Only in the context of that type of caring can instruction be optimally effective.

Resources

Evans, P., Vansteenkiste, M., Parker, P., Kingsford-Smith, A., & Zhou, S. (2024). Cognitive load theory and its relationships with motivation: A self-determination theory perspective. Educational Psychology Review, 36(1), Article 7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09841-2 

Garon-Carrier, G., Guay, F., Dionne, G., Séguin, J. R., Boivin, M., Kovas, Y., Lemelin, J.-P., Vitaro, F., & Tremblay, R. E. (2016). Intrinsic Motivation and Achievement in Mathematics in Elementary School: A Longitudinal Investigation of Their Association. Child Development, 87(1), 165–175. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24698540

Lepper, M. R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1973). Undermining children's intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the "overjustification" hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28(1), 129–137. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0035519

Martela, F., & Ryan, R. M. (2016). “The Benefits of Benevolence: Basic Psychological Needs, Beneficence, and the Enhancement of Well-Being.” Journal of Personality, 84(6), 750–764. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12215. Note: This paper does not present the evidence that downgraded beneficence to a secondary need; I heard the news when Richard Ryan announced it from the stage at the 6th International Self-Determination Theory Conference in 2019.

Martela, F., Ryan, R. M., & Steger, M. F. (2017) “Meaningfulness as Satisfaction of Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness, and Beneficence: Comparing the Four Satisfactions and Positive Affect as Predictors of Meaning in Life.” Journal of Happiness Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-017-9869-7.

Murayama, K. (2023). Motivation resides only in our language, not in our mental processes. In Motivation Science: Controversies and Insights by Bong, Reeve, and Kim (eds.) Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197662359.003.0011 

Murayama K., and Jach, H.K. (2025) A critique of motivation constructs to explain higher-order behavior: We should unpack the black box. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 48, e24: 1–57. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X24000025

Reeve, J., Cheon, S. H., & Jang, H. (2020). How and why students make academic progress: Reconceptualizing the student engagement construct to increase its explanatory power. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 62, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2020.101899

Ryan, R. M., Deci, E. L., Vansteenkiste, M., & Soenens, B. (2021a). Building a science of motivated persons: Self-determination theory’s empirical approach to human experience and the regulation of behavior. Motivation Science, 7(2), 97–110. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000194 

Ryan, R. M., Deci, E. L., Vansteenkiste, M., & Soenens, B. (2021b). A legacy unfinished: An appreciative reply to comments on self-determination theory’s frontiers and challenges. Motivation Science, 7(2), 120–121. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000237 

Santana-Monagas, E., Núñez-Regueiro, F., & Núñez, J. L. (2025). Does motivation lead to academic success, or conversely? Reciprocal relations between autonomous and controlled motivation, and mathematics achievement. The British Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(2), 513–529. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12736

Sapolsky, R. (2017) Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Penguin Books.



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