The ASCD bestseller, The Classroom of Choice: Giving Students What They Need and Getting What You Want (2004), in addition to being used successfully by thousands of teachers worldwide, is now being used as a textbook in colleges and universities throughout North America in their teacher preparation programs.  The Classroom of Choice provides a compelling research-based rationale for replacing the traditional carrot-and-stick approach to classroom management and instruction based on extrinsic motivation with a new, more effective intrinsically-oriented approach.

Using world-renowned psychologist William Glasser’s Choice Theory (1996) as his model for intrinsic motivation, Jonathan Erwin explains why and how to appeal to students’ basic human needs  and create a classroom climate and culture that is optimal for quality learning and performance.  Chapter One explains why it is more beneficial for teachers to appeal to intrinsic motivation than to use an extrinsic approach and thoroughly explains each of the five basic human needs:

• Survival-- the need for physical and emotional safety, order, and security.
• Love & Belonging-- the need to feel accepted and have positive relationships.
• Power-- the need for learning, competence, achievement, recognition, and to be listened to.
• Freedom-- the need for movement, choices, and novelty.
• Fun-- the need to play.