ABSTRACT
The role of motivation in talent development has been of great interest across all educational fields. Literature on motivation in high-ability learners, including two periodical special issues on the topic, aims to inform parents, teachers, and educational policy makers of ways to better motivate these learners to reach their potential. Motivation is a process of initiating and sustaining effort toward a goal. The synthesis of research findings in this chapter is organized according to various major motivation models under the umbrella of the social cognitive perspective. The intrinsic motivation of gifted learners contributes independently to predicting their actual accomplishments beyond the effect of intelligence. The self-determination theory (SDT) provides a contemporary perspective of the intrinsic-extrinsic classification of motivation. Students’ beliefs about their ability have motivational implications for their learning processes and outcomes. Educational contexts play an important role in developing learners’ self-concepts.
