The passing from the traditional educational paradigm (focused on professor and teaching activity) to the postmodern paradigm (focused on student and learning activity) brings along deep transmutations regarding the planning, organization and evaluation of didactic activities. The student with his/her interests, potential and learning needs is being placed nowadays in the centre of the didactic activity. A decisive role towards success in learning is played by the learning motivation, when considered that the authentic and efficient learning is based on the inner impulse, the student’s desire for knowledge, progress and development. A vast part of the specialty literature supports the idea according to which, a high level of learning motivation, especially the intrinsic motivation leads to higher performance in learning. There are two categories of factors that stand at the basis of learning motivation: internal factors (such as cognitive abilities, interests, aptitudes, will, emotionality, level of aspiration, health, curiosity etc.) and external factors (among which the teaching quality, the educational environment, the professor’s personality, the contents of the studied discipline, the degree of novelty and difficulty of contents etc.). The professor’s role is that of acting upon the factors in the student’s outer environment, in order to empower the internal factors that could increase the level of learning motivation. The current study is concerned with three basic aspects: underlying the role of learning motivation in the instructional activity; the analysis of factors lying at the basis of learning motivation; introducing some ways to stimulate the learning motivation in higher education. On the whole, the paper aims at contributing to the development of theory and practice of instruction in higher education, focused on the student and his or her learning activity.

learning motivation; internal motivating factors; external motivating factors; stimulation of learning motivation.

Presentation: oral