Dan Pink's book Drive has many ideas that resonate well in education. A large section of the book focuses on how goals work in the age of creative, thought-based tasks which you may find interesting. if you have not read the book, RSA Animate who do very clever things with videos have done a great job summarising the book in a ten minute video (see below).
Pink also talks about positive feedback having an enhancing effect on intrinsic motivation with written feedback going even further, something we have recently talked about again in the Junior School as a goal for us all.
