Filipino students in Hawaii, like other ethnic minority students, continue to face academic struggles. Yet, there are few studies that have looked at the root of this issue for Filipino American students. While past research have focused on interventions through "culturally appropriate" instruction and multicultural curriculum, the researcher aimed to explore this issue by focusing on "intrinsic motivation to learn." In this study, the researcher examined Filipino students in Hawaii who were learning under two different classroom learning orientations--a "culturally conforming" classroom that utilized cooperative learning techniques and a "culturally confronting" classroom that utilized individualistic learning techniques. Specifically, she explored the effects of these classroom learning orientations on three aspects of intrinsic motivation to learn--competence, self-determination and autonomy. The researcher hypothesized that student intrinsic motivation to learn would be generally stronger in the "culturally confronting" classroom than the "culturally conforming" classroom, especially for lower achieving Filipino students. Using a variant of the ethnographic method of Observant Participation (Block, 1975), a mixed-methods, quantitative and qualitative research methodology, the study involved 30 total visits to 2 6th grade classrooms, 150 hours of participant observation, 12 student and 2 teacher ethnographic interviews, and student surveys and writing samples. The methodological limitations of the study, such as small sample size, issues in treatment sampling, and dosage of treatment resulted in uninterpretable findings. Despite this, the study still provides recommendations for future research particularly in the area of Observant Participation. The study also provides valuable insight for the need to continue investigating the academic issues of Filipinos in Hawaii. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]