We claim we want to nurture self-directed learners and hope that the use of technology and other innovative educational practices will engage our digital natives. We also know it is critical that our students develop resiliency, self-regulation, and other social emotional competencies in addition to academic behaviors for success such as study skills, self-advocacy, and note taking. While I have no doubt that providing engaging and thoughtful academic environments though the use of inquiry, literature and other engaging practices and using technology tools to foster collaboration and problem solving will result in improved outcomes for students I increasingly hear teacher concerns with student ‘motivation’. I believe that if we have more than 50% of our teachers claiming that more than 50% of out students are not motivated we have a big problem and need to engage in the intellectual inquiry necessary to learn how to improve this situation. Maybe it’s not 50%. If not, what would be the percent at which we should be concerned? Is this truly better or worse than 10 or 20 years ago? Can we expect it to be better or worse now?
One of my tasks this past couple of months has been to inventory what we are currently providing for ‘curriculum’ in the areas listed above. For the most part this is done and we are beginning to look at expanding and improving in some critical areas such as study skills/academic behaviors in grades 3-8. In order to do this well I have revisited some of the research that was very important to me as I raised my own children; that is the research surrounding the impact of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. I read and hear varying understandings of this research and debate so I chose to go back to some large meta-analyses in order to learn for myself. I can send the articles to anyone interested.
As I do this, some very frightening thoughts and questions lurk at the corner of my consciousness and keep me awake at night.
~ I have no doubt we need articulated curriculum, both for all students and for students who need additional time and opportunity to develop social and emotional skills. However, we also know that the skills or dispositions we are describing are nurtured and developed over time through interaction with responsive and informed adults.
~ Whether we like the idea of this or not, MANY of the practices we engage in in schools are used to somehow or other modify or shape behaviors. We provide feedback on a minute-by-minute basis in a myriad of conscious and unconscious ways. We desire to shape and develop appropriate behaviors both for our own sanity, and because we believe the behaviors we want students to demonstrate are ultimately beneficial to them.
~ What if we are unwittingly engaging in well-intentioned practices that are at best not supporting the development of a child at any given level, or worse, are actually detrimental to their needs at any given stage of development?
~ What if, though encouraging and focusing on the short-term goal of compliance and control we are actually hurting the development of competence and autonomy.
For instance:
1. Should we reward an eight-year-old child with a 'prize' for being kind to another child?
2. How do we truly support 16-year-old student council members to learn leadership skills? Are we prepared to support the mistake they will make as they learn or do we actually want them to act as ‘puppets’ for adults attempting to control the environment? This has been a burning question since my oldest daughter was a student ‘leader’.
1. Should we reward an eight-year-old child with a 'prize' for being kind to another child?
2. How do we truly support 16-year-old student council members to learn leadership skills? Are we prepared to support the mistake they will make as they learn or do we actually want them to act as ‘puppets’ for adults attempting to control the environment? This has been a burning question since my oldest daughter was a student ‘leader’.
I believe we need to be prepared to closely examine our Pre-K – 12 systems to ensure we are not unknowingly using practices that are actually detrimental to the long-term impact we want to have. Plugging in ‘curriculum’ in 8th grade to artificially teach something that could and should be environmentally nurtured in 2nd and 3rd grade seems like a sad waste of time and will it even be successful when provided after the developmental 'window'? Is there a developmental window for this learning?
I am convinced we cannot move forward unless we have courageous conversations that should involve, at very least, revisiting Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages and Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development along with the research on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Maybe with THIS central to our educational efforts will we improve academic outcomes.
Great thoughts. I have been wondering about these same questions lately myself. My thoughts were ignited by this blog by Rick Wormeli. (love him) . http://www.brilliant-insane.com/2014/01/the-game-of-school.html?m=1
ReplyDeleteChris - you Math Hatter you! I love your blog: http://cjsieling.blogspot.com/
DeleteWow - flipped classroom, self-paced learning, and standards-based grading all going on at the same time! You are amazing! I especially loved the video for parents posted on March 21st - this explains your vision so well. We have recently stepped into standards-based grading for K-5 and we're doing well but have not fully explored and discussed the potential impact on student motivation which you obviously have. Are you seeing any changes on this front with your students? Overall how would you describe the impact on student motivation and learning given the changes you have made?
Ironically, I just started reading Phil Schlechty's Engaging Students, and although I am not even through the first chapter yet, the similarities to some of your thoughts are remarkable. He basically categorizes students into groups like "engaged", "strategically compliant" (meaning that they will work for the extrinsic reward--generally the grade), "ritually compliant" (focused on exit requirements ie. the least I have to do to pass), "retreatism" (withdrawn), and "rebellious". He has spent a fair amount of the first section discussing the culture of "grade grubbing" in schools.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree that we begin incentivizing children in the wrong way early on. (Daniel Pink's Drive is a great reminder of this. Also, Carol Dweck's Mindset...) As you suggest, this leads to short-term compliance, but does little to foster any of the skills that learners need in order to persist and to develop autonomy. On the surface,it seems like the glib answer is to tie learning to real and relevance situations for students in order to trigger the more intrinsic motivators to fuel their effort, but realistically, how do we do that in all areas? (i.e. how do you intrinsically motivate students to learn direct object pronouns -- fairly necessary in order to learn most world languages -- but a fairly mundane grammatical construct. I can think of dozens of examples for math (which I learned in a rote, extrinsically-rewarded fashion), science, etc.
With any luck, all will be solved in subsequent chapters of Engaging Students :) I will keep you posted...
Sue, interesting point and huge question because so much of the time we are asking students to learn discrete disconnected tasks. The research I'm reading is primarily focused on the impact of extrinsic rewards on motivation to engage in 'interesting' tasks as opposed to the more 'routine' tasks such as your example of learning 'direct object pronouns'. I need to think about this more, but is the learning of direct object pronouns actually tied to student motivation to learn another language? So long as student motivation to learn another language remains high then hopefully he or she will be wiling to engage in the lower level task necessary for this... and does it matter if 'rewards' are provided to help make it through these lower level learning tasks?
DeleteMaybe I don't really need to build life-long motivation to learn direct object pronouns (sorry to keep using the same example:), but I do need to learn that if I break a larger goal or task into smaller (and less interesting) ones I can reach my greater goal. Delayed gratification helps too but that's entirely another story... or is it?
Obviously I really need to read Engaging Students, 'Grade grubbing' - horrible thought - I can picture this though! Read on and please share any insights gained!
Of course I left the book on my nightstand, and I am on the road all week (damn! I have a loaned print book, not the digital version!) so we will have to hold the phone for the next words of wisdom. But I do agree that if we could build self-motivation to learn, then our main task as educators would be to provide relevance and a scaffold. I have been thinking lately a bit about the work around Gradual Release of Responsibility as something that we should introduce in kid-friendly terms as early as elementary school. I think most kindergarteners enter school eager to learn for its own sake, even though we have been extrinsically (and probably detrimentally) rewarding them with gold stars and skittles both at home and in pre-school. But at what age does the "grade grubbing" mentality really start to take root? If we could replace those rewards with a GRR system (along with some good work based on Kohlberg et al) at that point, we could maybe head off some of the "Will work for A's" mentality. If kids became self-aware about what they individually need in order to learn and if this is leveraged into Learning Plans that they create themselves (with our guidance), then "they" can build the more mundane developmental skills (that we them see that they need) into the big picture. Haven't seen this done well in many schools, but what a wonderful world this would be. Fulfill all my dreams of facilitative teaching...
DeletePuppets!
ReplyDeleteNo, I agree with your thoughts, Jean. Just last week, I heard a veteran teacher say, "This group of students would never get through what I was teaching X years ago." I think it is a sign of the age, the Entertain Me generation, that hard work and motivation are golden words from yesteryear. At the same time, I think it is important to recognize the environmental factors our students are growing up in. When older brother and younger sister have different last names than I, where is my stability?
Keep blogging; you must have more time than I do :-)
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ReplyDeleteWhen we characterize students as "motivated" (or not), what benchmarks are we using--what are we actually measuring? What is a veteran teacher truly looking for when s/he complains that students are not as acceptable as they once were?
ReplyDeleteAs someone who is not an educator but who attended high school recently, I find myself put off when the moral failure of my generation (or my parents') gets all the blame for my supposed lack of motivation.
I do sometimes wonder what role economics plays. I have a hunch that for many middle class, rural students in this post-recession era, simply "being good" and getting decent grades doesn't necessarily pay off in the long run--at least not like it may have even 10 years ago. My thoughts on this are not well-developed, but I imagine that when traditionally motivating rewards structures (college degrees for $400 a semester, decent-paying jobs with benefits) fall through, we have to work even harder to nurture meaningful engagement. By the time they're in high school, students are totally capable of grasping these realities.
Take my thoughts with a grain of salt--I did spent a hefty chunk of grade school mental energy trying to figure out why my family has 3 different last names.
Best regards.
I will boldly (and probably foolishly) speak for all veteran teachers when I say that I think the main benchmark was compliance. With almost 30 years in education, I don't think my students in my first years of teaching were more motivated; they were merely more likely to comply. And I don't delude myself into believing that their former compliance resulted in much more deep or long-term learning than the current students with their current so-called lack of motivation.
DeleteI think you are absolutely correct about some of the economic factors and their effect on motivation, at least for high school and college students. I clearly shouldn't speak for your generation, but I think that in addition to not believing the fiction that compliance in school will result in future success, I also suspect that even if you all did believe it, you wouldn't necessarily buy-in. There is some research pointing to an upcoming generation who define success differently and are willing to sacrifice much of the "old" American Dream for the new one -- work that is deeply meaningful personally. And the pathway to success in that new landscape is much more about self-discovery and self-direction, skills that are not only not valued in a compliance-based educational structure, but often discouraged or characterized as self-absorbed.
Obviously this oversimplifies the myriad factors that affect student motivation, but I truly believe that too often we begin and end with a "blame the victim" strategy of simply bemoaning that the students just want to be entertained without recognizing the complexity of the factors that impact learning or even our own roles are the parents who raised said children with a constant stream of structured "entertainment" activities: play dates, orchestrated museum and park trips, soccer camps, music lessons, grand themed birthday parties etc -- all with the best intentions but little thought about the end results.