Motivating students to work hard and do well when it matters is an essential part of the job. Here is a method for creating the conditions for internally motivated students.
A seemingly perpetual struggle in education is motivating students to enjoy school. This issue is magnified in schools in challenging contexts, where I have worked for 15 years. Some schools can easily have 700 pupil premium students on-roll. Just on Dunbar’s number alone, constructing a motivating narrative is an extreme challenge for leaders.
It is of course true that exam results are important but it perhaps truer to say that it is one important aspect of their education. It does not acknowledge their emotional literacy, their practical intelligence and their emerging purpose in life. Nor does it instil in them the courage and resilience to fail repeatedly, nor to wonder, self-direct nor to create.
If we are serious about reducing educational inequality, we need to be serious about motivating PP students to do it on their own. Which means empowering their why, not instilling ours.
Take responsibility… get motivated
Schools are highly uncertain, highly complex, highly volatile places. Nothing wrong with that, its what makes them awesome. Plenty of teachers and students get pushed and pulled in a swell of the everyday micro-stresses that affect us. To have high performance in such contexts there needs to be high levels of personal responsibility. And in order to consistently take responsibility in the shifting sands of a school term, you need to be motivated. Motivated to learn, to stay curious, to be open minded, motivated to fail repeatedly, everyday. Motivated to accept the call to adventure of self-discovery. The best students, the best teachers are autonomous, independent and take responsibility.
But… you can’t just coerce someone into taking responsibility - it’s a paradox. If I tell you to take responsibility and then you do, I’ve robbed you of your responsibility.
Motivation is as unique as you
In 15 years or so of teaching, I’ve not heard much from other teachers or leaders about student motivation and how it impacts progress. Or how we can systematically improve the motivation of the young people we teach. It’s one of those concepts that is skirted around: lamented over when absent and taken for granted when present. We talk even less about the motivation of staff, like it is an absolute truth that all teachers are motivated to put the student first and above all else. Or worse, to put the school / trust’s policies first above all else. It’s a massive presumption and it holds so many school leaders back.
Mindful Motivation
I’m interested in how teachers can mindfully develop motivation amongst students and how leaders can motivate staff. I’ve only ever taught in challenging contexts, where student motivation is often ambiguous and uncertain. Whilst every child I’ve ever met ‘wants to do well’, in my experience many are not motivated or not equipped to work hard towards exams. For example, my old deputy head worked on a mantra that the only the revision students would do is the revision we see them do. We should not assume that all students can or should conform to the ideals on which our exam system is based.
Internal vs External
It’s certainly clear that motivation is complex, diverse and hidden. I think we make a couple of big assumptions – that teenagers want what’s best for themselves and that schools know what’s best for students. These assumptions incubate power structures, control and ultimately external motivation.
The best teachers and the best students clearly have exceptional drive to be their best. But I think we get the source of this motivation wrong. It’s easy to think that the right observation or essay feedback will make someone feel driven, like motivation is a simple formula consisting of energy in and rewards out. In fact, motivation is much more complicated on an individual level and complex on an organisational level. Schools like to tightly control what happens within them but motivation is rarely about external reward. In fact, external validation, though effective short-term, can actually be damaging. Doing it to please miss / parents / doing it for the kids is a trap.
Outside of schools, psychologists have given this a name, the Hawthorne Effect; emotional reward is more important than material compensation. True motivation comes from within.
Zak’s External Struggle
To understand the hidden drivers lets look at a student called Zak who liked playing on computer games. Zak was a bright young lad who passed through years 7–9 without ever having to work hard – every assessment was passed with the merest of efforts and in class he acted a fool because he could still do the work without concentrating. By year 10 his teachers were increasingly worried and things came to a head at parent’s evening. Zak’s parents were worried so they decided to offer a carrot: a new console if he got the right grades in the end of year 10 mocks. Good lad that he is, Zak worked hard for the mocks and got the grades he deserved and needed for the new xbox. He felt great about himself and his parents were ecstatic. Only he no longer had any incentive and it became harder to motivate himself; going into year 11, he drifted back into old habits.
Aisha’s Internal Power
Compare that with Aisha, a student from a disadvantaged background whose parents worked round the clock. She was a student who had a growth mindset, who listened diligently during modelling and acted it out perfectly when the pressure was on. I bet your parents are strict, I said. Not at all, my mum is chill she replied, before going on to say “I do it for me. I do it for the future”.
This is the distinction between internal and external motivation. Internally motivated students do it for the love of learning and for themselves. Externally motivated students do it for their teachers, their parents, to look good or maybe for achievement points. One is not intrinsically worse than the other, but high performers in life are nearly always internally motivated. When motivation is driven by self-determined factors it has a bigger long-term impact on effort. Not only this, but is associated with higher self-esteem and lower anxiety, which will in themselves lead to more optimised conditions for learning.
Motivational Transcendence
So, as teachers, we want to systematically create conditions for high levels of self-determined behaviours. Motivation is flexible and dynamic so we are not aiming for ‘complete self-determined behaviour’. Some jobs are still boring and some tasks will need a ‘bribe’ to make student’s complete them. Such is life. It’s just that internal trumps external. It’s perhaps best to think of them as continuum or sliding scale; we might need to start with external motivation but we need to consciously slide it towards internal as internal transcends external.
A = Autonomy
Organisations that care less about control know that humans by their very nature seek purpose – a cause greater than themselves. And they also know that they can’t simply tell them what this is; they need to discover it autonomously. Nietzsche said it nicely – “he who has a why… can bear any how”. Psychologists define autonomy as acting in harmony with your sense of self; to be motivated, your work should reflect your core values and your need to be true to yourself. If our work chimes with our sense of self, we will be motivated.
Humans are instinctively driven to look for patterns and meaning, so helping people find a purpose that is bigger than ourselves can be absolutely profound. Just don’t shove a set of values that you chose down their necks. Instead harness the amazing power of stories and artefacts to show the power of the hero’s journey, the solo pursuit to discover their true self, to discover what means the most to them.
B = Belonging
According to self-determination theory, motivation increases when we have a sense of connection with the people around us. It is probably this instinct to cooperate that meant humans went on to create language, schools, nations and blogs. For a million years before schools were invented, collaboration and connection gave us a survival advantage in the face of numerous threats. This powerful drive is much more persistent than the modern, western, drive for individualism. We are ‘wired’ to do better in teams, groups and communities; having a clear ‘tribe’ with a defined purpose drives internal motivation, giving us a reason to belong and a reason to sacrifice.
The human instinct to seek purpose aligns with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which says that beyond the satisfaction of basic needs, we are no longer driven by purely external motivations. And of course this is captured in detail by Jim Collins and Simon Sinek with their work on having a clear ‘why’ – its not controversial in business so it has no need to be in schools.
Not only does a sense of belonging increase motivation, it also improves learning. Failure is an essential part of learning and safety to make mistakes is a vital component of a high performance classroom and school.
More than this, it physiologically changes the students within it by calming the amygdala and limbic system, the part of the brain where emotions and fight or flight responses are found – the primordial part of the brain on hyper-alert for threats. What was once predators and pillage now manifests itself as shame, the thief of learning.
C = Competence
Most people are driven to control their own destiny. When we can’t, it makes us unhappy, stressed and depressed. This is why responsibility and autonomy are so important. When people believe they are in control over their situation they work harder and are more resilient to setbacks. People even feel more likely to win the lottery when they choose their own numbers and more confident they will win a dice roll if they roll the dice themselves. It’s why people take the long way round traffic jams and it's why some students who refuse also have immaculate presentation.
Nothing makes students feel in control more than feeling competent. If you help to make students feel good about learning then they will be more motivated to learn more. Aim for high success rates and praise effort authentically. Whether you say they can or you say they can’t, you will probably be correct.
Motivation Brings Joy
And if you’ve got this far and need a final rationale, do it because kids need all the confidence they can get – they have it tough enough these days. Motivation and confidence are symbiotic and if you wish to be successful in school or life, its better to have both in spades. Plus, there are fewer things more joyful than being motivated and confident to do something well and finding flow in the process.
Conclusion
If we agree that education is a process of self-actualisation, helping young people to find their feet and then their way, we need to let go of binary notions of carrots and sticks. That may have been the way our parents were raised, but that ship has sunk.
Motivation is just one spoke in the wheel of self-regulated learning and it needs curated and deliberate attention. Helping students to find their own internal motivation is an essential gift that schools can give students and we should stop overlooking it or we are destined to continue the spoon-feedback loop.
In class explorations
Try and teach a whole lesson using choice-orientated language
Teach a class where the objective is to boost student confidence in your subject
Think of a common obstacle to learning. Now spend 15 minutes visualising the best possible reaction over and over again until it is embedded.
Teach a lesson where the only objective is to foster ‘belongingnes’
Teach a class without saying a single negative thing. To any one.
Teach a class where you only praise effort, never outcome.
Teach a whole lesson where you show zero tolerance to any misbehaviour. Share what you are doing with the class before you start and spend 15 minutes at the end in a circle discussing it.
In another lesson spend the whole lesson speaking extremely calmly. Again, do a debrief.
Teach a whole lesson with the students in a circle.
Buy a counter and count how many positive statements you make in a lesson
Do the same with negative comments
Pick the ‘naughtiest’ kid in your class. For a whole week say only positive comments to them.
Comments
Post a Comment