Minds of Our Own video, from Learner.org

Watching this video was both enlightening and amusing. Starting with the amusement, one researcher is quoted as saying (without a hint of sarcasm that I could sense) that they, miraculously, discovered about a decade ago [possibly a few decades now] that children have minds of their own. Really?

My first thought was that the researchers did not remember what it was like to be a kid. My second thought was that they also either did not have children of their own, or it had been a long while. My third thought was a bit more charitable in that they probably had been taught that when in school themselves and the video seemed on the older side.

But it still makes sense that this would have been the thought. If you think about the education system, at least when I was a child, it was based around the idea that children will learn if you just tell it to them. But children are not blank slates. Sure, we can give them some ideas, but we have to change what they believe. They pick up their own ideas as they learn. Sometimes we have to alter or guide their ideas, but they will have them.

A lot of good ideas were presented in the video. Our technology is growing extremely fast, and I think that many young kids, even though they grow up with it, look at it more like a magical feat than with any real understanding. Lights require power and if I flip this switch, that turns on the power. That's the general idea, but it does not allow any insight into how the bulb turns on, or why.

One researcher put it quite well near the beginning of the video: “If one cannot light up a light bulb with a battery and a wire, then everything built upon those basic ideas has problems.” If students do not comprehend and are not able to apply the knowledge they learn, they cannot truly use it. And that is, really, one of the biggest goals of a school; to provide a way for students to learn something they can use in life.

And this can be difficult when students struggle to hang on to their beliefs and ideas. The video had two different examples regarding vision and how the eyes work, and three different students who had erroneous ideas about that process. Two of the students insisted that they would be able to see an apple in a pitch-dark room. The idea, pointed out by the scientists, likely came from inexperience in a truly pitch-dark room. Most of us equate a completely dark room with our own bedroom in the middle of the night. So, if you do not realize that light still enters the room from different places, you might come up with the idea that, given enough time, your eyes can adjust to any environment, even one without any source of light. And yet, after experiencing a completely dark room, the two students still clung to the idea that, hopefully, given a bit more time they would have been able to see that apple on the table. The other student believed, after observing his own cat's eyes, that our eyes emit light to help us see in the dark.

These examples show how we tend to filter things out that are not important to us, and that we see what we believe we will see. The more solidified a student is on an idea, the harder it will be for them to let go of it.

This can, obviously, be a great challenge to a teacher. In order for a student to change their ideas, they have to see for themselves that the idea is wrong. And even then, the change can be hard. An instructor they interviewed, and helped to change his style of teaching, commented that it is difficult to let go of things you believe when you are still not sure of what you are grasping.

So how do we help our students make this change? That is a tough question to answer. One set of teachers they followed were using an extremely scientific approach to teaching their class. They guided discussion, but left the discovery up to the students. It is slower learning that way, but all the students they interviewed agreed that they knew the material extremely well. One teacher said that “it's not just important to have hands-on learning. It's important to have heads-on experience as well.” Students need to engage not just their hands, but their minds as well. And considering that students learn more outside of the classroom than inside (in the earlier years at least, perhaps throughout life for some subjects), we have a small, but important opportunity to help our students to learn how to learn.

Reflections on Motivation

In my readings on motivation, one of the first things that caught my eye was providing a secure environment, meaning a place where the students feel safe failing – not in all of their assignments, but where they can understand that failure is sometimes a step in the learning process – and that there is no penalty for failure.

To me, that is something huge. Growing up in a family that kept getting larger (I am 3^rd of 10 children), both failure and success were common things we dealt with. It is hard to always win at everything when you have older siblings better than you at whatever you were playing, and younger ones who would cry if they always lost. When I got to school and met more kids, I learned of some whose parents would not accept anything less than perfection, and how hard it was on those kids. So the idea of making sure that all students know that failure does not mean the end of the world is fantastic.

And a good application for this is something else that I read; No Questions Asked coupons. These little cards are something you can give out to your students as part of the syllabus (one per student) that allows them to turn in an assignment late, “no questions asked” or no penalty. The coupons can only be redeemed once and each student can only use one (cuts down on the student black market for them). The reading suggests that if a student never uses it, a bonus can be given.

Another part that I thought was interesting was a section that discussed William Glasser's The Quality School. Glasser thinks that teachers should be more like project or management leads than bossy, meaning that they should lead and guide students rather than just telling them what to do. In this way, a teacher can focus on helping students learn problem solving skills and on helping them be motivated to do good quality work. To me it seems a bit strange to think of a teacher as mid-level management and the students as entry-level employees, but perhaps this is closer to the way things should be. If we did think of school in this way, it would certainly help students prepare for entering the work force much better than they are right now.

I imagine this would be easier for a Tech teacher than for many of the other teachers. In Tech Education, we are already teaching students skills that can be applied to a career, as we lean more towards hands-on learning. To me, it would not be a large leap to run a classroom like a business, with people rotating tasks to make sure they all learn everything. That would be an interesting experiment.

It also leads into another thought that I found interesting: fantasy. This is where you introduce an element of fantasy into the learning environment. In the above experiment, students could imagine that they were being employed and doing work (or on the job training). This can allow students to find their own level of interest, and thus help with their motivation.

Another thing that caught my eye was using non-controlling feedback. The idea is that you phrase your comments and feedback in such a way that you remove any words that indicate you are trying to control them. For example, saying that a student should or must do their homework. I can see this being a big challenge, since most of the instruction that I can recall growing up was more like controlling feedback: Kevin, you need to do _________, and so on. But I can recall some people in my life trying to use non-controlling feedback when conversing with either myself or others that I was able to observe. Phrasing it such as: I have noticed that this is not going well for you. What is going on? How do you think you can do better? I even remember a math professor asking me why I thought I was not doing well on the tests, since my participation in class was high and my homework was, for the most part, good. The answer to that was that, in general, math tests and I are not friends.

But I can see how effective that idea, using the non-controlling feedback, can be. It empowers the student to take control of their own education, stimulates them to consider different influences in their life that could be negatively affecting their academic performance. Used properly, this could help students feel at ease around you as well, as they would not see you as someone else trying to dictate everything that happens in their life.

One word of caution that I saw said that if you decide to use extrinsic motivation of some kind, make sure it is never perceived as a bribe. All of my reading on the subject seems to agree on this point. Extrinsic motivation is useful only up to a point, and only for short term effects. If it is ever used as a bribe, motivation goes down. So, in the classroom, research indicates that extrinsic motivational techniques, such as rewards or permission to do something, should be used to drive towards intrinsic motivation.

Again, from my life, I had grown up learning and then knowing that if you really love something or are really interested in something, you generally do better in that subject than in a class where you do not understand anything or have no interest in the subject.

I have been fortunate to have a large variety of interests, but I have had classes that did not really interest me, which have been a struggle. Fortunately, I never had the teacher that would drone on and on about a topic. They all did well at trying to engage everyone in the topic, and that held me through each one.

I do like how one segment that I read mentioned that teachers need to be motivated as well. Imagine a teacher trying to motivate students when they had no motivation themselves. Seems rather silly, but I am sure it happens, though most likely without much success. Teachers have an even greater need to be motivated in what they do. A highly motivated teacher who demonstrates a passion for the topic can help students to feel some of that passion, which can help them to gain an interest in the topic. We always need to take care of ourselves, making sure we show a good example of motivation for what we teach, and thus help the students to gain that interest, in wanting to learn if nothing else.

All this reading and thinking has me pondering my own life right now. With my children, I now wonder if there are better ways of handling difficult situations. Looking back I can see how different situations have led to my children feeling motivated about something we were doing. I have plans on using some of what I have learned (and mentioned above) in motivating my children in things they want to learn and things that I know they need to learn.

A way of increasing motivation that can be applied to all levels of life, either personal, familial, or in the classroom is setting goals. If students can learn to break a difficult task down into manageable components, they will be so much better prepared for the real world. I have already begun this with my children when they are asked to clean up their toys. They almost immediately feel overwhelmed and do not want to try. But if I set them on the task of picking up just a certain type of toy, they work happily on that task, knowing that it is not that hard. We then move from type to type until everything is done.

This can also be applied to the classroom. We can teach students to take the syllabus at the beginning of the year and set goals as to when certain tasks such as homework assignments or projects should be done to a certain percentage, or completed, then they can feel better prepared, and thus more motivated to completing the assignments. Or, with more granularity, a single project, if large enough, can seem daunting, such as a large research paper. We can help students learn how to break it up in to manageable pieces and set goals for each of the smaller ones. This will help them not only feel better about being able to accomplish the entire project (which raises perceived confidence), but if they are permitted to set the goals themselves, this gives them more control (which raises feelings of autonomy). This should then lead to greater intrinsic motivation.

Last of all, humor is one thing that I had not considered as something motivating, though it makes sense. When you add humor to the classroom, you help students relax. It can help create a safe learning environment. And a safe learning environment will help students feel comfortable enough to learn. And that's what it is all about.