Motivation
---------- Autonomy ------ Mastery ------ Purpose ----------
There have been research results coming out of the fields of economics and sociology have begun to make contributions to our understanding of motivation. I like the concise autonomy, mastery, purpose framework put forth by author Dan Pink. If you have a minute the video above is about 10 minutes and it is a fun way to get introduced to it. That autonomy trumps extrinsic rewards may seem somewhat surprising to economists but it certainly rings true to we educators.
I think the more that we find out about the importance of motivation the more the traditional classroom setting seems to present challenges in the area of providing choice, real choice. There are topics we must teach and there are only so many student contact hours in which we can engage students. There are two avenues I see to enhancing student motivation to read through offering choice. The first is limited choice. Call it what you want, guided, structured or whatever mental gymnastic you can imagine. This is going to be the goto strategy for much of the content we must teach.
Cartoonist - David Horsey, 2008
The more radical alternative I find myself attracted to is to allow reading anything. I am not sure how much of a difference it would make, between choice and freedom. I imagine that it is sometimes the case for struggling or reluctant readers that left to their own devices they would choose to read things that would be hard to talk about in class or be hard to justify spending time on.
Every time I watched that video of his speech with the RSA animation, I ended up thinking about cake! They drew cake at least three times!!! All that aside, the results of the study done in India was so surprising to me. Motivation is extremely complex but it is the main driving force for action.
ReplyDeleteI honestly do not believe that there is anything wrong with having limited choice. Sometimes assigning specific instructions and setting clear expectations can lessen the anxiety level in students. That is not to say we should not give students choices and freedom in learning. Like one of the article in the reading, limited choice is okay as long as we’re choosing texts that are interesting and memorable.