Pansies seeded from the baskets on the barges of the Leeds and Liverpool canal, Gargrave UK.
Motivation and emotion
What makes kids motivated?
And how can teachers and
senior leaders get all kids working hard?
In a five-post series, I’m
exploring a few different ways of thinking about these questions.
Last week, I borrowed from game theory and behavioural economics to illuminate motivation
deficits and short attention spans.
This week, I want to look at
expectancy, emotions and trust.
Self-fulfilling prophecies
According to ancient Greek
legend, Pygamalion invested so much love and care
in sculpting a statue of the
most beautiful and inspiring woman he could imagine,
that the gods fulfilled his
hopes and metamorphosed her into reality.
Teachers’ expectations have
an impact on pupils that is hard to overstate.
In 1968, Rosenthal &
Jacobson ran a landmark experiment.
When teachers were told that
top sets were actually bottom sets, results declined.
When teachers were told
bottom sets were actually top set, results improved.
This has been replicated ever
since. For instance, in a landmark study,
researchers told teachers
certain students had performed well on a test of intellectual ability, though
they had actually been randomly selected.
After 8 months, these
students significantly outperformed their peers,
and the teachers described
them as better motivated to succeed than other students.
Researchers have dubbed this
the Pygamalion effect.
(I’ve heard this described as
the Halo effect.)
What a teacher thinks of a
class impacts on their motivation.
People live up to your
expectations of them. Student success depends on teachers’ beliefs.
As a student, what makes you
look forward to the lesson?
It’s not so much what you have next, as who you have next.
Emotional interactions between
teachers and students are some of
‘the
most powerful hidden dynamics of teaching’,
according to Robert Marzano,
as they are ‘typically unconscious’.
‘They don’t care how much you
know until they know how much you care’
This chiasmus enlightens us
to an enduring truth about influence
recognised long ago by the
Ancient Greeks.
Rational, forceful persuasion
is far from the most powerful form of influence:
it comes third out of the
three charioteers of ethos, pathos and logos.
This philosophy helps us see
a teacher’s influence on pupils’ motivation
through the eyes of the
pupils. There are questions that all pupils implicitly,
subconsciously ask of teachers when being
taught by them:
Ethos: How much credibility
does this teacher have?
Who is my teacher? What do
they want for me? Do they mean what they say?
The subconscious mindset is
this: ‘I can’t hear what you’re
saying
because who you are is shouting too loudly
in my ears.’‘
Pathos: How much does this
teacher care?
How much do they care about
me as a person?
How much do they understand
and encourage me?
The unspoken mindset is this:
‘why should I care about
learning from you, if you don’t care about me?’
Logos: How much does this teacher help me succeed?
What do they have to teach
me? Do the challenges they set make me feel successful?
The subconscious mindset is:
‘The more I experience success,
the more effort I’ll put into succeeding.’
I suggest that the more
pupils (implicitly) answer these positively,
the more pupils feel
motivated to work hard by their teacher.
The harder you work on your
empathy for them, the harder they’ll work for you.
Given that these questions
are always subconsciously asked by pupils,
there are some things that
teachers should be thinking about:
TLC
Ethos: How can I do more to
build my pupils’ trust?
How can you demonstrate that
you want great things for them?
How can you encourage their
efforts with genuine, sincere praise?
How do you model hard work
and self-control?
Pathos: How can I do more to
understand my pupils?
How can you take the time to
understand each pupil by asking them about them?
How can you affirm each
pupil, catching them making the effort?
How can you show you see
their viewpoint – ‘I know this isn’t your only subject!’
Logos: How can I do more to
help every pupil succeed?
How can you trust them with
rewarding challenges?
How can you hold them to
ever-higher standards?
How can you support them even
more patiently?
Science here tells us what we
always knew
Trust is the best motivation.
It is a better predictor of
teacher success than expertise, according to Hattie & Yates (2014).
A teacher can know their
subject inside out, but if their pupils don’t trust them,
they won’t feel very
motivated. It works both ways, though: subject expertise builds trust,
as pupils love being taught
by someone who loves their subject and knows how best to share it.
Catch 22
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-33. Orr
would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane,
he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didsn’t have to; but if
he didn’t want to, he was sane and had to.”
The difficulty is this: while
pupils with the most difficult emotions are precisely the most difficult
to deal with, they’re
precisely the kids in most need of emotional affection,
affirmation and
encouragement. All too often I hear difficult conversations between a pupil
and a teacher where the
teacher is saying, ‘Adam, you’re so bright, but
your behaviour
isn’t good enough and you’re
not working hard enough.’
The message Adam hears is: ‘I’m so bright, I don’t need to behave or work
very hard.’ Eventually,
interactions turn hostile, and both teachers’ and pupils’ emotional reactions
are resentful.
If pupils grappling with the
most tangled emotions are the ones most at risk of a downward spiral
of complacency, negativity,
resentment and hostility, what can we do about this?
Levelling the unlevel playing
field for those who experience negativity at home
by rewarding their intermittent
efforts whilst neglecting those pupils who quietly and consistently work hard
seems unpalatable: when the worst behaved kids get rewarded most,
the school perpetuates
disruption and disincentivises effort.
Ultimately, this is a dilemma
as much for school leaders as for classroom teachers.
Every kid has to find a way
to internalise the habit of self-control that will
last them a lifetime.
A culture of trust is vital,
and it starts with modelling: unless we as teachers
and the school at large practise
what we preach on being motivated and loving learning,
how do we hope to inspire
enduring motivation in kids? The happier teachers are in their work,
the happier pupils are to
work hard. The higher the standards of behaviour that we hold kids to,
the more they realise that we
care about them in the long-term.
We shouldn’t permissively
indulge them by placating and pleading, then lose patience
and snap into anger and
annoyance. Instead, we should embody purpose, not power,
as guiding adults making
tough choices, especially when it gets difficult.
So here are some things
school leaders might think about across the school:
Ethos: How can we do more to
build our pupils’ trust?
How can we make 100% on task
every task in every lesson the enforced expectation?
How can we follow through
relentlessly with consistent consequences?
How can we encourage everyday
effort with public, sincere positivity in assemblies?
Pathos: How can we do more to
make our pupils feel understood?
How could we survey pupils on
how committed they feel to the school ethos?
How could we share the
results of the survey visibly and see their viewpoint?
How can we know every name,
to affirm pupil’s individuality in corridors?
Logos: How can we do more to
help every pupil succeed?
How can we teach all pupils
to understand their emotions and self-control?
What teacher training can we
run on how to help pupils with self-control?
Which roleplay scenarios
could we play out on what to do when it gets difficult?
Emotions matter. Those of us
excited by the potential of cognitive science to
improve instruction should not blind ourselves to pupils’ emotional connection
with us.
To neglect the affective
domain is to miss an important piece of the puzzle of pupil motivation.
And the more difficult the
emotions the kid brings to the classroom, the greater the emotional impact we
have a chance to make on their lives. Tender, loving care can make all the
difference.
Hearts matter as much as minds.
Next week, I’ll look into
pupil mindsets, and borrow from choice architecture
to see how to turn the growth
mindset into the default option for all our pupils.
https://pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/motivation-emotion/
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