Welsh poppy.
Motivation and instruction
Why do some kids arrive at
secondary school already motivated to work hard,
while some arrive demotivated
to exert much effort at all in lessons?
Picture two students
you’ve taught: one who works incredibly hard, and one who seems
incredibly lacklustre and
avoids making effort.
What explains this
difference? How does motivation work?
In a series of five
blogposts, I plan to explore what we as teachers can do about motivation,
self-control and willpower in
school. There’ll be stories of elephants, chimps and bees;
mindsets, biases and
self-fulfilling prophecies. The heroes of the story will be Carol Dwek,
Daniel Kahnemann, Richard
Thaler & Cass Sunstein, Jonathan Haidt, Kelly McGonigal
and the Heath brothers. Going
beyond the cognitive psychology I’ve been
exploring,
this is a journey into our
social, intuitive minds.
In the first post of the
series, I want to see how two approaches from the field of economics
might apply to the question
of motivation: game theory and behavioural economics.
But to start with, why is
motivation so important? I think Hattie and Yates capture
it well:
Learning requires effort,
attention, concentration, discipline and motivation
Material is subject to rapid
and substantial forgetting
Concentration spans are short,
and attention is easily disrupted
Concentration and self-control
place great stress on mental resources, which are subject to overload
Self-control strategies are
insecurely learned, relatively unpracticed and easily depleted
The Willingham hypothesis is that what drives motivation
is not so much the relevance
of the content as the challenge of the task.
‘Curiosity
has staying power if we judge that the
mental work will pay off –
we quickly evaluate the mental
work it will take to solve the problem’.
For instance, when you are
given a Sudoku puzzle, crossword or mental arithmetic problem
that is too hard, like
working out 23 x 79 in your head, how much do you feel like attempting it?
How about a question that is
far too easy, like 5 + 5?
We are motivated by problems
that are both challenging and attainable – otherwise
we get frustrated, bored or
complacent. Teaching should stretch but not overwhelm students.
But that’s certainly not all
there is to motivation. What about pupils’ perceptions and expectations? That’s
where game theory comes in.
Effort Exertion & Game
Theory: Rational Expectations
In one of the most
thought-provoking blogposts I’ve read all year, Trying is Risky,
David Thomas used game theory to model a pupil’s choice
in a lesson: whether to exert effort or not.
In any lesson, students can make one
of two choices: to exert effort, or not to exert effort.
The lesson can be a good
lesson, or it can be a bad lesson. A good lesson is one where a student
will learn if they exert
effort; a bad lesson is one where they may not.
For each pair of inputs there
are two outcomes: the student’s level of academic and social success.
‘So how does a student make
their choice? It depends on how likely they think the lesson
is to be a good one. Call the
student’s perceived probability of the lesson being good,
p. If p is high, then
they’re more likely to choose to exert effort, as it’s more likely
they will get the best
available outcome. If they perceive the probability of it being a good lesson
to be 50%, most students would,
quite rationally, opt to not exert effort.
They are risk averse: they’d
much rather choose a strategy that guaranteed them an okay outcome than a
strategy that gambles between a good outcome and a bad one.
‘The goal for teachers is
making p as high as possible so that all students exert effort in lessons.
This is affected by prior experience of the subject, self-esteem and school
culture, not just teacher quality. Students believe they’ll do badly in Maths
because they’ve always done so before.
Raising p is about
breaking this damaging chain of reasoning, and the only way to go
is by forcing them to
experience success. This means that you plan your lesson to make sure that
if they exert any effort at
all, they will have some measurable success.’
Motivating demotivated pupils
is about ensuring they experience success in your subject.
What I like about this model
is that it’s subject-specific,
and it locates the solution
in the teacher’s sphere of control,
whilst acknowledging other
factors outside the teacher’s influence.
I’d like to unpack those
external factors in the next few blogposts,
whilst also challenging game
theory’s assumptions.
The greatest challenge to
economic modelling is that of the rationalist delusion.
People – especially pupils –
don’t always act rationally.
There’s little rationale for
sabotaging their own learning in the way some seem to,
and it doesn’t always result
in social success.
Behavioural economics offers
another way of looking at motivation.
Daniel Kahnemann is the chief
exponent of this approach, in his book Thinking Fast and Slow.
In this view, our minds are
made up of two agents: fast, intuitive, effortless
and automatic system 1, and
slow, deliberate, effortful, and reflective system 2.
Effort & Attention: the
Lazy Controller
‘System 2 requires attention,
is disrupted when attention is distracted,
and requires continuous effort
exertion. Conflict is common in our lives
between an automatic reaction
and our intention to control it.
System 2 is in charge of
self-control. System 2 prevents us from reacting foolishly to insults,
for instance. A defining
feature is that its operations are effortful,
and one of its characteristics
is laziness, a reluctance to invest more effort than is necessary
or comfortable. We conduct our
mental lives by the law of least effort.
The effortful thinking that we
demand of pupils requires discipline and self-control.’
‘The law of least effort is
operating here. He’s thinking as little as possible.’
‘Both cognitive work and
self-control are forms of mental work.
Several studies have shown
people simultaneously challenged by a demanding cognitive task
are more likely to yield to
temptation. People who are cognitively busy
are more likely to make selfish
choices and make superficial judgments in social situations.
Cognitive load is not the only
cause of weakened self-control – a sleepless night is too.
Self-control requires attention
and effort.’
Ego Depletion
‘Effort of will or self-control
is tiring. If you have had to force yourself to do something,
you are less willing or less
able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes up.
This phenomenon has been names
ego depletion. Ego-depleted people succumb
more quickly to the urge to
quit. Later, they give up earlier than normal
when faced with a difficult
cognitive task. The results of depletion can be reacting aggressively
to provocation; persisting
less; performing poorly in cognitive tasks.’
‘Activities that impose high
demands on system 2 require self-control,
and the exertion of
self-control is depleting, unpleasant and involves a loss of motivation.
After exerting self-control in
one task, you do not feel like making an effort in another.’
Incentives and training
‘In several experiments, people
were able to resist the effects of ego depletion
given a strong enough
incentive. University of Oregon researchers explored attempts
to raise intelligence by improving control of attention.
Training attention not only
improved self-control, scores on non-verbal tests of intelligence
also improved and the
improvement was sustained for several months.’
We demand extraordinary
efforts of cognitive work and self-control from pupils every day.
Some pupils have weaker
system 2 than others. The paradox is that our pupils with weak self-control
need it most but find it hardest. David Thomas is right to say that self-control depletes,
habit rescues. The
only way out of the paradox is this: we must strengthen
their system two by building the habit of
self-control to get it increasingly on autopilot. Where might we, as teachers
and school leaders, start?
Teachers
Frame tasks for optimal
challenge in your subject
Frame lessons to ensure
demotivated students experience success in every lesson
Strengthen pupil’s attention
spans and their deliberative, effortful system 2
Make pupils’ habits stick with meticulous planning and persistent practice
School leaders
Reinforce effort exertion and
set the bar at 100% of pupils on task every task
Train pupils’ control of
attention and teach self-control explicitly
Ensure social incentives reinforce system 2 effort exertion and self-control
Create a summer school with practice routines to automate the habit of
self-discipline
On exploring the rationalist
delusion, Jonathan Haidt said: ‘It just seemed too cerebral.
There was hardly any mention of
emotion’.
Next week, I’ll look into the emotional side of motivation,
and how trust,
empathy and relationships affect how hard pupils work.
https://pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/motivation-instruction/
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