Are our classrooms structured to motivate?
The question of motivation seems to burrow itself into every facet of education. I've always found our schools to be structured strangely, given what we now know through pyschological and educational research about motivation. Specifically, classrooms tend to be competitive and fairly regimented. I was thinking about this again while reading an article about reading motivation in "The Reading Teacher" by two researchers, Kathryn Edmunds and Kathryn Bauserman, who found that 4th-grade students consistently listed choice and personal interest as primary motivators for wanting to read. Edmunds and Bauserman cite a 2000 paper by researchers John Guthrie and Allen Wigfield who note, in Guthrie's words,
This issue of motivation is especially cogent in today's educational climate, since high-stake tests and, in high school, grade point averages, are presenting more pressing extrinsic motivations than ever. As a commenter offered below, "As for love of learning, we burned that bridge long ago. Did you read about the districts that offered cash, DVD players, and in one case, a car to promote student participation?" Extrinsic motivation isn't always bad; when there is already a lack of intrinsic motivation, it can in fact be a very handy tool. Despite that potential, it is often abused. As Alfie Kohn lays out in "Punished by Rewards," in many circumstances an excess of extrinsic motivation can kill intrinsic motivation -- in other words, students can lose their love of learning and instead only perform for positive (or the absence of negative) consequences.
There's also the point regarding choice and student interest. My conceptual problem with the Core Knowledge Curriculum and ideas of its ilk is that there is a suggestion that all students should be learning the same things in the same ways. If the skill you want is reading, then the actual book shouldn't matter -- Of Mice and Men and Prince and the Pauper will both advance the cause, but one might really appeal to certain students while the second might appeal to others. I understand of course that occasionally the whole class needs to be reading the same book, but even just anecdotally, I went to the best public high school in the nation and almost all of the books we read were whole-class, no option. According to NAEP survey data, in 1998 a full 40% of 8th grade English classrooms have students reading books of their own choosing only either "once or twice a month" or "hardly ever" (happily, that number is much lower in 4th grade, though far higher in 12th grade).
When I talk about fundamentally evolving our pedagogy, this is the type of thing I'm talking about. An emphasis on choice and personal interests and a tempering of competitiveness helps students learn. There is an enormous mountain of evidence and research that tells us that. Yet we have many, many classrooms which deemphasize choice and personal interest and carry a highly competitive atmosphere.
I daresay almost every single child enters kindergarden with a love of learning. The fact that most of them lose it by the time they even get to middle school -- and that, to a large extent, we know why and don't repair the problem -- is agonizingly sad.
Regrettably, motivation for reading decreases as children go through school. One explanation focuses on the capacity of children to understand their own performance. Children become much more sophisticated at processing the evaluative feedback they receive, and for some this leads to a growing realization that they are not as capable as others. “A second explanation focuses on how instructional practices may contribute to a decline in some children’s motivation” (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000, p. 408). Practices that focus on social comparison between children, too much competition, and little attempt to spark children’s interests in different topics can lead to declines in competence beliefs, mastery goals, and intrinsic motivation, and increases in extrinsic motivation and performance goals...
This issue of motivation is especially cogent in today's educational climate, since high-stake tests and, in high school, grade point averages, are presenting more pressing extrinsic motivations than ever. As a commenter offered below, "As for love of learning, we burned that bridge long ago. Did you read about the districts that offered cash, DVD players, and in one case, a car to promote student participation?" Extrinsic motivation isn't always bad; when there is already a lack of intrinsic motivation, it can in fact be a very handy tool. Despite that potential, it is often abused. As Alfie Kohn lays out in "Punished by Rewards," in many circumstances an excess of extrinsic motivation can kill intrinsic motivation -- in other words, students can lose their love of learning and instead only perform for positive (or the absence of negative) consequences.
There's also the point regarding choice and student interest. My conceptual problem with the Core Knowledge Curriculum and ideas of its ilk is that there is a suggestion that all students should be learning the same things in the same ways. If the skill you want is reading, then the actual book shouldn't matter -- Of Mice and Men and Prince and the Pauper will both advance the cause, but one might really appeal to certain students while the second might appeal to others. I understand of course that occasionally the whole class needs to be reading the same book, but even just anecdotally, I went to the best public high school in the nation and almost all of the books we read were whole-class, no option. According to NAEP survey data, in 1998 a full 40% of 8th grade English classrooms have students reading books of their own choosing only either "once or twice a month" or "hardly ever" (happily, that number is much lower in 4th grade, though far higher in 12th grade).
When I talk about fundamentally evolving our pedagogy, this is the type of thing I'm talking about. An emphasis on choice and personal interests and a tempering of competitiveness helps students learn. There is an enormous mountain of evidence and research that tells us that. Yet we have many, many classrooms which deemphasize choice and personal interest and carry a highly competitive atmosphere.
I daresay almost every single child enters kindergarden with a love of learning. The fact that most of them lose it by the time they even get to middle school -- and that, to a large extent, we know why and don't repair the problem -- is agonizingly sad.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, February 12, 2006 at 10:28 AM.
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