"They just don't want to learn." How often have you heard teachers say that? "I ask them to come to class prepared to write about something, and they don't even read what I give them on the topic. They're not motivated!"
Can anyone motivate someone else? Can anyone motivate you? Can teachers motivate students to write more? Read more? Think more critically? How closely is motivation linked to a student's culture?
"The essentials of the motivational framework are that it 1) respects diversity; 2) engages the [internal] motivation of a broad range of students; 3) creates a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment; 4) derives teaching practices from across disciplines and cultures; and 5) promotes equitable learning. While respectful of different cultures, the framework enables the construction of a common culture within the learning environment that all learners can accept. The framework systemically represents the four motivational conditions of inclusion, attitude, meaning, and competence that act individually and in concert to provide a pedagogical ecology that continuously enhances intrinsic motivation to learn." (Ginsberg and Wlodkowski, Professional Learning to Promote Motivation and Academic Performance among Diverse Adults, CAEL Forum and News, November 2009)
What is your take?
Leecy Wise, Moderator
Reading and Writing CoP
leecywise@gmail.com
Comments
Hello Leecy and others,
Here's my take on motivation. You asked, "Can anyone motivate someone else? Can anyone motivate you?"
I have often been motivated to learn something by another person, but perhaps only rarely in a classroom. Often it is an unpredictable combination of people and events that has led to a conscious decision to learn something new, to learn to play a new musical instrument, to join the Peace Corps, to be a teacher, to apply for graduate school.
In the 1980's, as an adult basic skills professional development program director, through our project that published adult learner writings in a literary magazine, named "Need I Say More" by the adult learners on the project's advisory board, I saw lots of motivation to write, and motivating others to write. The adult new writers, people who were passionate about wanting their voices to be heard, but who never thought they would be published writers, with the project's encouragement and support, became writers. They became people who not only cared about expressing themselves, telling their stories in poetry and prose, but writing them well in their own voices, passionately and effectively, and with correct grammar and punctuation (because they wanted their writing to be good, not just "correct"). The classrooms of adult and young adult learners who received issues of the magazine, and who read the stories and poems, became motivated to write, not by their teacher's presentations, but by the writers themselves, especially when their teacher invited a published "Need I Say More" author to their classroom.
My favorite example was a classroom of out-of-school young adult women in Holyoke, Massachusetts whose teacher received our magazines and had joined our "Writer in the Classroom" project, where one of the published adult new writer authors would visit a classroom and talk with students about writing and being published. Brilliantly, the teacher had asked the students, before the author visited their classroom, to describe her based on her stories. Most concluded that she was only a few years older than they, college educated, and white. When the author walked into their classroom, an African American grandmother who only recently had earned a high school equivalency certificate, they were stunned. In response to their questions about when she decided to be a writer, she explained that for many more years than they had been alive she had wanted to tell others about her experiences, the tragedies and joys in her life. She added, however, that until this project she had never believed it was possible for her to write, or to even dream that her stories could be published.
When the teacher processed the visit with her students later, speaking for many in the class about what surprised them, one of the students said, "She's just like us. Maybe that means we could be writers and be published too!"
Were they motivated by someone? Yes. Was it someone who was like them? Not in age, certainly, but in color, or growing up in poverty, or experiencing tragedy as a result of the challenges of poverty or a family member's drug abuse, and in many other ways. Did that make a difference? Absolutely. Not in what the author "taught" them, but in the authenticity and passion of her writing and, in meeting her, discovering what they now saw as possible in their own lives. Being motivated by someone to change, for example to learn something new, often is not a direct line between teaching and learning, but a series of events, with perhaps the most important one a door that opens to believing that you could learn this.
David J. Rosen
djrosen123@gmail.com
David, thanks for wonderful examples of students who followed their motivation to write. Great stories! You said, "Were they motivated by someone? Yes."
So I'll pose another situation to consider in this regard.
Several students attend an event where a famous cellist performs a few pieces and then talks to students about what music means to her. One student is mesmerized and decides to become a cellist as a result. He goes home, and with the support of his parents and teachers, he eventually becomes a well-recognized cellist as well.
Three other students also attend the event. They are bored from the start and become restless during the performance and talk. After the event, they return to their homes with barely a memory of what happened. Two eventually drop out of school, and the third joins the army after graduating. Did the performer fail in her task of motivating those three students to become musicians?
Leecy
Hi Leecy and others,
The cellist story is a great example of the need to have a different standard of success for instructors and motivators. Of course teachers can be motivators but, for that goal, the measure of success and how to measure it might be very different than for an instructional goal.
When I teach or train, my goal is that 90% or better of the participants attain the stated instruction/learning objectives, taking into account that some people came to the workshop or course with misunderstandings about what it was intended to do for them. When my goal is to motivate, I never set that high standard, and sometimes I am happy if only a few people decide there is something important in what we did together that leads them to pursue it. I rarely know when this has happened, although sometimes years later someone will tell me that a particular workshop, course or article motivated them. I think that may happen for motivational speakers, too. Although they may get rave evaluations or reviews at the end of a session, they may wonder how many people were moved to change in some way and, if so, why.
My theory is that to be motivated people need to be uncomfortable, "out of sorts" with some part of their life, looking for a solution to a problem; they may not necessarily be consciously aware of that, although they could be. They could also have recently had good news, e.g. a large tax refund, an inheritance, earning an education credential that they have worked hard for, had a child or grandchild, recently retired. These kinds of good news are sometimes unsettling even if welcome. "How should I spend that money,?" "Use that diploma or degree?" "What new challenges and opportunities will this new child in my life bring?" They are receptive then to ideas that might be a solution. In unsettled states people are ready to be motivated.
Of course, motivating students to take an interest in certain types of music has many other dimensions such as degree of exposure, understanding of the kind of music, the quality of the performance, the personality of the artist(s) and, as in my earlier example, whether or not one can imagine being the sort of person who can play that music.
David J. Rosen
djrosen123@gmail.com
Hi David, Leecy and all, What a powerful anecdote, David! Thank you for sharing how your program implemented the literary magazine of student writing, "Need I Say More." There is no doubt that we human beings are programmed to respond to stories. We respond to stories much more readily than we do to logical arguments. When learners read the stories of others and --even more so-- when they met the authors face-to-face, the stories deeply resonated with their own experiences. This inspired learners to share their own stories. The authors surely motivated many other authors to write.
Similar to what David describes, I've noticed that learners are often motivated to achieve when they see what others have done, especially when creativity is encouraged. Like the stories in "Need I Say More," this can create a snowball effect, too. "Oh, wow, look what Daniela did! I think I can do something like that, too!"
Learners can definitely inspire and motivate each other!
If you are interested in more information about the power of story, check out this brief Scientific American blog by Jag Balla, "It's in Our Nature to Need Stories."
Looking forward to hearing what others think about the role of motivation.
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, Teaching & Learning CoP
Thanks for bringing up story telling,Susan. I live among Native Americans in the Southwest, and the passing down of stories following oral traditions is a common practice. Interestingly, writing teachers don't often ask students to write stories. I wonder why? Would we have higher retention rates among Native Americans if instead of asking them to write essays to practice we asked them to write stories? Leecy