Motivation: Moving Beyond Carrots and Sticks

Lately, I have been thinking about my own education and how I, as a student, have changed over time.  In my K-12 education, I was a successful student who was “good at school.”  I did what the teachers and adults asked, I followed their examples of how to solve problems (I could follow any procedure in math when I knew the formula and worked through a few with the teacher), I followed their rules (no running, no swearing, etc.), and was always considered a “good kid.”  Once I went to college to get my undergrad and later my master’s degree, I realized I wasn’t as "good at school" as I had once thought. 
 
When I look back at why this shift occurred, I realize it was because as a K-12 student I wasn’t as interested in the learning and understanding of what I did, as I was with getting good grades (I was a passive learner), having teachers and classmates like me (the 'relator' in me) and being labeled as a "good student" and friend.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I did learn a lot during my K-12 years of education and I had a lot of great teachers, I just didn’t always strive to know or better understand the “why” behind what I was learning. I simply wasn’t motivated to do so.

As an adult learner and as an educator, I realize that none of my former teachers were trying to make me a passive learner, I just wasn’t motivated to be as active in my learning as I could have been.

I believe that as educators we want our students to do well in school but also be motivated and active in their learning. What follows are some things to consider as we try to motivate our students to become active learners rather than passive learners, moving them beyond traditional carrot and stick motivators.

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Adjusting for 21st-Century Learners

A colleague introduced to the book Drive by Daniel Pink. The first two chapters really hit me: they highlighted what we are doing in education now,  noted what we can change, and identified why it is important that we do. Both chapters hit directly upon motivation.  The chapters “The Rise and Fall of Motivation 2.0” and “Seven Reasons Carrots and Sticks (Often) Don’t Work. . .” tie into what we see in our classrooms every day, even though his book is spun more for the business-world.  If you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend  you do! 

If you want a quick idea of what Pink is talks about in Drive, then watching his TED Talk: “The Puzzle of Motivation” is a great starting point:

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My favorite part of this talk is when he mentions that what motivated 20th-century learners (me) doesn’t often motivate 21st-century learners (our students).

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The Impact Homework (Doesn't) Have

Looking at ways to motivate students in the classroom and comparing it to what has been done in education for years, John Hattie explores the effect size of these different actions, noting if they have a positive, negative, or neutral effect  on our students.  As secondary teachers who we all likely taught in a system that was incentive driven, we need to start taking a closer look at what we are doing to motivate our students and to help them be active, life-long learners.

One of the things teachers tend to struggle with is the homework we give and the reason we give it.  According to Hattie, homework has an effect size of .29 (very low).  We have had students who could do the homework and were motivated to get them all right (i.e. get a good grade) but then struggled when asked to explain why certain rules/procedures worked and why it didn’t. When asked to solve a problem another way, students usually groan and ask, "Why?". We have also had students who did the homework but didn’t really understand the material, as well as students who just didn’t do the homework at all. So clearly, just assigning homework was not a motivator for most students in class and tying it to grades make it even worse.  

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Three Key Motivational Elements: Autonomy, Mastery, & Purpose

Continuing to look at what we can do to help motivate students, implementing a different mindset, specifically growth mindset, into how our classrooms operate is huge. We need to model and encourage making mistakes and focusing on what can be learned from those mistakes.  Instead of modeling how to solve problems, we need to give out students the problems first and see what they can figure out on their own.  We should incorporate more projects that are real-life based (the why of what we are doing is relevant), give students timely feedback versus grades (a .75 effect size from Hattie), and have students self-report on what they learned and what grade they earned (a whopping 1.44 effect size from Hattie!) should become the norm.

Making our classes relevant, interesting, and challenging to our students will help with their motivation.  As Daniel Pink refers in his book Drive, if we make tasks in our classrooms fit into one or more of the three key categories--Autonomy, Mastery, or Purpose--our students will move from being compliant (grade driven) to engaged (seeing the value).

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​I know from my own experience that when I switched from being all about grades and more about the why and how, what I was learning became important. I became a totally different student. I also remember far more about what I was doing rather than just knowing I had learned it once upon a time.  I know it isn’t always an easy transition: when we find things that work and that we are comfortable with, change can be hard.  But, in knowing our students face different opportunities than we may have faced, it's time to try things a little differently.

This post brought to you by Jen Coenen, Secondary Implementation Associate and STEM Village Director