Motivating Students for Maximum Potential!

---

Motivation is described as The Holy Grail of instruction by Mark Gura in Make, LEARN, Succeed: Building a Culture of Creativity in Your School, but much like the Holy Grail, it is extremely elusive and no doubt guarded by a not-so-harmless cute little bunny rabbit.

Much like the ISTE Standards state, as educators, it is our responsibility to stay current with research that supports improved student learning outcomes from various legitimate and reputable resources. Though when it comes to motivation, it is hard to find research that points to a singular right direction.  People are motivated by various things.  Take for example in How People Learn II, the authors suggest that there are some people who prefer performance goals over mastery goals, and the behavior of each differs greatly.  Performance based people typically do such for praise and recognition, whereas mastery based people tend to want to learn not just one way, but several of accomplishing tasks so that they can apply them to different aspects of their life.

Which gets us into goals.  I was actually a bit conflicted on this one.  I honestly think you should set goals, not easily attainable ones, but ones that are attainable, but just barely.  I know from personal effort that when I hit roadblocks is when my creativity starts to kick in.  I absolutely love a challenge, especially when someone tells me that I can't do it, it just makes me want to do it even more.  However if you set impossible goals, such as "develop warp technology using a mirror and a spoon" then you are setting yourself up for failure.

That of course brings me to my favorite topic, stereotype threats.  Yes, this is one of the only things I 100% agreed with in this book, as far as effects.  The causation I think they entirely missed.  I believe Miguel Ruiz states it best in his book, The Four Agreements, people take on agreements that they don't even realize.  Some of this agreements come from society, some come from family, some even come from the government.  If people are constantly and often told they are "bad", "stupid", etc. then eventually there are two things that happen, one is that most humans desire to feel as if they belong, and they accept those harsh and nasty words as what their identity should consist of, because they want to meet people expectations.  The other is that if you hear something enough, you eventually believe it, that is how brainwashing is actually performed.

The most important thing for motivation, out of every thing I read, in my opinion boils down to one little word "choice".  Gura, Make, Learn, Succeed, quotes from research performed by Richmond in 2012 "Not surprisingly, if students see a direct connection between what they are learning and their own interests and goals, they are likely to be more motivated." (Richmond, 2012).  Now, that says nothing of choice, but if you have 20 students in a classroom, there is a strong chance that not all 20 of them are going to like every single thing.  One of my favorite projects I have done recently was to choose a playwright and give a sort of biography of him and present a sort of "modern" twist on one of his works.  I chose Alfred Jarry and his play Ubu Roi.  Needless to say it is not a kid friendly play, however everyone in my class had to choose someone else.  So instead of all of us having to learn about Shakespeare or Aristotle, we got to learn about an author whom we liked, research them really well and then present to the rest of the class.  I learned about 5 different playwrights, of which I would have never looked at myself, and even wound up like one (Chekhov) that I would not have given the time of day to previously.  These are the things that can help people to get motivated to learn.  I mean, we can also come up with some handy tools to use as well.  I mean Minecraft has an education edition, it's uses are not as limited as you might think and you may have students that can teach you as well.

Citations

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2018. How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/24783.

Ruiz, M. (2017). The four agreements: A practical guide to personal freedom. San Rafael, CA: Amber-Allen Publishing.

Gura, M. (2016). Make, Learn, Succeed: Building a Culture of Creativity in Your School. Eugene: International Society for Tech in Ed.