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Chapter 1
I Still Want to Know
How Do You Motivate Students?
Those ideas and lessons in the last book were good, and I continue to use them. However, colleagues in higher grades who are getting my students as they advance would like to reinforce developing intrinsic motivation with fresh lessons. I could use some additional ideas, too. What have you come up with since Helping Students Motivate Themselves was published?
Summary of the Case Against Emphasizing Extrinsic Rewards
This chapter, and this book, will share a number of ideas and lesson plans building on the foundational concept that âpushing the ropeâ of student motivation through external rewards is not in the best interest of our students, their families, or ourselves as educators.
Johann Wolfgang von Goetheâs poem âThe Sorcererâs Apprentice,â made into the classic Disney film Fantasia, tells the story of an apprentice who is tired of doing the hard work of constantly carrying water into the house. When the sorcerer is away, the apprentice decides to take the easy way out and use magic he doesnât fully understand to make a broom fetch buckets of water. The spell works at first, but it ends up making things far worse when he canât make the broom stop and the house becomes flooded.
The use of carrots and sticks on a regular and systematic basis (though of course, there are some times when we all choose to use them) is one of those âmagical solutionsâ that often ends up making things worse.
The application of these kinds of incentives has been proven time and time again to produce this âsorcererâs apprentice effect,â as extensive research in Helping Students Motivate Themselves showed and new research in this book will reinforce. Professor Edward Deci is widely considered to be the most respected researcher in the field of motivation. He points out in The New York Times that his forty years of research shows that people will do something if they know how to do it and you pay them. But theyâll stop doing it when you stop paying them, and in fact theyâll then perform the behavior even less than they did before! The article continues:
âThere is no evidence that paying people helps them learnâand a lot of evidence that it doesnât,â Deci said. Then why . . . resort to paying students? âBecause itâs easy,â Deci said. âItâs much harder to work with people to get them motivated from the inside.â (Guttenplan, 2011, para. 18)
Author Daniel Pink (2009) describes how extrinsic rewards might work in the short term for mechanical tasks that donât require much higher-order thinking. But research shows that points, prizes, and presents donât tend to produce true motivation for any work that requires higher-order thinking skills and creativity.
Pink also points out that everyone needs âbaseline rewards.â These are the basics of adequate compensation. At school, studentsâ baseline rewards might include fair grading, a caring teacher who works to provide engaging lessons, and a clean classroom. If baseline needs are not met, then a personâs âfocus will be on the unfairness of her situation and the anxiety of her circumstance. . . . Youâll get neither the predictability of extrinsic motivation nor the weirdness of intrinsic motivation. Youâll get very little motivation at allâ (Pink, 2011a, p. 35).
In fact, recent research by Professor Armin Falk goes even further and finds that people who feel like they are not treated fairly do indeed feel increased motivation. However, they feel more motivated to do worse (Freeland, 2012)!
Does this book suggest that extrinsic motivators are always bad? No. On some occasions an extrinsic motivator can entice someone to try something new or can serve as way to deal with an immediate, one-student classroom problem without distracting the entire class.
The key, however, is to have an exit strategy in mindâone that will move your students in a relatively short time toward self-motivation. The suggestions in this book offer concrete ways to make that transition to a classroom culture of intrinsic motivation.
Recent Research on the Use of Rewards
Intrinsic motivation, sometimes also called autonomous motivation (Hout & Elliott, 2011, p. 30), is what the ideas and lessons in this book are designed to encourage. This kind of motivation drives students to put effort into learning because they see that it will help them achieve their personal goals.
Scores of studiesâthe National Academy of Sciences says at least 128, in factââshowed clearly that tangible rewards do significantly and substantially undermine internal motivationâ (Hout & Elliott, 2011, p. 26). Even reviews more sympathetic to the use of rewards in schools find that test gains are small and not sustained over time (Usher & Kober, 2012, p. 9). One well-publicized study that claimed to show giving cash or trophies would result in increased test gains (though they were not sustainable) found that it worked best if students were given the reward prior to taking the test and told it would be taken away if test scores did not improve (Levitt, List, Neckermann, & Sadoff, 2011). Hereâs an excerpt from a television interview with one of the authors, Dr. Sally Sadoff:
Q: The ones that did badlyâdid you rip it away from them and then did they scream and cry?
A: Yeah, itâs hard when you rip a trophy out of the hands of an eight-year-old.
(âIs Bribing Students,â 2012)
Itâs questionable whether an incentive system like that would contribute toward building a positive classroom culture.
One particularly intriguing study was published in 2011. It found that just mentioning the idea of rewards as a possible motivating tool (in that case, money) actually resulted in the participants in the experiment wanting to do the exact opposite of what they were asked to do (Pink, 2012). Another recent study reached the same conclusionâhalf of Swiss citizens who originally supported a nuclear waste facility in the community changed their minds when they were told they would receive money for their support (Rothman, 2012)âthey said they could not be bribed.
| | | Ed Tech Motivation Research |
For a complete review of research on motivation, rewards, and incentives, including several insightful and funny video clips from popular television programs that highlight key concepts, go to âThe Best Posts & Articles On âMotivatingâ Studentsâ (www.ÂlarryferÂlazzo.ÂedublogsÂ.ÂorgÂ/Â2010Â/Â05Â/Â17Â/Âmy-ÂbestÂ-postsÂ-onÂ-motivaÂtingÂ-studeÂnts).
Using points, grades, and percentages as motivational levers might not always get the desired effect from all our students.
Updates on âOldâ Strategies
Helping Students Motivate Themselves included many suggested immediate actions and several lessons plans in the student motivation chapter and elsewhere. All of them wonât be repeated here, but some will be reviewed and supplemented with updated information.
Engaging Lessons
Engaging lessons are an important part of the baseline rewards mentioned earlier in this chapter. Boring lessons donât encourage the development of intrinsic motivation!
Recent research has reinforced the effectiveness of cooperative and discovery learning, and demonstrated the weaknesses of lectures and direct instruction (of course, thatâs not to suggest that direct instruction should never be used, but it should certainly have a subordinate role).
One 2011 meta-analysis of hundreds of studies (Alfieri, Brooks, Aldrich, & Tenenbaum, 2011) highlighted by education researcher Robert Marzano (2011) found that âenhanced discovery learningâ was clearly superior to direct instruction. The study identified three kinds of âenhanced discovery learning methodsâââgeneration, elicited explanations, and guided discovery conditionsââand defined them in this way:
