 Hi, my name is Tracy Tokohama Espinosa and this is a video on the concept of motivation. All of the information here is going to be taken from my book Making Classrooms Better as well as some other sources which are cited at the bottom of each slide. Today we're going to look at theories of motivation as well as what individuals consider to be motivators, engaging classroom contexts, how can we keep kids on track and motivated, as well as this big concept of social contagion. What is it that we can do as teachers that actually influences the motivational level of our students? So what are some basic motivational theories? We know that there are some theories that focus on conscious and unconscious processes or motivators that might exist. Others that look at cognitive goal setting, which is a very conscious way of focusing yourself and keeping yourself aimed towards a specific end. There's also cognitive dissonance theory in that people do things to avoid things that are unpleasant or uncomfortable or unknown. Many of you who have looked at basic psychology remember Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. We'll look at that in just a second. But the two most probably prominent pairs in the literature have to do with intrinsic versus extrinsic motivators as well as push and pull theories, things about positive or negative or reward and punishment concepts. This last pair, positive, negative, intrinsic, extrinsic, is really interesting because what's key in what makes motivation a tenant is that what motivates you doesn't necessarily motivate me, right? So there's very, very personalized aspects to motivations and we say to ourselves, we know what makes us click, what makes us work, and then we'd try to do that to our students, but it might not have the same effects because motivation is highly personalized. So why are they so different for different people? We know that no two people are motivated in precisely the same ways, and that's a lot to do with their own prior experiences. The things that have happened to them in their past will influence what they would be focused or motivated on in the future. But we also know that people spend time and energy, which is equated to motivation, when they enjoy it and individual tastes or preferences are really hard to put our fingers on sometimes. This is why we see in our classroom sometimes when students think that this particular activity is worth it, if they like what they're doing. They'll spend more time on it and by spending more time on it, they actually learn more. And this is the key challenge in teaching, right? How do we motivate all those different kids in our class who have different things that push them to want to do different activities? So we mentioned Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This is an old theory, but it's still got some relevance here. Some people don't draw it as a pyramid anymore because they see that these different levels are intertwining and so there's more circle-y things nowadays. But the basic concept is still pretty interesting and pretty true. And we can look at this at macro levels of governments, down to individual motivators for what you're going to do today, right? If basic physiological needs aren't met, if you haven't eaten, if you don't have a roof over your head, you just can't get to that higher level of thinking, right? And if safety needs are in question, if you feel threatened, if you live in a neighborhood which makes you feel insecure or you're bullied at school, you're also not going to be able to get to that higher level of thinking. But once you've reached this basic stage of having some core friendships that you feel that you have a sense of belonging to a group, you can sort of see this light at the end of the tunnel, the possibility of doing higher or thinking. From that is born this general sense of self-esteem. I like myself, I believe in myself, I think I can do this, I am a learner. And some, not all people, will reach this level of self-actualization, cool in your skin, I'm what I think I should be, right? So getting to these different levels and reaching this higher level of cognition, for example, is very much tied to the idea of basic motivational needs. What pushes people? So initially, people will be driven to first get those basic physiological needs under control. Then once that's okay, then they can secure safety needs, core safety needs. Then love and belonging, esteem, and then self-actualization. What we find from the recent literature now, looking at mind brain education, there's some very interesting stuff coming out showing how emotions lead to motivation, which leads to the time on tasks that people spend, which leads to eventual learning. Or that emotions lead to motivation, which means that classroom management issues are reduced. Any of you who are great teachers know that it's really not hard to manage a class when your students are really on task and focused and motivated about what they're doing. But classroom management issues loom large when kids are not motivated, when they don't care about what they're doing. There's also other studies that shows how non-verbal communication, how our faces, how our body language, how the intonation of our voice is interpreted by students. It's perceived by them as either being something that can be a motivator or not. And so students will either have high or low confidence in the teacher, which then leads to either low or high student learning. So we know there's a lot of information out there now connecting motivation to general learning outcomes. But we also know, as Dan Willingham has pointed out and why students don't like school, is that a lot of the things that happen in school are not necessarily the most motivating to students. And there's a big suggestion, and it makes a lot of sense if you think about it, that we need to find this really sweet spot, this Goldilocks rule. No one likes to do things that are too easy, people don't like to do things that are too hard. They like to do things that are just, you know, a little bit harder than they can do on their own. And that is really the science in our art of teaching. How do we really recognize where students are, who needs to be tipped or pushed in one direction or another? And that is part of our job of teaching, is figuring that out at the level of every individual student. But some of you might be thinking, ah, but why can't they all just be like, you know, Sally, she's just so self-motivated, she's always on top of it. And, you know, that's a really interesting question. Why aren't all students motivated all the time? One explanation might come from just this general openness that's a habituated learned behavior over time. Some kids just are interested in just about anything, right? But being open to new ideas is something that requires a habituated mind frame that not all kids are exposed to. And a real key connector to all of this is the ability to fail, dare to err, you know, as Schiller pointed out. Being able to experiment with ideas and make mistakes and grow with that. The openness to different things can also be a foundation for motivation. But the reason a lot of kids don't have that openness and it's willingness to try new things and to feel that the whole world is generally a curious place. It's kind of like this, you know, Elmo state of mind of like, oh, why, why, why, how wonderful, how interesting, the whole world is great, right? Well, it doesn't always happen like that because the brain adapts to what it does most. So you can habituate behavior over time. We know this, we can learn different types of habituated behavior. But what's core is that sometimes in the early years, some kids can just be celebrated for trying new things and, you know, all is good or other kids can actually be admonished for having new ideas. And we know that kids will either be really open or closed off to new experiences, which is really the heart of a lot of motivated practice in classrooms, right? If their own thinking has been received in either a positive way or a negative way. And this is a really big eye opener for teachers to think about. So the research in this area, Enderman and College showed that what is it that teachers actually can really do to influence motivational levels in their classroom? And they found it on three key areas. One is to support understanding. There's nothing more demotivating than feeling frustrated because you think you're stupid because you're not catching on to some idea. So the time that we take to support understanding is key to student motivation. Also, the idea of building and maintaining rapport. Do the students see us as an ally in their learning? Or are we getting in their way? And third is this big idea of classroom management. All of us know that you can have a beautiful classroom and you have that one kid just throws everything out of sync for us because they're not sharing the same goals that we are. So understanding how to engage students so that those classroom management issues are reduced is a really key part to enhancing student motivation. There's another idea I love which comes from Jackson's book, Never Work Harder Than Your Students. I break down this idea into two different concepts. The first is that there's a law of minimal effort. Humans will do the least possible to get the most possible all the time. That is just humanity. And it's actually a smart thing because we will look at cognitive load in just a minute, but the whole idea is that it takes energy to learn. And so any way we can conserve energy, it's all really good and welcome, right? So we know that there's a law of minimal effort. So things where they can have to work super hard where they feel that their energy is being expended in the wrong way will not be a motivating factor. The other element to this, the second part of this, is that it's really key to understand that the person who does the work is the person who does the learning and the person who feels the motivation. So this dad is doing a great job. He's not tying the shoe for the kid. He's helping the kid learn to tie her own shoes. Because we know that if the dad ties the shoe over and over again, the dad gets really good at tying the shoe. Same thing, if the teacher helps the kid color in all the painting, well, the teacher's getting great at painting. But if the teacher is the one who makes the test, the teacher is the one who's getting really good at taking that test. But if we get students to do more of their actions, they're the ones who do more of the learning. And because of that authentic nature, that is more motivating to students themselves. This is kind of the explanation of why people say, learn by doing. Well, that's a very big part of it. Being able to apply the information in authentic context is really huge. So going back to this point of energy conservation, there's this idea of cognitive load theory, which explains that the general energy that your brain is using. And by the way, your brain uses about 20% of the total energy. For something that weighs about 2% of your entire body weight, it's using a lot of energy. Students intuitively know this, right? And they will parcel out their energy or save their energy for the things that are really important to them. And knowing this gives teachers the power to really use this information. How do you spiral up that enthusiasm for what's being learned in the classroom so that students want to invest their energy into that learning? We all know this concept, you know, time flies when you're having fun. Can you construct those classroom environments where the students feel so engaged in what they're doing and their own learning, but they don't even feel that time has gone by because their energy has been well spent. Fisher and colleagues have a great book out right now called Engagement by Design, which is really taking the time to think about our classroom interventions and what is it that they're doing to students? It's really typical to go on to schools and you see kids, you know, the bell rings, they all leave for a new class and then the hallway is sort of like, when is, when am I ever gonna use that in my life, right? They don't see the application of a lot of things that are going on in our schools right now and unless we can make that come to the forefront, unless we can make them feel engaged and unless we can explicitly show them the link between the classroom learning and what's gonna happen in their real lives, it's gonna be very hard for them to feel motivated. But when students do see this benefits me, this feeds my curiosity, this is something that's going to help me get ahead in the world or whatever. If there can be that engagement then, then there's no worry about motivation. Motivation comes naturally with the engagement that's created by that classroom environment. And Marsana and my colleagues give some very specific ideas about this. Engaging classrooms can be enhanced by teacher interventions that, you know, initiate friendly controversy where they challenge kids to sort of get out this comfort zone of yes and no answers and sort of, you know, have to reflect and defend ideas that they believe in. Teachers can also do this by presenting unusual information, you know, instead of showing that typical, let's do basic genetics in 10th grade, let's show them a two-headed snake and say what happened here or whatever, right? So that we can talk about genetic patterning without having to do the dull rehearsal of information. And all of this means that you're really just connecting to those students' real lives, their real ambitions, but you can't do this unless you know the students well. And when we know our individual students well, then we can start to put the finger on the pulse of what is it that really motivates this particular kid? The fourth recommendation they make is to make sure that the classroom setting has an effective pace, that things are not too slow, that is the most boring thing. And especially with kids these days who are really ready for quick changes in their environment to have a dull lecturing teacher at the front of the classroom has not something that's motivating, but allowing kids to work at their own pace to remember that Goldilocks effect to help find that sweet spot so that they feel that they are actually at the right pace of their learning is really huge in keeping them motivated. And all of this of course really links back to the research that shows that passion is probably more important than just about anything else that a teacher has in their arsenal of tools that they can use to keep kids motivated. Your passion, the way you react to your topic, the way that you feel engaged, if you love what you're doing, that's contagious. And we know the opposite is just so true. Without any passion, if the teacher is bored with their own subject area, obviously the students aren't gonna be motivated to learn it, right? So you know what, we know that that's something that is that's inexpensive, that's not too hard to train teachers to do, but help them share their interest in the subject area that they're teaching with the students. It's really clear and this goes throughout life. It's not just school learning, right? People who love what they're doing are contagious and that is something that really motivates learners. This means that teachers really need to take the lead in social contagion and that's a whole other video and we'll get into that in more detail later. But the key idea here is to understand the way you are, the way you feel how motivated you are is gonna have an impact in how motivated students can become. So five big ideas here, right? Your brain pays attention to different things at different times for different reasons. If you just keep and sustain the same thing over and over and over and over and over again, it gets boring. If you yell at the kid all the time, they just numb to it as well, right? So attention systems of the brain have to take an advantage of. That's a whole other video. We get a chance to look at that one as well. Second, your brain is drawn to elements that help sustain focus. So when you have words that jump out on a page or if there's a change of voice, for example, or whatever, saliency is also a good way to help keep focus in students and keep them motivated and on task. Third is that when situations are not engaging, it's clear that sustained focus is dropped. And when there's no sustained focus, there is no learning. So we know that part of this engaging element is really at the heart of motivation. And one clear thing to keep in mind is that the disconnect between what kids are experiencing in school and what is happening in the real world is really the key factor in low motivation. When kids don't feel that what they're learning has anything to do with real life, that is the number one turnoff point and motivation reductor. So we have to keep that in mind. We have to make sure that we're making those links to the authentic experiences in real life, which means the core of that is knowing our students well enough to be able to engage them at that personal level. Some ideas that can be used, also another video, is to really dive into what Richard Church and Morrison have recommended in their visible thinking routines. These things are great ways to not only make thinking visible, but they do lead into great personalized learning experience and therefore keep students very motivated. So I encourage you to go read their book. Fantastic work. Okay, so in summary, we talked about a handful of theories of motivation, but basic motivators being positive, negative, intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. We looked at certain motivators, but how they come about because they're habituated over time. And some of the things we can do to help kids have the level of repetition necessary to create habits are to give them that space to make errors, dare to err. That's one of those things that will keep this open curiosity going, which keeps students then motivated to approach new learning, new materials, new information in your classroom with a much more open mind. We also looked at this big idea of classroom management and how do you create engaging classrooms, which really has its roots in authentic learning context for students. And finally, biggest idea yet, it has to do with just our own personal level of passion and understanding how social contagion explains how our own personal level of motivation can spill over onto those students, which means that we have to keep our energy level high and our passion for what we teach really visible to students in order for them to then feel that contagion and also feel motivated themselves. Thanks, look forward to seeing you next time.