As a teacher, the constant struggle of “how can we make them want to learn?” haunts us before every lecture. We want our students to be excited to come to class, crave the material, and walk away happy with this epic newfound knowledge in hand. To put it simply, we want them to want it.
Intrinsic motivation, as described in Dan Pink’s TedTalk, is what we strive for as educators. A go-getter attitude with an air of excitement is what we hope to see in every student that walks through our doors. Unfortunately, when this doesn’t happen, we tend to do one of two things: blame it on them or on ourselves. We may come away believing that they aren’t a good student, we were never meant to teach, and our material was, even after hours of preparation, lack-luster. The problem with this line of thinking is that, more often than not, this lack of intrinsic motivation is not due to either of the aforementioned individuals. Instead, it is due to the omnipresent extrinsic motivation of the omnipotent grade.
As Alfie Kohn suggests in “The Case Against Grades,” this obsession over the grade (more often tied to a fear of failure and/or overwhelming need to “succeed”) can be a true hindrance on our students. Not only does it force them to worry about a number, it actually prevents them from getting excited to learn. There are many students who really want to learn, but due to many factors (e.g., lack of sleep, complicated material, instructor teaching style), they actually lose all focus on learning simply because they have their eyes on the external prize.
The argument over the failure or success of assessment has been a long standing one. However, I think a huge factor that needs to be taken into consideration when making this argument is our students’ motivation. What is truly motivating them? Is their desire to learn, or is it the number on a test? To say that assessment is a system-flaw would be an understatement. In the larger sense, assessment could be potentially damaging to students’ intrinsic motivation in an irrevocable way. Thus, the question is: how do we, as teachers, increase intrinsic motivation? How do we make our students want to learn while the system is telling them they have to learn?
I think the lack of motivation among student during the learning process is partly due to an intrinsic contradiction in modern education itself: it is not practice oriented, but knowledge oriented. Modern educators take such a position for granted: students should be prepared as much knowledge as civilization has accumulated, regardless if such knowledge is relevant to the students or not. They assume Newton’s laws of motion should be taught, even if the students do not want to design a satellite in the future; they assume the history of ancient Babylon, Maya, India, and China should be memorized, even if the students will not likely to travel to those areas in their lives; they assume the skills of painting, drawing, and the ability of appreciating music should be touched, even if the students never want to touch a single brush or instrument at all. On the contrary, schools seem to intentionally avoid really practical knowledge that is absolutely indispensable to contemporary lives, such as how to sue someone, how to calculate credit card interests, how to fix a car, how to cook a nice meal, how to discern an eloquent but treacherous candidate, how to survive a terrorist attach and so on. Without touching on real lives, how could students motivate themselves just by memorizing in which year Caesar was assassinated? It seems the education system really needs some deep reflection.
Thanks for sharing! Student motivation is so important for students to truly benefit from the resources at their fingertips. What do students typically write down as soon as they receive syllabus for the class? First thing I feel like they write down is the exam dates and then ask if the final exam will be accumulative? We design courses in a way that students calculate what they need on said exam to receive said letter grade. The syllabus emphasizes grades so how do we get students to not focus on what grade they need to succeed? How do we make it so students see outside applications to the material they learned for the test especially in large lecture halls? I agree Xiang, I think we are losing a lot of instrumental knowledge!
Good points here. I think we need to consider several things. We are dealing with a different generation in our undergraduate programs. We need to keep in mind that whatever motivated us, probably won’t be the same that motivates them. For example, I find that using technology, like social media, can help them be more engaged in the classroom. In addition, we need to be also committed to their engagement because it will take a lot of time from us as instructors. We will need to think and re-think our entire course designs in order to suit students motivations. In order to do that another crucial point is to take the time to know your students, make them understand that you are there for them, that you care about them, and that you really want to know them. But believe me is not easy at all, especially with some topics in engineering that are so complex and confusing.
Thanks for sharing.
I agree with so many of your points made!!! I think the blame cycle is damaging both to oneself as an instructor, and to your students as an instructor. I love that you mentioned “the omnipresent extrinsic motivation of the omnipotent grade.” I think in so many ways, grades force a student to care or fail. This seems so self-defeating on a developmental level. Some students come to college with an unwavering aspiration of becoming X; however, many are here to “find themselves” or figure out what they’re passionate about. I would pose that grades can often be a conflict of interest for the student, and a hindrance to their ultimate purpose while on a university campus.
I think you ended your post with some great questions! I think as instructors we can strive to help students see value in whatever our course is centered around through our teaching methods (which tie into your question of intrinsically motivating them to desire knowledge through learning), but more importantly, I think we have to be okay with the fact that what makes us tick also makes us individuals. Not every student will love what we love- and that’s ok! While I don’t think that should be embraced as a teaching mentality (e.g. “they don’t love it, so whatever.), I do think it’s important to realize that success as a teacher doesn’t mean making students love what you love… sometimes I think we forget that and that this contributes to the guilt cycle you alluded to in your post. If everyone loved the same thing, we wouldn’t be debating all these pedagogical concepts, right?!
I think that you are right in addressing student motivation, which is the key issue here. If we want to move beyond the linear, old-school teaching and assessment methods, then we have to motivate our students to focus more on the act of learning and less on the test or product. It starts, however, with the instructors (and the support of the administration) by catering to students’ learning habits. If we look at the classroom as a pool of individual learners, we can begin to move away from standardized teaching.