What motivates students and can help them engage in deeper, more purposeful learning?
Authors Gayle Gregory and Martha Kaufeldt have some suggestions in their new book, The Motivated Brain: Improving Student Attention, Engagement, and Perseverance (ASCD, 2015).
I really enjoyed reading The Motivated Brain. It was a “fast read” and easy to synthesize. Here’s what I learned.
A field guide to creating motivating classrooms
The book is a veritable “field guide” for teachers wanting to create a classroom where students have choice, find themselves often in the “zone,” are curious questioners and discoverers, and who view learning as an adventure.
The book begins by clarifying the difference between engagement and motivation: “Motivation is the force or energy that results in engagement (p. 9)”, according to the authors. Linking motivation to drive, tenacity, and grit, the authors remind us of a truism for both adults and students: “If we don’t learn how to deal with frustration and obstacles, we are not likely to choose challenges or risk paths and will likely lead a life of mediocrity and predictability (p. 14).”
As I read the book, I reconnected with many of the ideas posited by Daniel Goleman (emotional intelligence), Jennifer Fredricks (student engagement), and even Abraham Maslow, Plato, and Abraham Lincoln!
A section that I found to be particularly interesting was the thinking of William Glasser, who expanded on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Glasser identifies five human needs (p. 21).
Closely connected to these basic needs is choice theory, which identifies both “caring” and “deadly” habits that can draw people together or conversely push them apart. (See table below.)
As I read these habits, I was reminded of Costa and Kallick’s 16 Habits of Mind, which is also reprinted in a very useful form later in the book. Clearly, to effectively engage students over the long haul, it is critically important for teachers to think not only about their knowledge and skills, but also their dispositions.
The book spends a good deal of time explaining the Seven Primary Emotional Networks defined by Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist and professor at Washington State University. Of the seven, Panksepp identifies the SEEKING/EXPECTANCY system as the most powerful. This emotional system governs curiosity, interest, foraging, anticipation, and craving (p. 35). The authors agree with Panksepp and believe that it is this system that “provides us with continued enthusiasm, interest, and motivation while we are in the midst of processing incoming information that is important to us” (p. 38).
What teachers can do
As a result of all these understandings, there are specific behaviors that teachers can foster among their students and that teachers should model if they want to deeply and effectively engage their students.
For example, teachers should create classroom conditions like enriched environments, collaborative activities, unstructured and spontaneous play, recognition of students’ needs and preferences, and time to explore and make choices (pp. 49-50). They should also inject novelty and promote curiosity, and have a classroom that is “resource rich.”
Key to making all this happen, according to the authors, is building trusting relationships, encouraging and crafting meaningful and relevant cooperative learning activities, and a nurturing a safe classroom culture where mistakes are viewed as yet another opportunity to learn.
Obviously, to achieve these results, the teacher must become what Michael Fullan calls an “activator of learning” and give students “multiple opportunities to do active processing (p. 76).” The authors suggest several actions that can be taken to encourage this type of active processing:
- Discussing new learning experiences
- Making a connection to prior learning
- Making the learning relevant to students’ daily lives
- Creating sustained anticipation and interest
- Developing optimistic growth mindsets.
I’ve just touched the surface of the resources and ideas included in this book to give you a feel for its value. Certainly, it would be a welcome addition to anyone’s professional library.
