Engagement and Motivation in Reading (and all other learning tasks)

We all know that high quality learning requires engagement and motivation, but generating this, in my opinion, is one of our most difficult tasks. And for the majority of students, the levels of engagement and motivation are so dependent on our teaching style and methods that we cannot take this duty lightly. The research discussed in "Contexts for Engagement and Motivation in Reading" written by John Guthrie (http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/index.html) speaks to this point.

Research discussed in this article suggests that teaching style and methods have great consequences on student motivation and engagement. Teacher-centered styles foster situational, extrinsic motivation, instead of long-term, intrinsic motivation. In contrast, student-centered, learning-goal oriented styles increase self-efficacy; when understanding content, using strategies effectively, and linking new and prior knowledge to construct meaning are emphasized, students are more likely to be engaged.

So what specifically can we do to develop engaged and intrinsically motivated students? We can give students autonomy by allowing students to make choices about learning materials and tasks. We can  provide real-world interactions by using concrete examples and/or hands-on activities to enhance text-based learning and improve achievement.We can provide interesting materials for instruction which will engage students and make them more motivated to learn. We can provide explicit reading and learning instruction to develop skills necessary for independent learning. We can provide opportunities for collaborative learning, enabling students to communicate ideas, to be exposed to multiple perspectives, and to construct meaning. And finally, possibly the most important thing we can do is be involved and engaged teachers who care about our students and take the time to get to know their interests and individual learning styles.The below figure from the article summarizes (with more detail) the instructional context engagement model of  reading devolopment.



Although  this article was specifically addressing reading engagment and motivation, I believe these techniques are generalizable to all learning activities and this article has provided me with a framework to foster engaged and motivated students.

Online version: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/index.html
Kamil, M.L., Mosenthal, P.B., Pearson, P.D., & Barr R. (Eds.). (2000). Handbook of reading research: Volume III (pp. 403-422). New York: Erlbaum.

Cooperative Learning

Collaboration is essential in so many careers, especially in science, and I believe that it is our obligation as teachers to help students build the cooperative skills necessary to be successful both inside and outside the classroom. Therefore, I believe that cooperative learning should be a major component to the science (and all other content areas) curriculum.

During my student teaching experience, I tried to incorporate cooperative learning as often as possible. Although students were always excited for the opportunity to work in groups, the outcome was not always want I intended. Despite trying a variety of ways of forming groups (heterogenous, mastery, mixed level, random, and student choice), a variety of group sizes (from 2-4), and using a variety of different learning tasks, I found it difficult to get all of the students to "buy into" the goal of cooperative tasks and invest in the group. I often observed that all of the students completed the work, but they hadn't worked together to do so; students were not actually "collaborating." I finished student teaching without being able to resolve this issue and without a method to implement to try to fix the problem.

Monday night's discussion on cooperative learning finally provided me with some tools to try moving forward.. Of particular interest and help was the material presented by Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec on types of interdependence and basic elements of cooperative teams. In looking over and discussing this material, I noticed that I had defecits in two major areas during my student teaching experience: creating interdepence and providing explicit instruction in cooperative skills. Students were always aware of the individual need to complete the taskand that they needed to work in groups because of limited resources  ort time, but in reflecting back, I don't think I ever created true interdepence (I feel totally disappointed in myself that I never realized this! I think I was worried about so many other things that I just didn't notice). There were a few times where I feel I created a little interdependence, but not enough. For example, students were assigned to complete a group fetal pig dissection lab as the cullumating activity to the human physiology unit. Prior to starting the lab, I passed out a dissection questionaire to find out which students really wanted to be hands-on with the dissection and which wanted to be observers. I then organized groups based on the questionaire responses and skill level. Before beginning the first day of dissection, students were told to choose a lead dissector, assistant dissector and readers/recorders. For each student to successfully complete the lab, each student had to perform a role. However, in walking around, I noticed that there were some groups were only one person was dissecting and one person was reading/recording and the other two group members were off task. I think I was close to creating interdepence in this case but I could have further developed it by enforcing each persons role before they could begin.

The other area that I feel I did not address was cooperative skills. I think group work would have been significantly improved if I took 5 minutes before cooperative activities to discuss cooperative skills or to do a looks like, sounds like T-chart that our professor has spoken about. However, I felt that too much was packed into everyday, that I barely had time to get the students through the activities, let alone taken 5 more minutes to discuss this (another topic for another day). However, I believe having this discussion occassionally would significantly improve the students work efficiency and quality.

After Monday night's discussion, I am really excited to get into the field and try out some of these new cooperative learning techiniques!

Motivation

Motivation is a vital component to high performance and completion of any task, and one could argue that it is especially essential in education for both teachers and students.In order for quality teaching and learning to occur, motivation must be fostered. So how to create and/or maintain motivation is a major question. This is a question that I have personally struggling to answer, particularly during my short student teaching experience and that I continue to research as I enter the the teaching profession. Needless to say, I was especially intrigued  by the RSAnimate on Dan Pink's "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" our professor posted on D2L (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc).

First off, this was the first RSAnimate I have ever seen. It is amazing! I was so fascinated and captivated by the animation and it really increased my enjoyment while listening to the author. Also, it helped me comprehend  what was  being  said  because I was hearing and seeing it. I definitely want to explore what other animates are out there. 

That being said, the content of Dan Pink's work is intriguing and believe has strong implications on the teaching profession. He talks about research that has been done to test the relationship between motivation (work output) and monetary reward. Surprisingly, it has been found that increased reward actually decreases motivation. In the animate, he  doesn't really explore possible  reasons for the results (maybe he does in the book), but the results are fascinating none-the-less. 

Why would it be that people become less motivated with higher rewards? I contemplated this question for awhile after watching the animate and haven't come up with anything concrete. But my thought was that when people are so dependent on their work performance to make the money the need/deserve for their work, stress begins to crush motivation. Anger toward the employer builds, employees reach a stage where they hate (or dislike) going into work everyday, job satisfaction diminishes, and creativity and work quality suffer.. How could someone stay motivated given all of that?  I don't know if this truly explains the results of the research or if  there is research out there that explores this question, but that was my thought. Any insight???

Reasons for the results aside, what are the implications on the profession? Dan Pink suggests that if you pay people enough base salary to take the money issue off the table, then 3 factors contribute to increased motivation and job satisfaction: autonomy (the desire to be self directed and direct our own lives), mastery (the urge to get better at things), and purpose. (You should really watch the animate the listen to all of the interesting things that he says about these factors.) What does this mean? I believe that if we are to expect education in our country to improve, which it definitely needs to do, than teachers need to be paid more. I'm not one to be tied to any profession because of the money, but I believe that if we want to get good teachers in the system and get teachers to be motivated to improve methods and devote energy improving education, that salary needs to be increased so that issue (and major stressor) is taken off the table. In addition, more autonomy, in some cases, needs to be given to teachers to try new things and do their own research. I'm not saying the research has to be done individually, but as a  department, school or district. Something needs to be done to improve education and I believe Dan Pink is on to something.

After watching the animate, I also felt that these same principles could be applied to the classroom. Why not increase autonomy and purpose in the activities that we give students in order to increase their motivation? Research has shown this, but why aren't all teachers doing it?!

Education is ready for a revolution (and I believe one has begun) and I believe motivation needs to be at the center. This issue has been a passion of mine and I was glad to be shown Dan Pink's work by our professor. I plan to read the book and encourage all of you to at least watch the animate!

Until next time.....