25 January: Motivation

Matters Arising from previous session and reading...

We started with a question about assimilating what one has read; looking around for a useful source, this material from the OU is good and contains the ideas we discussed and more.

And that led on to re-visit what we had previously discussed about memorisation techniques, and Joshua Foer's book about becoming a memory champion, Moonwalking with Einstein reviewed here.

(And then digressed onto the unit assessment...)

When we got onto the Zull material, much of the discussion was taken up with the distinction between System One thinking (immediate global grasp of a situation and response, initiated in the amygdala) and System Two (more painstaking disciplined linear analysis of an issue, through the neocortex). The distinction--and the limitations of both forms--are spelt out in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow (2011). If you want an introduction to his ideas, then check out this site--scroll down to get to video and transcript, or this TED talk (although he's slightly off topic, here).

As I mentioned, there is some discussion of similar material in Claxton G (1997) Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind London; Fourth Estate and Gladwell M (2005) Blink; the power of thinking without thinking London; Penguin.

This raised the question of the point at which a skill becomes "second nature", and the role of deliberate practice in facilitating that, which...

...moved us on to motivation... Remember that there were several links recommended in last week's post.

We started by thinking about Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivation, and the (longer than I had intended) clip from Dan Pink at the RSA, arguing that rewards etc. could actually inhibit performance. That led on to a discussion of the Educational Maintenance Allowance--now defunct, of course--and its upsides and downsides in these terms.

We did look fairly briefly at the Maslow model and its implications for the classroom (particularly in prison), and then at Herzberg, and the importance of addressing the "hygiene factors" (a.k.a. de-motivators). (Links for these were listed last week.)

We could have proceeded from there to a consideration of optimum arousal or stress levels and their motivating role, but as it was we just nodded at them in passing, so here's the link again. We can't cover everything, but do ask about things--which, of course, you do.

And that broadened the topic a little to overall attitudes to learning. One of the most interesting models in this area, although very easy to grasp, is Carol Dweck's "self-theories" (see here and here [by Petty] for web introductions. And here for her home page at Stanford where there are pdfs of several papers on open access.) We discussed a couple of emergent points;

• These are the kinds of beliefs which may be difficult to change, but have profound implications if they do.
• They only really become influential under conditions of adversity, difficulty, and failure.
• The labels Dweck uses are variable, which can be confusing.
• The model has implications for the way in which we give feedback to learners: as some of last year's group put it, "Tell students that they have worked hard when giving feedback, rather than 'you are really good at that!'" "Praise for putting effort in, not for being naturally good at something."

Going on from that, we looked at Seligman's work on learned helplessness, where people and animals lose the connection between anything they do and consequences in the real world. I mentioned in passing that he has now cheered up a little and turned his attention to "positive psychology", which sounds good but could be pernicious; see Ehrenreich B (2010) Smile or Die; how positive thinking fooled America and the world London; Granta. or watch this RSA presentation on YouTube (10:23)

We'd by now got into some personality features, and so to sum up I directed you to Gregory Bateson's ideas about levels of learning.

Next week...

Please look at some material about behaviourism. (And note that of course some of what that approach says is undermined by the evidence about rewards we looked at in the video...)

• My own attempts, with some further links, are here. I say "attempts" because behaviourists often get very impatient when their work is described in anything less than very flattering terms, and they regularly write me rather patronising emails about how I've got it all wrong...

• This is an annotated links page on behaviour analysis. Just browse and make a note of your questions; this topic is not really difficult, but it is easier than most to get hold of the wrong end of the stick, so don't try to force yourself to get your head around it. You can always post your questions in advance as comments to this post--just click on where it says (at the moment) "0 comments" at the bottom of the post to open the comments box.

Asides

Sorry--the snowboarding crow has disappeared from YouTube for copyright reasons.