Motivation Class 2
Yesterday we had our second class on motivation. I showed an old video from the Internet Archive - Maintaining Classroom Discipline from 1947. I thought there was a pretty good discussion of issues related to discipline and motivation, although it also brought up a very interesting concept alien to my own experience as a student. That is the notion of teachers respecting or disrepecting their students. It’s a complex issue, because I would argue that the deepest respect an instructor can show his/her students is to expect that they can attain high levels of performance and point out to them when they fail to do so. But I don’t think that construal really fits the way students tend to think of this term.
In the video, “Mr. Grimes” is caught in a mutually frustrating punitive cycle with his students. Then an alternative approach to the initial problem (the students performing very badly on an exam) is shown, in which the students’ reactions are acknowledged and they are set on a fairly clear path to learning what they didn’t understand.
I think that the key issue with motivation in the classroom is finding ways to interrupt a cycle in which students infer that they’re going to be successful or unsuccessful in advance of and independent of trying to learn something. It’s easy for assessment and teaching processes to play into those beliefs, because American schools do have a great variation in student performance (so some students probably already know whatever is being taught). To the extent that that knowledge seems like magic, it will prove to discourage those who don’t have it, with baleful effects that may be well-established by the time students enter high school.
The week after next, Eva Pomerantz will be talking about exactly these issues, although I suspect my students will be out in their field placements and have to miss it.
I’d be very interested in feedback on the class discussion — I’m still not very good at leading those, but I thought the class discussion yesterday was useful and interesting.
October 27th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
The classroom discipline issue is a complex one, but clearly a big problem in the U.S. in the context of what we see in the Chinese videos. I agree with you that respect should correlate with expecting the most out of students. The problem I have encountered, however, is that students have many experiences with teachers who have arbitrary, albeit harsh, disciplinary rules and also do not really push them academically. It is hard then to go in as a teacher who aims to have both tough rules and tough academics. The students think they’ve seen it all before, and it is difficult to overcome their past experience.