#85: Does school kill intrinsic motivation?
#85: Does school kill intrinsic motivation?
🧠 It sure can. Here's what to do about it (part 2)
Thoughtful reader, this Q&A is worth your time especially if you’re a teacher or parent, and also if you’re not. Its insights can apply to all human relationships.
This is the second part of my interview with motivation psychologist Johnmarshall Reeve, where we examine how school can damage intrinsic motivation, and what we can do about it. You can start with part 1 here.
Can everybody, every teacher learn to have an autonomous motivating style?
That’s a great question. We have given workshops to thousands of teachers by now, and we always check our data and measure people’s motivating style, before our workshops and after. Assuming that you're willing to work with us for six or eight hours, we find that about 45 out of 50 teachers show a big bump up in their motivating styles, but five teachers don’t change or improve their motivating style. Somehow we missed these five people, and we’ve worked really hard to understand [why that is]. Usually they’ll say, I just don’t agree with you. You’re just a liberal, wacko guy1. You don’t understand! I’m in the classroom, I’m the authority so the students should listen to me. It’s a value conflict.
How do we reach these teachers? We say, Okay, you value structure, right? And they say: Yes, and that’s why I’m such a good teacher. And we say, Okay, don’t give up any part of your structure. All we’re asking you to do is learn the skill of delivering instructions or feedback in an autonomy supportive way. We’re not anti-teacher goals and teacher leadership. When you say you have to raise your hand to speak or to go to the bathroom, or something that is pretty controlling, I’m not going to try to take the rule away from you, but just ask students: What do you think about this rule? How do you feel about this rule? Do you have any objection to it? Let me explain why we have this rule. Instead of giving directives and commands, give explanatory rationales. Instead of countering arguments, acknowledge and accept. Instead of using pressuring language, use invitational language. And we can reach 100% [of teachers by doing this].
Do these changes endure over time?
We’ve tested a couple of times whether it endures a year later. We’ve never done it after 10 years, which is really what people want to know, but that’s a hard research study to do. You measure teachers’ motivating styles at the start of an academic year, you work with them through the term and see this benefit. You come back a year later, the pressures from the parents and the school and the tests and the state standards are ever present, so it makes sense that teachers would backslide. But what we find is that not only have they maintain that autonomy-supportive style, they’ve actually become even more autonomy supportive. Students are more engaged, your relationship improves with the students, you enjoy spending time with them. Class is more interesting and satisfying, you feel more efficacious, and you have your own needs satisfaction in class, why would you go back to your old motivating style?
We need to treat teachers the same way we treat students. If the teachers are complaining and stressed and thinking about quitting, we need to roll up our sleeves and say: Where’s this coming from? How can I help? How can we make your job better? Administrators and legislators need to really listen to teachers. Let them tell you why their job is so stressful or unsatisfying. Maybe they’ll say it’s money. Maybe they’ll say it’s the workload, or lack of professional development opportunities. Ask them directly, listen, and then do something about it.
Some families say that school cannot be reformed enough, and decide to live without it2.
I think teachers want the skills, they want to engage interested students, and if they developed an autonomous motivating style, schools would be great places to be. I don’t think we have to start over, invent a new system. The question is, who are the schools for? What's the purpose of school? Very generally, there’s two thoughts on this. One, which I favour, says it is for the students, for personal growth, for personal education, to learn values and goals. The other extreme says [school has to fulfil society’s] needs: for instance, kids should take STEM classes because we need this many engineers and scientists to optimise society.
“You can’t go through the factory model and expect to get creativity and innovation.”
Some critics say our school system is inherited from the 19th century [when school allowed parents to work in factories, and trained future industry workers], and not fit for today’s world.
I think it’s a valid criticism, it’s historically accurate. We’ve got a legacy school system from the industrial age. I think you can keep the schools, you just have to update them. If you really want a society of innovators, entrepreneurs, and creative individuals, people who can think for themselves, then you support their intrinsic motivation and autonomy. You can’t go through the factory model and expect to get creativity and innovation. That model needs to be gone, and it’s up to the schools to get rid of it. And schools are making progress. It’s very slow, too slow.
I hear regularly about teachers who use reward charts and stickers. What would you do about that?
The first thing I would do is go in and see if we can deliver that points system in an autonomy supportive way. Then I would keep talking with the teacher and say there may be a better way. The sticker charts really squelch intrinsic motivation, they externally regulate a child, who will do [a task] for the reward or the praise, not for the skill or out of interest. So we can recommend perspective taking and rationales and over time, I would hope that the teacher would find it more effective to be autonomy supportive than to use a sticker chart.
What could we do as parents if our child’s teacher has a controlling motivating style?
In an extreme case, something that you consider like abuse and shaming, I would talk with the principal, ask if my child can change class, not in a confrontational way but because you care about your child’s environment. [In a less extreme case] I would also focus on inoculating my child: [acknowledge that] the teacher is trying to pressure children and that’s not right. You need to be your child’s ally to preserve their sense of autonomy. When this happens, here’s an interpretation. Here’s what you can do about it.
What resources do you recommend for teachers?
Last year we published a book called Supporting Students’ Motivation: Strategies for Success. We describe everything that we do in our workshops, all the empirical evidence and all the benefits to teachers and students, and we have videos attached to that. We’re trying to get the message out, and to help as many teachers who are interested in working on their motivating style as we can. It’s hard to figure out on your own.
Any final thoughts?
Yes. I think it’s a much bigger issue than teachers and students: it’s a relationship issue. It’s parent and child, it’s coach and athlete, employer and employee, citizen and nation, spouses, siblings. If you support my autonomy, we’re going to have a high-quality relationship. If you control me, pressure me, and have conditional regard, we’re going to have a low-quality relationship.
