Wouldn’t life be some much easier if we could figure out how to inspire student motivation? Are we (as teachers) motivated to teach and to learn?
Deborah Stipek is a professor at Stanford and wrote Motivation to Learn (2001). We talked about her research at the Klingenstein Summer Institute. I think one reason it resonated so strongly with me was it took psychology theory and put it into practice, and explained things that I was seeing in my students.
She gives factors that influence intrinsic motivation:
- Need for a sense of competency
- Need for sense of self-determination
- Need for interpersonal connection
- Need for sense of purpose, meaning, or relevance
- Students followed tutorials and saw growth of their cities, and they got frequent feedback from the game to develop their competency.
- Students got complete control over their own city.
- Many students helped each other – it was rare for the classroom to be quiet – and all the chatter was about the game using the systems vocabulary. All the chatter was about the game. They were connecting about the project.
- This was linked to our yearlong theme of systems and sustainability.
- Games are fun – there is a natural interest to seeing what the reaction is to your action.
- How do you make your students feel competent? What feedback do you provide? What feedback to they hear?
- How do you give them self-determination? What choices do they have? What real choices do they have?
- How do you allow them to connect with each other and you?
- What purpose or relevance do they see in assignments? (This does not have to be that they are saving the world…)
- Are they interested? Are you interested?