From Dante’s
Purgatorio, Verse I:
To run o’er better
water hoists her sails
the little vessel
of my genius now,
which leaves
behind her such a cruel sea;
and of that second
Realm I ’ll sing, wherein
the human spirit
purifies itself,
and groweth worthy
to ascend to Heaven
As we approach our last week of Educational Psychology studies and I am about
to say goodbye to Professor Defalco and
my fellow classmates… I realize that before starting this course I was in some
sort of “Educational Inferno”. As a matter
of fact, I shamefully admit that I had been there for quite sometime, as I was unaware and guilty of not knowing the wondrous paths that can lead to
higher teaching practices. Am I now worthy of going to “Educational Purgatorio?” Hopefully yes!
Now that I have
left Hell
And reached Purgatory
I need to set sail
toward progressive teaching
I need to rid
myself
of ineffective teaching
habits
and as I move onto
higher grounds
I strive to reach educational
Heaven.
While taking
gargantuan leaps of faith
I will
hold onto
The knowledge
The eagerness
The curiosity and
Your hands…
My dear students.
(From: Cecilia’s
Purgatorio, Verse I)
Let me ask this question: What makes us
different from other species?
The question
what makes the human species unique may never find a satisfying answer, in my
opinion. I often believe that animals are smarter… or at least my dog is! But
it not a question of who is smarter, it is a question about which characteristics
are unique to us, humans. We have to listen to prominent experts, such as anthropologist
Michael Tomasello and Professor of Developmental Psychology, Melinda Carpenter,
who explain that the human kind is different, not smarter from other species
because of “Shared or collective intentionality, which
is the ability and motivation to engage
with others in collaborative, co-operative activities with joint goals and
intentions.” They continue
by saying that “The
term (shared intentionality) also implies that the collaborators’ psychological
processes are jointly directed at something and take place within a joint
attentional frame”. (Hurford 2007: 320, Tomasello et al. 2005).
Studies have shown that apes differ
from humans because they do not intentionally take part in joint activities,
whereas children begin this process at the age of 14 months, and neuroscience supports
this theory because the biological adaptation of the human brain is a proof
that humans have an hedge over the apes. Humans are able at a very young age to
show intentions and goals and share their psychological state, through
evolution our brains have evolved and developed cultural cognition, such as
language and beliefs, which in turn allow us to share intentionally. In my honest opinion, I have never really
thought about animals not sharing intention. As I look at a school of fish or a flock of geese, I wonder
whether they are sharing their intentions of looking for food, or migrating.
Growth-Resilience-Intentionality-Toughness
Have you ever heard the word GRIT in
education? Let’s not confuse it with a tasty grain, usually eaten for breakfast
(delicious, believe me). Here we are
talking about grit as “will-power” or as per my self-created acronym GRIT is
also identified as growth, resilience, intentionality and toughness in a
person. If we could teach the following principles every day, we would be
super-teachers:
learn something new, complete a task every
time you start it (resilience), work on the task alone or with others with
passion (intentionality), if you fall pick yourselves up (toughness). Easier
said that done! So much is asked of teachers, isn’t it?
According to Angela Lee Duckworth, “Grit is the power
of passion and perseverance” for very long term goals. According to
her to reach our goals we have to apply “growth mindset” rather than “fixed
mindset”. So what are they? The table below is quite self-explanatory:
Carol Dweek claims that teachers can teach
growth mindset by supporting the students and allowing them to work around
their weaknesses by applying their strengths, that is my opinion as well, but
it is not that easy. A fixed mindset may set us up for failure as it closes the
door to growth and further development of our cognitive skills, according to
Dweek; this week this particular topic was quite controversial on our
discussion board. We know that growth brings change and the environment around
us changes constantly, therefore we cannot expect the brain to react in a fixed
manner to the changes of our surrounding environment. Sure but I ask myself
whether there is something in between fixed and growth mindset, mustn’t it? How
malleable are our brains? Apparently a lot, so we may be able to go from a
fixed to a growth mindset with the proper help.
Professors Hochanadel and Finamore also
present the concept of grit in their research paper: “Fixed and Growth Mindset
in Education and how Grit Helps Students Persist in the Face of Adversity”.
They tag onto Carol Dweek’s concept, which suggests that by teaching growth
mindset we could teach grit: “Individuals with a fixed mindset believe that their
intelligence is simply an inborn trait – they have a certain amount and that’s
that. In contrast, individuals with a growth mindset believe that they can
develop their intelligence over time (2010).
Grit
and Motivation
Psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward
Deci provide a detailed study about what motivates an individual in their
research paper: “Self-determination
Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and
Well-Being” (2000). They explain that there are external (extrinsic)
and internal (intrinsic) motivations, which work on our psyche. Individuals are
moved by three important factors:
- · Competence, the need to feel competent
- · Autonomy, the need to control the course of our lives which
is not individualism or independence
- · Relatedness , the need to have a close and affectionate
relationship with others
Earlier studies instead had depicted a
“hierarchy of needs” from lower to higher, for instance according to
Psychologist Maslow an individual had to satisfy the basic need for food,
water, etc. before reaching for higher needs, such as self-esteem and
ultimately self-actualization.
Have you ever taken a step back and
listened to yourself while talking to a classroom full of enthusiastic
students? The language we use does have
a controlling effect on students. Controlling language (must, can’t etc.) in
academics lower the sense of autonomy. We should instead use informational language, which allows the
learner to make choices. I have personally witnessed how a principal and
several teachers in my children’s school have used very demotivating language
in school meetings. It is unfortunate that many educators are unaware of the
fact that negativity can transpire in subtle ways and affect the students.
“Goals”:
a word, which in my opinion carries a heavy psychological load!
Goals are defined by Locke and
Latham as “an outcome or
attainment an individual is striving to accomplish” (2002). I
believe that it is important to work with students to determine the true nature
of their goals, goal setting has been shown to improve performance. Goals have
to be reachable, specific and clear. Long term goals should differ from short
term goals. Some goals can be related to the desire to perform well (performance oriented), that is students
are truly motivated to learn for the purpose of demonstrating their abilities to others, these
goals are not necessarily fruitful at all times. Mastery goals are set
by a learner without consideration of others as the ultimate purpose is to
master something important. However, some students fall victims to the opposite
or so called avoidance oriented goals, which motivates students for the purpose of avoiding problems with
teachers and to avoid appearing incompetent in front of others.
The
Attribution Theory of motivation according to Psychologist Bernard Weiner states that an individual tends
to attribute his/her own successes or failures to various factors, such as good
or bad luck, excuses, mood, effort, abilities, help, lack of something, etc. This
is the truest theory of all! It applies to all aspects of life. Weiner says
that usually people group excuses into three categories:
· Location of the cause, internal or external
· Stability, will the cause change or stay stable?
· Controllability, can I control the cause?
One can see how finding “excuses” for oneself may trigger feelings of
low self-efficacy and academic failure, i.e., I was too tired to read last
night.
I had never heard of “benevolent
feedback” but I can see how being empathetic may create benevolent
feedback. Anita
Woolfolk says that when a
teacher is too easy on a student because of his/her own uncontrollable
situation (poverty, race, disabilities, etc.) he or she is giving the student
the wrong message and does not help with motivation. Teachers do not need to
show pity or give extra praise when not needed.
Self-Determination Theory or SDT, presented by Ryan and Deci in “Self Determination Theory
and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and
Well-being” suggest that human beings naturally or intrinsically look for
satisfaction (mental or physical) but are also “vulnerable to passivity”. In
order to promote competent, autonomous and related intrinsic behavior there has
to be external psychological support from parents, teacher, peers and society…”by failing to
support for competence, autonomy and relatedness …(we) contribute to ill-being
and alienation” (Ryan and Deci) .
Denial of proper support provokes a
series of negative effects on the individual’s well-being, such as poor
performance in society, school and at work also called “amotivation, or the state of lacking the
intention to act” (Ryan and Deci).
How
do we help students with a work-avoidant attitude?
A work avoidant learner does not try
hard, I am sure we have all experienced this avoidance attitude as students. Teachers
are the key to successful goal settings, they need to help students throughout
the process without fading away. Teachers are the facilitators, the key that
opens doors for students, to show them they can reach their goals. By
establishing goals with our students we can help them become active learners.
Classroom goals are a great strategy a teacher can use to create a sense of
relatedness. When students feel that they belong, the are more motivated.
Teachers must provide feedback in order to maintain the classroom goals
ongoing. Goal framing is another strategy,
which helps students dig deep to find what
makes them move to the next level. Goal acceptance is a instrumental
conclusive aspect of goal setting as it
asks the student to commit to established goals.
When learners, especially adults think
of their abilities to reach their final goals, they seem to apply two basic concepts according to Woolfolk:
- · Entity view of ability,
which assumes that an ability is stable and cannot be changed and
- · incremental view of ability, which is the opposite as it assumes that it can change.
The latter one being more helpful to increase motivation.
Individuals who are motivated by unrelated
external factors do not feel autonomous, this is the case of many regulations
in our schools, which are dictated from high above, not understood by students
and ultimately create un-relatedness with school staff and teachers. A more
interesting approach would be to discuss the rules with the children and let
them create some of their own to allow them to express autonomy.
“Ryan, Stiller
and Lynch (1994) showed that the children who had more fully internalized
regulations for positive school-related behaviors were those who felt securely
connected to, and cared for by, their parents and teachers”.
“Taking in a rule but not fully accepting it is called “introjected regulation”, which is another aspect of extrinsic motivation. I feel
that many doctrines these days have introjected control on our lives as we
follow them to avoid feeling guilty.
This week Anita Woolfolk explores the Social Learning Theory of
Psychologist Bandura, whom we have discussed in previous blogs.
Bandura states that “Social learning is
a cognitive process that takes place in a social context and can occur
purely through observation or direct instruction, even in the absence of motor
reproduction or direct reinforcement”.
Bandura’s social cognitive theory supports the
idea that teachers, peers, parents, etc. serve as models for learners while at
the same time the learner is using self-concept
(getting something done without comparing oneself to others), self-esteem (self- judgment) and self-efficacy (feeling confident of
knowing how to handle a particular task).
But what is Self-Efficacy? According to
educational psychologist Dale Schunk, “self-efficacy” is “an individual’s judgments of his or her own
capabilities to perform given actions” (Self Efficacy and Academic
Motivation, 1991) or according to Bandura self-efficacy is: “people’s judgments of their capabilities to organize
and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of
performances” (1986).
Schunk has extensively analyzed the
cause and effects of self-efficacy in the academic world, while considering the
influential work of others such as Bandura and Woolfolk. How do we acquire
self-efficacy? Apparently as we experience and learn and reach goals we build
self-efficacy. Positive accomplishments increase a sense of self efficacy, and
negative results create a sense of low self-efficacy. Therefore positive
experience while learning and performing are very instrumental to a high level
of self-efficacy. We can learn from what others already know, from comparing us
to others, however an effective way to help students build a strong sense of
self efficacy is positive reinforcement, which has to be accompanied by
subsequent psychological support and skill building. “Given
adequate skills, positive outcome expectations, and personally valued outcomes,
self-efficacy is hypothesized to influence the choice and direction of human
behavior”.(Bandura, 1989).
Schunk approach is very helpful in the
sense that according to his studies students initially act upon their prior
knowledge, skills, attitudes and experiences, then while they are working with
teachers and peers they receive
rewarding feelings, which add to their sense of self efficacy. Motivation comes
into play when students feel that they are making progress, which in turn makes
them more accomplished and helps them to maintain and/or develop strong
self-efficacy.
Teacher’s
self-efficacy or super teacher?
Schunk touches on the topic of
self-efficacy in teachers from a very positive point of view, whereas Anita
Woolfolk touches on the pros and cons of being a teacher with high self-efficacy.
I define myself a high efficacy teacher a “wanna be super-teacher”:
enthusiastic, open-minded, willing to try new methods, I use challenging
material, I do not always stick to the curriculum and I spend a lot of time and
energy motivating the students. Rita Pierson says in her Ted Talk:” Every kid
needs a champion”: “we (teachers) are born to make
a difference”. Woolfolk states that the downsides of a high efficacy
teacher can be false optimism therefore he or she may believe that what has worked well
in the past should be continued and not be changed, researches have shown that a little self-doubt does not hurt: “doubt motivates
change”. (Wheatley, 2002).
Self-regulated
learning especially in
today’s world of on-line classes is a concept we should teach our students. How
self-regulated are students in their first year of college? Do you remember when
you started undergraduate school? These
days students are challenged to stay on task (how many times have you checked
your FB account since you have been reading this blog?) How can a young learner
master the skills needed to self-regulate him/herself?
Professor Barry Zimmerman, explains
self-regulations as “the process we use to activate and sustain our thoughts,
behaviors and emotions in order to reach our goals”. This process is
comprehensive of few steps: self-observation, self-control, self-judgment
and self-reaction. A student needs coaching to master these techniques.
A teacher can intervene and help the student analyze the task, set goals, design
a plan, start learning (research, writing, reading etc.) and modify the
approach when needed. There should also be a final assessment of the completed
task and a self- analysis. This is not easy but when taken step-by-step it may provide
long-term results for the purpose of self-regulated learning.
According to Bandura and
his theory of triarchic reciprocal
casualty, three elements interact while learning: environment (teachers,
peers, social setting, etc.), the learner’s personal beliefs, attitudes and
knowledge and the learner’s attitudes toward learning (motivation, mindset,
etc.). The image below is a good representation of his theory:
from:ponsjournaljourney2learning.wordpress.com/2013/page/2/
When learning by observing others, also
called by Bandura observational
learning or “acquisition and later performance of behaviors
demonstrated by others” (Bandura),
four concepts come into play: “Attention or the
extent to which we focus on other’s behavior, retention or ability to
retain another’s behavior in our memory, production processes or the
ability to perform the actions we observe and motivation and our need
for the actions witnessed and their usefulness to us (Bandura).
Anita Woolfolk suggests that we should
ask our students how they feel about learning: excited, bored, anxious,
curious, and fearful. I believe this is a healthy strategy also considering the
fact the neuroscience has given insights as to the emotional reactions of the
brain while learning. Apparently “Dopamine
is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure
centers. Dopamine also helps regulate movement and emotional responses,
and it enables us not only to see rewards, but to take action to move toward
them”. (Psychology today).
Perkun,
Elliott & Maier, 2006 suggest that “emotions
can affect learning by changing brain dopamine levels that influence long-term
memory”…furthermore “sometimes emotions
interfere with learning by taking up attention or working memory space that
could be used for learning” (Pekrun, Goetz, Titz & Perry, 2002). Emotions affect learning and are a consequence of
learning. I recall having a couple of students in my class sweating as soon as
I mentioned the word grammar or listening comprehension. It was painful to see
them anxious, it took a lot of reassuring on my part and ultimately their positive
results were all they needed to overcome those negative emotions. Teachers
should be attuned to students’ emotions. An emotion may be unrelated to
learning. I had a student once who was recovering from cancer, I tried to be
there for her when she wanted to talk. Anxiety can be debilitating for teachers
and students, I believe meditation and breathing exercises are great coping
mechanisms, we should teach our students. Goals are not only for students.
Teachers must have goals, short term and long term.
In order to help students learn and
achieve their goals and stay on task and be motivated, teachers may use the
TARGET model, as it was introduced by Ames and Epstein (1992 and 1989):
T= task value – give the students a task
which has value, use problem-based learning and service learning
A=Autonomy or Authority, giving students
the right amount of choices
R=Recognition of students’
accomplishments
G= grouping for cooperation, for individual purposes and for competition
E=evaluation of their work not of grades
T=time in classroom, make time for
student’s learning without rushing to reach a goal.
I completely agree with Anita Woolfolks’
analysis of what a teacher should do to enhance and keep her students
motivated. The following is a summary of key point she presents in Chapter 12:
“Expect high results, explain the
importance of the task, explain clearly the goals and give proper directions, extrapolate
meaningful activities from the curriculum, open the door to other disciplines
such as art, show students that their effort pay off, encourage risk taking,
use games as reinforcements, involve parents in activities presented in school,
collect rocks and categorize them, explain the same concept in various ways,
praise and keep classroom’s atmosphere positive. Stimulate creativity, give
opportunities for choice, tell students they can handle challenges, nurture and
care for students. Work in small steps, show that everyone has strengths and
weaknesses and grades are not the way to prove it, show how to solve problem
and that errors are part of learning and no-one is immune, give students
opportunities to respond, let students create and finish a task, allow healthy
competition, provide long-term support for difficult tasks, teach learning strategies
needed for each particular task”.
Stay cool today as the thermometer hits 103F.
That’s all folks…
Ciao
Cecilia
