It's All About Autonomy

The QKED Mind/Shift blog has a great summary of the current intrinsic/extrinsic motivator debate, and how many educators are finding success when they give their students autonomy. Here is a clip:

The same subtle interplay between motivation and rewards is also at work when it comes to education and learning, say Schwartz and Wrzesniewski. Rewarding students for getting their schoolwork done with prizes, snacks and even grades, as most schools do, can have the unintended effect of dismantling a child’s drive to learn for its own sake. The intrinsic rewards that come from exploring interests in depth, and mastering difficult concepts and problems, can be smothered by a reward system that focuses on grades, say, rather than understanding. It also signals what’s important to the teachers. “When you dangle Burger King in front of kids’ noses, you are telling them what kind of consequence matters, and what motive to pay attention to,” Schwartz says. “And education will suffer.”

What is interesting about this is the idea that extrinsic rewards take away the autonomy of our students. Simply put, maybe we shouldn't be telling our kids how to feel rewarded, and instead we should give the the autonomy to find their own reward.

Curiosity Makes Us Better at Learning Everything (Including the Boring Stuff)

It's no surprise that the more curious we are about something, the better we are at learning about it. However, a new study published in Neuron has findings that go beyond that:

More surprising, however, was that once their curiosity was aroused, they showed better learning of entirely unrelated information... that they encountered but were not necessarily curious about. People were also better able to retain the information learned during a curious state across a 24-hour delay. 

Curiosity is a form of intrinsic motivation, which means we get a rewarding feeling just by learning about what interests us. According to this study, curiosity also creates a state of mind where we feel rewarded no matter what we are learning about. That means students will learn more and retain more information about anything, as long as they are kept in a curious state.

As  teachers and youth workers, this means we must talk to our students and learn what makes them curious. Then we can plan lessons around that curiosity, allowing them to absorb extra -- even unrelated -- information and feel good about everything they learned.

Trainings Available

Motivate Youth is pleased to introduce our new trainings in Motivational Interviewing (MI). Our four hour-long trainings cover the principles of MI and apply them to youth work. The practical, interactive trainings can be highly customized to meet any organization's needs.

MI has been scientifically shown to be an effective approach to increasing the grades of middle school students. These short, simple conversations between adults and youth can help children and teens find their internal motivation, and use that to succeed in school.

Right now, many of the trainings are available for free or at a reduced cost. For more information, please contact Aaron Romens at aaron@motivateyouth.org.