Internal Motivation is Like North Dakota

Posted in DemEd in Real LifeStudentsTeaching on Mar 17, 2010 - 09:01 PM

Paul, one of my friends in high school, proclaimed that North Dakota didn't exist. He'd ask, "Have you ever met anyone from North Dakota? What's ever come out of North Dakota? We've read about it--but have you ever been there?" I've never really stopped wondering about North Dakota being a conspiracy to validate South Dakota's existence, but Paul's words have been louder than ever in my head since I've taken on my new teaching job as a literacy intervention teacher.

Last semester, I was thrown into a teaching position wherein I had 150 students to tend to--and that experience was more an exercise in control than in instruction or teaching. This semester as explained in my last entry caps my student load at 50 students (I have 37--6-10 students per sixty-minute period). My students and I can finally breathe in this classroom and focus on developing depth of thinking rather than breadth (getting through the curriculum). Now, the nuances that go into a true learning environment are coming to the surface and my colleagues and I are trying to figure out the mystery that is internal motivation.

Yes, I'm searching for that Philosopher's Stone of education--how to develop internal motivation in students without the use of external motivators (rewards or punishments). As with North Dakota, I've read about it, I've seen videos of students proclaiming to have found it, but I have yet to see it with my own eyes.

There are still 14 weeks left in this semester, so there is still time for this search, and I feel my students and I getting closer to it. Learning in our class is starting to feel genuinely fun and engaging. I am having to lecture students less. Some students are even doing extra homework. Little tiny hints, but we still don't know what's happening or how it's happening exactly. My students and I discuss this topic openly so they're in the know.

My students and I are doing some self-reflective research with double-loop learning wherein we document our words after implementing a lesson (we have students transcribe speech) then we evaluate the lesson and go back to the transcription to find evidence to support our judgments. We're trying to pin-point exactly why some of us are internally motivated, getting there, or some of us are nowhere near it.

More details to follow after our second round of instructional research is complete next week. For now, what we (my students and I) agree on is that we're in a beautiful state of confusion in our class, and we feel that this is what real learning feels like.

Tags for this entry:
research, motivation, rewards, punishment, questioning

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