The issue of motivation in school is one I have spent plenty of time working with during my time at Miami. In school I personally found myself losing a lot of my motivation in classes through Middle School due to a collapse of extrinsic motivation. A concept that Daniel Pink discusses in the book “Drive” described as akin to a carrot on a stick. School built up motivation to succeed not for the purposes of intrinsic fulfillment, but to get a good grade or to earn something. However, several of my middle school teachers leaned into this motivation even further while also denying it. My sixth grade English teacher gave us a quiz before teaching its contents, said we all failed it without handing it back, then told us we need to put more time into studying and paying attention, but she won’t put our failed quiz in as a grade. This was a ploy go get us motivated to not lose a grade, but instead it did the inverse for many of us going forward. This is a perfect encapsulation of how building extrinsic motivation can be short term useful, but can quickly backfire and fall apart.
This all particularly lines up with the descriptions of Type I and Type X on pages 76-77 of Drive. Here Type I represents intrinsically motivated individuals and Type X represents extrinsic motivation. Within these pages Daniel Pink states “An intense focus on extrinsic rewards can indeed deliver fast results. The trouble is, this approach is difficult to sustain.” Eventually extrinsic motivation will fall apart and those that are intrinsically motivated will surpass them. My goal in education is to bring about the intrinsic motivation in the ways described throughout by having tasks that are with purpose, allow autonomy, and build mastery.
The most efficient way to accomplish all of these aspects is with better labs within my physics classroom. Instead of cook book labs, labs can be student driven to allow autonomy. For example, if I were to do a lab about momentum, I could give them the equations needed, supplies they may or may not need, the mass of one object, and allow them to construct their own means to determine the mass of the other without directly measuring it. However, I must also get across the reasons in which momentum is important and takes place in real life to give them a feeling of purpose behind why they’re doing the lab. They also get a stronger understanding of the concept by working through the lab and can build mastery as they improve at experimental design.
Below is an example of a momentum lab with two marbles:
The idea behind the lab is solid, but it doesn’t contribute to any form of intrinsic motivation. It is far too wordy and to me would look like more busy work. It allows minimal autonomy with such laid out instructions. I would present the background in a more discussion-oriented format rather than a straight paragraph. I would also scrap the procedure and have them work with a partner to create their own design before having a discussion with another group about their procedures and why they chose to do them. Then there would be a class discussion about procedures, momentum, and student thoughts.
As someone who doesn’t feel comfortable in physics classes, I really liked your ideas to support students. What resources would you like your school to provide to help you?
Hi Ryan! It’s really unfortunate that due to your experiences in school, you lost a lot of your motivation. Hypothetically, if my students take a quiz (hopefully AFTER teaching its content) and all fail it, how would you suggest approaching it with my students in a way that won’t result in loss of their motivation?
I also enjoyed the lab twist to Pink’s book. I wonder, is there any more ideas that you can use momentum using technology (websites or electronics)?
I love how you applied this in a Lab setting. Do you think these labs will take too long for the average classroom period? Do you think I can implement this in group work to cut down on my grading?