Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

Posted: 01 Feb 2010 07:12 PM PST

Having explored the scientific research of the last 40 years, Dan Pink has deeply examined what really motivates people. What he’s found is that there is a mismatch between what social scientists know and what business (and education) does. This is a fascinating TED talk that relates some surprising (yet deeply intuitive) facts about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivators.

This is a must for teachers, leaders and builders of in all career fields. For quick insight into the video, I’ve posted a snippet from the transc-ript below.

Now I want to tell you about an experiment using the candle problem, done by a scientist named Sam Glucksberg, who is now at Princeton University in the U.S. This shows the power of incentives. Here’s what he did. He gathered his participants. And he said, “I’m going to time you. How quickly you can solve this problem?” To one group he said, I’m going to time you to establish norms, averages for how long it typically takes someone to solve this sort of problem.

To the second group he offered rewards. He said, “If you’re in the top 25 percent of the fastest times you get five dollars. If you’re the fastest of everyone we’re testing here today you get 20 dollars.” Now this is several years ago. Adjusted for inflation. It’s a decent sum of money for a few minutes of work. It’s a nice motivator.

Question: How much faster did this group solve the problem? Answer: It took them, on average, three and a half minutes longer. Three and a half minutes longer. Now this makes no sense right? I mean, I’m an American. I believe in free markets. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Right? (Laughter) If you want people to perform better, you reward them. Right? Bonuses, commissions, their own reality show. Incentivize them. That’s how business works. But that’s not happening here. You’ve got an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity. And it does just the opposite. It dulls thinking and blocks creativity.

And what’s interesting about this experiment is that it’s not an aberration. This has been replicated over and over and over again, for nearly 40 years. These contingent motivators, if you do this, then you get that, work in some circumstances. But for a lot of tasks, they actually either don’t work or, often, they do harm. This is one of the most robust findings in social science. And also one of the most ignored.

Related posts:

1. Motivation to begin a lesson or task. Tileston, D.
2. Motivation and Rewards. Jensen, E.
3. Understanding internal motivation. Sullo, B.

Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Csikszentmihalyi, M.

Posted: 01 Feb 2010 06:16 PM PST

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Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990).  Flow: The psychology of optimal experience.  New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.

Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist from the university of Chicago, defines the concept of flow as a peak state in which psychic energy is exerted in such a way that concentration is so focused that it leads to absolute absorption in an activity.  Time is distorted.  Self-consciousness dissolves along with fear and other emotional distractions.  People experiencing flow report feeling focused, strong, alert and in effortless control.  This sounds an awful lot like a powerful intrinsic motivator to me.

Indeed since this book was published and his theory has hit the mainstream, flow theory has been used widely in many different fields—including the development of curriculum and the study of life satisfaction and intrinsic motivation.  This is a fascinating read.  I highly recommend it to anyone interested in intrinsic motivation.

Related posts:

1. Motivation and Rewards. Jensen, E.
2. Helping students value learning. Sullo, B
3. Where’s the evidence? Sullo, B.

Boredom and its opposite. Strong, R., Silver, H., Perini, M. & Tuculescu, G

Posted: 01 Feb 2010 05:54 PM PST

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Strong, R., Silver, H., Perini, M. & Tuculescu, G.  (2003)  Boredom and its opposite.  Educational Leadership.  September 24-29.

This interesting article tackles the subject of motivation by asking “reluctant learners” questions, discussing, administering surveys about motivation and boredom.  They found four “natural human interests that (if included in curriculum) not only eliminate boredom, but create its opposite: “abiding interest in the content that students need to learn.” 

These interests are:

• The Drive Toward Mastery—When students “did not think they could succeed . . . they shut their minds down.”  Tools for increasing mastery are clearly defining the goal of the lesson or unit, give students opportunities to see models of different competencies, model skills clearly, give on-the-spot feedback.
• The Drive To Understand—“appears in our delight in puzzles, excitement about new ideas, and sensitivity to flaws, gaps, and contradictions.  Tools for increasing understanding are organizing units around questions designed to provoke thoughts/concerns, use rich and challenging text, teach to collect, organize weigh the value of different points of view, allow students to challenge and correct each other.
• The Drive Toward Self Expression—We all have a drive to be unique and some craving to have that uniqueness recognized.  This is about expressing creativity.  Tools—allow choice, model strategies students need to shape projects, make a rich set of samples available, build in time for students to explore their work.
• The Need To Relate—interact with others, share and work together.

Related posts:

1. Motivation and Rewards. Jensen, E.
2. Helping students value learning. Sullo, B
3. Relationship-driven teaching. Rogers, S., Renard, L.

Engaging underachieving middle school students. Muir, M.

Posted: 01 Feb 2010 05:30 PM PST

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Muir, M. (2001).  What engages underachieving middle school students in learning?  Middle School Journal.  November, 37-42.

Muir did a micro study of six underachieving students asking them questions about the ways in which they are motivated.  He found that while they were indeed motivated intrinsically describing hands-on, curiosity, pace, and personal goals, the students he interviewed were more motivated by relationship factors such as trust and respect.  Making meaningful relevant connections as well as offering choices that match a student’s learning style was also important to those interviewed.

Related posts:

1. Giving students what they need. Erwin, J.
2. Helping students value learning. Sullo, B
3. Relationship-driven teaching. Rogers, S., Renard, L.

Motivation to begin a lesson or task. Tileston, D.

Posted: 01 Feb 2010 05:26 PM PST

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Tileston, D.  (2004).  Motivation to begin a lesson or task.  In What Every teacher should know about motivation (pp. 19-33) Corwin Press.

This chapter included a lot of information about motivation, learning, attention, the brain and emotional intelligence, learned helplessness, stress and importance.  It explained many examples about how to use emotion to motivate (or at least not de-motivate) students, listing emotional states such as suspense, curiosity, anticipation, hope, fun, acceptance, surprise, self-confidence, intrigue, and importance.  It spoke to the importance of locus of control in a student’s perception about their own success, listing either ability, effort, task difficulty, or luck as reasons they believe contribute to success or failure.

One quote within a section describing threats, specifically “threats based on what we do or do not know” was related to giving students specific direction, instructions and expectations:

“There was a time when I would say to my students, ‘I want you to do this at quality level.’  What I soon found was that what I consider to be a quality level and what they consider to be a quality level were very different.  By giving them a matrix that showed specifically what I wanted, I was able to raise the quality level of their work considerably.  I believe that students would do work at a quality level more often if they know what we meant by that phrase.”

Related posts:

1. Motivation and Rewards. Jensen, E.
2. Giving students what they need. Erwin, J.
3. Understanding internal motivation. Sullo, B.

Relationship-driven teaching. Rogers, S., Renard, L.

Posted: 01 Feb 2010 05:20 PM PST

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Rogers, S., Renard, L. (1999).  Relationship-driven teaching.  Educational Leadership. September, 34-37.

This article describes how fulfilling students’ emotional needs fosters a more motivating culture for learning.  The authors explain two underlying principals that support relationship-driven teaching: “seeking first to understand,” and “managing the learning context, not the learners.”  They then outline six standards that make up a framework for this strategy:

• Safety—creating an environment free from physical and emotional danger (embarrassment)
• Value—creating opportunities for students to create value and meaning in their work and study
• Success—learning activities must be challenging and offer regular feedback indicating that the student is making significant progress toward mastery.
• Involving—students must have a “meaningful stake” in what is happening in the classroom.
• Care—the idea that a student is respected and liked contributes to that student’s need for love and belonging
• Enable—teachers must continually learn and use best practices that enable learning such as brain-based techniques or multiple intelligences.

Related posts:

1. Boredom and its opposite. Strong, R., Silver, H., Perini, M. & Tuculescu, G
2. Engaging underachieving middle school students. Muir, M.
3. Motivation to begin a lesson or task. Tileston, D.

Lessons from skateboarders. Sagar R.

Posted: 01 Feb 2010 05:18 PM PST

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Sagar R. (2002).  Lessons from skateboarders: What motivates young people to master the challenges of sports?  How can we inspire the same level of motivation in our classrooms?  Educational Leadership. September, 34-37.

Sager uses somewhat of an athletic metaphor to explain how to motivate students and not be “left behind.”  He describes CBUPO, his acronym for the five needs we all want to satisfy: The need to feel Competent, to Belong, to feel Useful, Potent and Optimistic. In this article he describes each need and goes into detail about how to build these feelings in our students.  Hint: High stakes testing and student comparisons (grade levels) are not one of them.  This was a great article with lots of examples and new ideas.“

Related posts:

1. 7th Grade Character Lessons
2. Relationship-driven teaching. Rogers, S., Renard, L.
3. Giving students what they need. Erwin, J.

Giving students what they need. Erwin, J.

Posted: 01 Feb 2010 05:13 PM PST

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Erwin, J. (2003) Giving students what they need.  Educational Leadership 61 (1) 19-23.

Erwin begins this article by stressing the importance of relationships and the evils of external motivation.  He then counters by briefly explaining Choice Theory and outlines the importance five key needs that he claims are the source of internal motivation:

• Survival–support safety, respect, order, water breaks)
• Love and Belonging–learn names, greet students upon entering, team and community building activities, and content-related discussion
• Power—personal growth skills that increase the quality of our lives and feelings of self-worth (learning styles, discuss value of curriculum, give students a voice in the classroom.
• Freedom—freedom from stress, fear, disrespect, monotony; and freedom to go where you want, choose where to be and what to do.
• Fun—children at play are learning how to cooperate, create, and negotiate.

Related posts:

1. Helping students value learning. Sullo, B
2. Motivation to begin a lesson or task. Tileston, D.
3. Where’s the evidence? Sullo, B.

Motivation and Rewards. Jensen, E.

Posted: 01 Feb 2010 05:04 PM PST

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Jensen, E. (1998) Motivation and Rewards.  Teaching with the brain in mind (62-70). Alexandria, VA: ASCD

Great article.  Jensen starts this chapter by introducing us to a bit of the history around the research surrounding intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  While educators routinely use extrinsic/stimulus-response rewards it turns out that this type of motivation is only truly effective for “simple physical actions” not for “solving challenging cognitive problems, writing creatively, (or) designing and completing projects.”  So many of today’s classrooms are bases on flawed theory.  He then goes on to explain how and why intrinsic motivation works better.  That the brain is often perfectly satisfied to “pursue novelty and curiosity, embrace relevance, and bathe in the feedback from success” because it (the brain) creates it’s own rewards—called opiates.  He also offers a great model for increasing intrinsic motivation in “Supercamp” a 10-day camp he co-founded.

Related posts:

1. Helping students value learning. Sullo, B
2. Understanding internal motivation. Sullo, B.
3. Motivation to begin a lesson or task. Tileston, D.

Where’s the evidence? Sullo, B.

Posted: 01 Feb 2010 05:00 PM PST

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Sullo, B. (2007). Where’s the evidence.  In Activating the desire to learn (pp. 5-14).  Alexandria, VA: ASCD

In this chapter, Sullo contends that “evidence is substantial and impressive” when it comes to using internal motivational strategies to create positive cultural change within schools.  He cites a number of different reports, authors and case studies that support the idea of internal motivation and control.  He goes over specific examples where teachers and schools adopted strategies based on choice theory, control theory, and concepts of internal control psychology such as class meetings, the responsible thinking process (RTP), community building, inclusion, reality therapy, social responsibility, and achievement motivation.  In each example Sullo focuses on data to support the use of intrinsic motivation with data related to incidence of violence, negative behaviors, disruptions and high-stakes test tools.

Related posts:

1. Understanding internal motivation. Sullo, B.
2. Inspiring through collaboration. Sullo, B
3. Helping students value learning. Sullo, B