MOTIVATION FROM THE INSIDE OUT:
Rethinking Rewards, Assessment, and Learning
Most educators, if asked, can explain the difference between
extrinsic and intrinsic motivation -- between carrots and sticks
on the one hand, and love of learning on the other. But many of
our daily practices suggest that we fail to understand the importance
of the distinction. In this workshop, Alfie Kohn, the author of
PUNISHED BY REWARDS, shows why we need to stop asking "How
motivated are my students?" and start asking "How are my students
motivated?"
That question, in turn, leads to an even more surprising
contrast: the distinction between getting students to think about
their performance (that is, how well they are doing) and getting
them to think about the learning itself (what they are doing).
These orientations often pull in opposite directions, which means
that too much emphasis on achievement can reduce students' interest
in learning - and cause them to avoid challenging tasks. When the
point is to prove how smart you are, there is less inclination to
engage deeply with ideas.
Thus, the problem with standardized testing is not only how bad
the tests themselves are, but also how much attention is paid to the
results. Even new, "authentic" assessments may backfire if students
are constantly led to ask, "How am I doing?" Likewise, research
demonstrates that students who have come to focus on grades are likely
to think less creatively and come to see learning as a chore. ("Do
we have to know this?")
This workshop urges teachers and administrators to reconsider
basic assumptions about motivation in general and evaluation in
particular. Participants are helped to develop strategies that tap
children's natural desire to explore ideas:
- creating a curriculum that is meaningful and relevant to students'
interests
- bringing students in on the process of making decisions about their
learning
- transforming classrooms into caring communities where students feel
safe and connected to others, and
- moving away from traditional grading in favor of more constructive
and learner-centered approaches to feedback.
THE DEADLY EFFECTS OF "TOUGHER STANDARDS"
"[The main effect] of the drive for so-called higher standards in
schools is that the children are too busy to think," said John Holt
in 1959. Four decades later, policy makers are pursuing just such a
heavy-handed, top-down version of education reform. The results:
schools have been turned into giant test-prep centers, the intellectual
life has been squeezed out of many classrooms, and some of the best
educators have gotten tired (or fired).
This seminar, by the author of THE SCHOOLS OUR CHILDREN
DESERVE, invites participants to explore five fatal flaws of the
Tougher Standards movement:
- It gets motivation wrong. Leading students to become
preoccupied with how well they are doing in school can undermine their
engagement with what they are doing. Paradoxically, a single-minded
concern with results can reduce the quality of learning - along with
the desire to explore ideas.
- It gets pedagogy wrong. Standards are often defined as a
long list of forgettable facts that students must know, or else.
Moreover, teachers are encouraged to stick with the sort of traditional
instruction that has now been shown by the best theory and research to
interfere with deep understanding.
- It gets evaluation wrong. In practice, "excellence," "higher
standards," and "raising the bar" all refer to scores on standardized
tests, many of them multiple-choice, norm-referenced, and otherwise
flawed.
- It gets school reform wrong. Tougher Standards are usually
seen not as guidelines but as mandates, with "accountability" a code
word for tighter control over what happens in classrooms by people who
are not in classrooms.
- It gets improvement wrong. Weaving its way through all these
ideas is the implicit assumption that harder is always better. The
result is that tests, texts, and teaching have not become more rigorous
but merely more onerous.
This workshop concludes by helping participants to see that the push for
Tougher Standards is not a reality to be coped with but a political
movement that can be opposed. Practical strategies are suggested by
which educators can pursue a more thoughtful vision of teaching and
learning.
BEYOND BRIBES AND THREATS:
Realistic Alternatives to Controlling Students’ Behavior
This workshop, by the author of Beyond Discipline: From Compliance
to Community, addresses the nonacademic realm of school life - and
specifically the ways that discipline or classroom management not only
tends to backfire, but actively interferes with the process of helping
students grow into responsible, compassionate people. We begin by
addressing the problems with trying to manipulate students' behavior
with the use of rewards (including praise) or punishment (euphemistically
called "consequences"). Then we dig deeper, looking at how much is lost
by focusing on behavior in the first place, how a demand for short-term
compliance (which is all that carrots and sticks can ever produce) gets
in the way of our long-term goals for kids, and how many problems originate
with the assumption that the teacher should be in control of the classroom.
In the second part of the workshop, participants hear about, see (on
videotape), discuss, and make sense of the alternatives:
- solving problems rather than administering discipline,
- working with students rather than doing things to them,
- addressing how "misbehavior" may be due to a curriculum that isn't
engaging,
- transforming the classroom (and school) into caring communities where
students feel they belong, and
- bringing students in on making decisions about how they want their
classroom to be -- and how to make that happen.
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