Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
One of the key questions that teachers and parents have to address is how to motivate students/children. In one of his most famous works, Drive, Daniel Pink has looked at four decades of scientific research on human motivation and found a mismatch between what science tells us and what organizations, including schools, actually do. It seems that now work requires greater judgement, creativity and discernment, the way we motivate people has not caught up. He examines five key areas that aid motivation.
At first he looks at extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. His research also dovetails well with Carol Dweck (Mindset). He identifies that there a massive difference between learning goals (intrinsic) and achievement goals, like grades (extrinsic.) A way of seeing the difference is as follows. An achievement goal is a student wanting to score an A in English. A learning goal is a student wanting to master writing English essays so that ultimately they can score an A. The research shows that reaching achievement goals doesn’t necessarily mean you have hit a learning goal. If people are single-mindedly focused on achievement goals, and they attain them, it doesn’t mean they have learnt anything, improved their capabilities or mastered something complex. The student is less likely to persist when the going gets tough and is less likely to understand why essay skills are important in the first place. However, where students are single-mindedly focused on the learning goal, chances are they are going to do very well. In the process the student will also reach their achievement goal too-the A grade. So what makes sense is focus on the learning goal and use the grades and scores as feedback as the student works towards mastery. The process is more important than the outcome. Listen to sports people when they are interviewed after games, many of them will, of course, focus on the result, but many will talk about the performance.
The second area he examines is that of engagement. With engagement people do things because they really want to, they see the virtues of doing it. The enemy of engagement is compliance. Traditionally, schools love compliance. However, if we really want engagement rather than compliance we have to increase the degree of autonomy that people have over what they do; over how, when and where they do it; and over whom they do it with. What it means in terms of students is giving them some discretion over what they study, which projects they do, what they read, or when or how they do their work and how they show their learning-giving students much more autonomy and agency.
Next week, I will complete this two part look at Daniel Pink’s work by explaining the final three factors influencing motivation.
