In this follow-up episode to my conversation with Phil Jones about Remke's paper on intrinsic motivation, I delve deeper into the concepts of motivation and expectancy, drawing from my doctoral research and my chapter in the "Learning to Teach Design and Technology" book. I explore the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, emphasising that intrinsic motivation comes from within the pupils, such as the satisfaction of mastering complex tasks or learning something new, while extrinsic motivation stems from external rewards like passing exams or pursuing a particular career.
I argue that teachers should consider both short-term and long-term relevance when planning lessons, as well as the cost-benefit balance for pupils in terms of stress, effort, and hard work. Using personal examples from my own schooling experience, I illustrate how a teacher's intervention and support can help students overcome challenges and develop their skills within their zone of proximal development.
Throughout the episode, I stress the importance of teachers conducting research in their classrooms to challenge assumptions and understand pupils' motivations better. By being aware of the complexities surrounding intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, teachers can create more engaging and effective learning experiences in design and technology. I invite listeners to share their thoughts on the conversation with Phil, and Remke's paper, and how it may have influenced their understanding of motivation in the classroom.
(Text generated by AI, edited by Alison Hardy)
Mentioned in this episode Learning to Teach Design and Technology Klapwijk, R. (2023). Secondary Students Intrinsic Motivation during Multidisciplinary STEAM projects : A quantitative study on the influence of competence, autonomy and relatedness in secondary Dutch classrooms. The 40th International Pupils’ Attitudes Towards Technology Conference Proceedings 2023, 1(October). Retrieved from https://openjournals.ljmu.ac.uk/PATT40/article/view/997
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Alison Hardy:
I hope you enjoyed listening to my conversation with Phil Jones on Tuesday about Remke's paper about intrinsic motivation. I thought it was fascinating. I thought it was really good that he picked out a paper where the outcomes weren't what the research was expecting. I thought it was really honest of Remke to highlight that and also for Phil to pick it out that teachers would make assumptions or teachers would make assumptions about if they do this, this will happen Really. To me it echoes my ongoing position that I think D&T teachers need to do research in their classrooms. They need to explore these things, to challenge our assumptions, because I think when we don't challenge our assumptions, then things continue in the status quo. Anyway, what I wanted to explore in this follow-up episode from Tuesday was about motivation and expectancy. There are a couple of concepts that I've explored in my doctoral research and since and I've written about it in the Learning to Teach designer technology book in my chapter on planning for progression. I think motivation is really interesting. I hear often from teachers oh well, we do this context, this design area, because we know that children in our area are engaged by this, and I think that is useful and I think we need to understand what we mean by motivated and engaged. Again, I think it's an assumption that they're only going to be engaged if it's a topic they're familiar with. Well, it isn't education about pushing them out of their comfort zones.
Alison Hardy:
In the Learning to Teach book, I explore this idea about motivation and I build on some work by Ryan and Deckey, which Remke also mentions, which is that there are two aspects to motivation. There's the intrinsic and the extrinsic motivation. In education, the intrinsic motivation comes from inside the pupils, thinking about what drives them, such as being successful at something, creating a good feeling, finding the work interesting, exciting or fun for its own sake, whereas extrinsic motivation comes from something external, an external reward, like passing an exam or wanting to get a particular job. So that's kind of like seeing almost a bigger picture and something that's more ongoing rather than something that's the value for its own sake. And there are different things that will influence people, chub pupils in motivating being motivated in design and technology around their intrinsic and extrinsic, and from Ryan and Deckey's work, I kind of explore the idea that this motivation can come from this intrinsic one, whether they enjoy it, which can be about feeling good, feeling satisfied that they've completed something or learnt something new. And that's complex, it's difficult. It doesn't have to be easy for them to enjoy. Actually, we get satisfaction from mastering something that is complex. So actually setting those challenges to pupils and scaffolding that so that they achieve that understanding is something that can be really important to children in terms of their intrinsic motivation. That they feel successful because they've worked out how to make a difficult part of their designs, they've drawn on knowledge they already have, they've pieced things together and they can work something out, or they make a decision that something isn't going to work. All of those things will motivate them. It's not about something being easy or fun. It can be about that satisfaction.
Alison Hardy:
Then another way we can think about motivation is about whether it's relevant or useful to them. And again there's two different ways of looking at this. This could be the short term or the long term. I kind of give a very simplistic idea, but I think it's relevant if they need to change the thread in the sewing machine so that the thread in the fabric colour matches. That's a short term thing. They learn about doing that and that motivates them because it's relevant for them now.
Alison Hardy:
But sometimes I think about you know design and technology, about what they want to do later on in life. They might not see a relevance. So, as a teacher, it's a balance. We can't just think that we're motivating them in terms of relevance by thinking about a career. If you listen to the podcast for a long time, you've heard me bang on about this, that that can't be the major motivation, because not all children are going to go into that area. Yes, we need as a country, more people to go into design and technologically related careers, but trying to persuade an 11 year old who at that point is just thinking I'm hungry and it's break time shortly isn't necessarily going to be a major motivational factor. So we have to, as educators, think about what's a short term relevance or utility to them, as well as a longer term. And then another way of thinking about it is thinking about in terms of motivation how much will taking part in this activity cost them? And it's not cost about money, but it can be about stress, effort and hard work. And so it's that balance, isn't it? It's a cost benefit. We're about this society so much. What's the cost benefit To thinking about it as a scale a pair of balance scales is if it costs more than it benefits them. If they're having to put in more energy than they're getting a benefit from, then it's not going to motivate them.
Alison Hardy:
So, for example, going back to this simplistic idea about changing the thread you know cranky changing the thread in the machine so that the color matches the fabric that I'm using, that's actually, you know, for a child who's not very experienced at doing that and they haven't got an automatic thread in the sewing machine, they might go. How important is it that the color matches? And actually it's going to cost me a lot of time. It's going to take me 10, 15 minutes. It's a 50 minute lesson. Is that something that's important to me? Actually, no, the benefits of having a matching thread isn't significant enough that I'm going to give it that time. But that's a really simple and I don't. That's not a pathetic example. It is for some children. That's a very real example is how important is it that I go and change the drill bit so it's exactly the right size? We're actually making a prototype, so does it matter? No, it doesn't. So you know.
Alison Hardy:
So we have to understand that children are making design and manufacturing decisions about cost. You know stress, you know I remember, you know being at school, being a child, you know, in design lessons and having the stress of having to use and use piece of equipment and people were watching, and particularly being a girl in a very male dominated field at that point, that stress, that kind of exposure to failure and the ridicule that might come from it, was it worth it? No, it wasn't. So. Again, understanding children's motivations, to how much they're willing to put themselves out there about what the benefits are of you know, for example, in my case at that point, learning how to use a junior hacksaw without breaking a blade, you know it sounds small, but actually for some children these things are quite major. But again, we have to think about, as teachers, that zone of proximal development by Gotsky's ZPD is.
Alison Hardy:
So what had happened is I had broken three junior hacks or blades and an older boy in the room at the time ridiculed me about how expensive these things were and as a result, I didn't finish the product because the stress, the anxiety was too much for me. However, a good teacher coming alongside me said I'm seeing a pattern here. I'm seeing a pattern of what's happening with you breaking, that is, rather than me stepping back from that zone where I could be developed to use the hacksaw appropriately. A teacher could come alongside and say I'm going to do a just in time demonstration I'm drawing on Matt McLean's framework there about demonstrations and saying I'm seeing a pattern here that some blades have been broken. Let's look at the process, let's look at the technique that everybody's using and let's just check out and let's give some opportunity to practice. And so then that opportunity for development that the teacher has seen kind of gets might have got me over that hurdle and that challenge that I was facing, where I'd kind of turned around and gone back while I could have gone over.
Alison Hardy:
So I think that's good teaching is coming alongside and seeing, ah right, okay, that's not happening, what can we do? And then that goes back to. That would give a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment, enjoyment, because I had learnt to do something that I then perceived as being difficult. So I think there's so much there in motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic, that I think teachers and good teachers need to think about in design and technology. I've given some really simple examples there that actually are very, very complex.
Alison Hardy:
If we start to think about what motivates children, why do they resist? Why did they step back? Is it sometimes about a design decision or it being good enough, or is it this? They've hit this point where it's a development and actually they don't see the benefit of that development because the risk, the cost is too high and I think teachers need to think about that when they're planning lessons. They're not going to get the teachers, they're not going to get that right all the time, but I think a good teacher is aware of some of those tensions. So that's what I took away from the episode with Phil. It took me back to some writing that I'd done, as I said, in the Learn to Teach book, where you can find some more of my sort of thinking around this. I'd be interested to hear what you think and what you got from that conversation with Phil and whether you've had a look at Remke's paper and it's opened up some thinking for you about motivation and our assumptions about pupils' motivations in design and technology.