A Motivated Brain

Membership in ASCD has many perks.  My favorite perk is having access to Educational Leadership, but I also appreciate that membership means receiving promotional ASCD member books.  Recently, I got a copy of The Motivated Brain: Improving Student Attention, Engagement, and Perseverance.

This book basically has all my favorite words in the title.  Since I have no free time, I'm making slow progress in it, but so far I'm nodding as I'm reading.  Part of the book's initial set up is an argument I've heard before, namely, that it's ridiculous for decisions about the structure and content of education to be made without reference to what works for the human brain.  One of my favorite quick overviews of how our education system is mired in an obsolete model is the RSA Animate version of Ken Robinson's talk on changing education paradigms.  Robinson points out that our current education system is still stuck in the original industrial age paradigm that was in place at the beginning of wide spread public education.  Doing things a certain way because that's the way we've always done it is not only a poor rationale, but it's also a path to failure in this rapidly changing world.

One of the educational changes I would love to see is a greater emphasis on motivating students.  Another great RSA Animate is one by Daniel Pink summarizing some of his major points on what does and does not motivate workers.  Pink focuses on three components that a workplace should provide in order to get successful results from employees: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Pink's three points correlate well with Deci and Ryan's educational psychology based self-determination theory which discusses the basic human need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.  The best part about self-determination theory, or SDT as it's often abbreviated, is that it has been tested in real classroom situations with consistent confirmation of its validity as a model.

Both Pink's model and Ryan and Deci's model emphasize the importance of autonomy.  Ryan and Deci even describe autonomous motivation in contrast to controlled motivation.  I still have to read some more to figure out how this fits with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  I'm realizing that in order to effectively research motivation it will be important to make sure I'm really clear on my terms.  

The first chapter of The Motivated Brain gives an overview of many of the top theories and works related to motivation.  In skimming it, I saw a heading for emotional intelligence, another big buzzword.  The picture next to it shows arrows between the rational and emotional sides of the brain, implying that emotional intelligence is what connects the two.  Thanks to my good friends at RSA Animate I know that the brain's division of duties isn't as simple as we are sometimes lead to believe. 

 

I'm looking forward to reading the next chapter of the book and seeing what I learn.  Please feel free to share any resources you think would help me better understand the brain and motivation.  In case you didn't already figure it out, I especially like explanations with visuals :-)