High school students look forward to engaging experiences in school. In their social circle, they indulge in social media and gadgets. My research highlights that students are motivated when they are able to carry out classroom activities via social media/gadgets. Educators should consider using technology as a supplementary tool to motivate students in their learning.

We all know how i is to be yung, but we dont know how it is to be yung today. Maby we have to ask what we can do and what we can´t do.  And if we can´t fight it maby we should embrace it?

Dear Gould,

It seems that the syndrome you have mentioned is universal. Even the application of technology cannot help much because of class disparity, distraction, and its use for extracurricular purposes. All we can do is to boost up their self-identity to make them understand their true selves and why education matters. Our main role as teachers is to discover the demotivating  factors hindering their progress. In short, teachers' motivational practices can really make a difference by making the learning pace faster.

Best regards,

R. Biria

Dear Håkan, Can you expand what you mean by 'embrace it' please?

Dear Reza, than you for your answer. My teaching practice has been focussed on motivation for the last 10 years. The last few years, I have been becoming less successful than previously. I canm put forward 3 main possibilities:

I don't think I have changed at heart, so I am tending to think that option 3 is a significant part of the problem since it potentially effects both teachers (including me) and students. They are not allowing themselves to be motivated because of prior schooling.

A factor may be the increased external pressure on teachers to meet expected pass rates, so they (we) are becoming more didactic to ensure we 'teach' what is necessary.

Could we expect less when we all seem to be busy and running after money? Monetary system of economy has turned majority amongst us to be slaves of economy, and the beauty is that we are oblivious to this fact. 

Regards and thank you for the question and the beautiful explanations given by all.

Suresh

I think it depends on the student and the circumstances. Much of our culture is moving to the sense of instant gratification, easy rewards and entitlements. This has to effect us.

Mark, we have quite a bit of research indicating that the curriculum has been dumbed down significantly over the last few decades as educational systems have embraced the "failure is not an option" orientation.  Although intended to address the worthy goal of ensuring that groups of young people who historically have not performed well in our schools and on placement tests, the lower standards and expectations have, I believe, affected student motivation.  When the average GPA is a B+ or an A- and requires very little effort, motivation is certain to drop.  Low standards and low expectations equals low student motivation.  Proctor (1984) developed a model for teacher expectation theory many years ago that continues to be relevant today.

Dear All,

This is a universal problem, and it may manifest itself differently in different countries. My experiences with student motivation have taken place in the USA, East Africa, and Mexico.

1952-1961 in USA, student motivation in high school and university was high.

1961-1964 in East Africa: student motivation in high school and college was very high.

1964-1992 in USA:  student and teacher motivation began to change from good to poor.

1992-2015 in Mexico: student motivation was poor, with few exceptions.

For sake of brevity, my answer will omit discussing the societal, cultural, and historical issues of different countries. Instead, I will focus on the USA, especially California (which is a trend setter).

As immigration into California increased dramatically, starting in the late 60's, the population started becoming more heterogeneous (with immigrants from Mexico, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe). The established "mainstream" population felt they were being overwhelmed. Many of the new immigrants paid less in taxes, especially property taxes - which was the main source of all school funding.

Coincidently, at this time the property taxes were onerously high - because they were based on the exploding Market Value of real estate, not on any profit the property owner had realized. This set the stage for the infamous Proposition 13 which greatly reduced the property taxes.

So, the money for all levels of education in California was reduced to a trickle of what it had been. It was the combined result of a "taxpayers' revolt" and xenophobia. These forces continue to influence California, the USA, and the World.

In conjunction with the taxpayers' revolt was the ever-increasing emphasis on making (and conserving) money. This social phenomenon has influenced, not only the motivation of students, but also their choices of major areas of study and their choices of the universities (ivy league) they want to attend - all for the sake of maximizing their future income. Beyond the students, this phenomenon has also influenced the quality of service that professionals provide: spend less time on your clients, students, patients, etc. in order to receive the greatest return on investment. There are many, many facets of our lives in which the quality has diminished, in large part due to the maximizing short-term profits.

All of this has had an impact on today's students and their parents. If they do not see a short-term profit, they are not interested.

How sad!

With regard to Antonio's response, I would note that Proposition 13 today affects only those homeowners who bought their houses before 1978.  Buyers after 1978 receive only one benefit, which is that the rate cannot increase by more than 2% per year.  Thus, someone who purchased a house in, say, 2000 and did not move has seen a significant property-tax increase.  If I dare use my own situation as an example, my property taxes have gone up 2% every year for the 11 years we've owned our home; thus, our annual property taxes are now just under $24,000.  Even so, my daughter's 4th-grade teacher last year didn't know the difference  between an article and an adjective.  In addition, California changed the mechanism for education funding in 1982 in an effort to provide equal distribution of tax funds.  School funding now comes from the general fund in Sacramento, and schools are no longer funded at the local level.  Moreover, they are funded on the basis of FTE, or Full-Time Enrollment.  

By law, 50% of all tax revenues are supposed to go to education. Nevertheless, the decline in California education has been significant, dropping from #1 nationally in 1965 to #47 today.  What we learn from the California experience is that the strong correlation between funding and education quality is largely a myth, especially when we consider that US funding for public education is higher than half a dozen developed countries combined, yet our students' performance is well below even many Third World countries.

The factors that have led to the numerous problems we have with education in the States defy easy solutions, in part because they often are political and social, not simply educational.  Few want to discuss, for example, how teaching has been de-professionalized with the rise of teacher unions.  Few want to discuss how problematic race relations and the historical underperformance of certain ethnic groups have led to dumbing down textbooks and curricula. Do these factors influence student motivation?  Certainly. 

Dear James,

Your data may or may not be more up-to-date; I need to look at more recent data. However,  I doubt very much that I will find that the current level of spending on public schools is at all comparable to what it was in the 1950's and 1960's (adjusted for inflation).

Furthermore, Proposition 13 was only a symptom of the "tax revolt" which reduced public spending on many fronts. By the way, movements similar to Prop 13 spread into other domains in California and to other states, and to the nation, as a whole. It even spread to Britain. 

As for the dumbing down of education, we have George W. Bush to thank for that, not the underperformance of certain ethnic groups. The under performance of Hispanics and African Americans is (to a large extent) a consequence of inferior (i.e., dumbed down) schools in the districts serving these minorities. (I attended such de-facto segregated schools in Denver, Colorado - see US Supreme Court case).

During the period of the Cold War (~1950-1992), the Establishment of the US realized they needed more scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to counter the Soviets, They enticed young people to study these subjects and offered great educational opportunities to the masses in many fields. But once the Soviet Union collapsed, the focus was on Capitalism at all levels - in short, making the most money. As a result, the enrollment in science and related fields fell drastically; and business-related fields were in demand.

As to teacher unions, I am against them, as you are. I am also against any union for government workers. They are a distortion of what a union is for - negotiations in a zero sum game. (I am however strongly in favor of unions in the business sector.) I do believe teachers' unions are an important factor in explaining why some incompetent, uninspired teachers are not fired.  

Antonio,

I don't have access to school funding data from the 1950s, so I can't make any assessment with regard to comparative levels.  Even if, as you suggest, the level was significantly higher back then, my point regarding the correlation between funding and performance remains valid.  There are many factors associated with student/school performance, but funding level doesn't appear to be one of them.  Indeed, because low performing schools receive fairly high levels of supplementary federal funding, they actually receive more dollars per pupil than high performing schools in some instances.

Likewise, Prop 13 benefitted homeowners for a very brief period.  As soon as those who had purchased prior to 1978 sold their homes, those houses were no longer covered by the proposition; the new owner was subject the the annual 2% tax increase.  I strongly suspect that most of those pre-1978 homeowners are now graveyard dead.

Yes, Bush One did much damage to public education.  No Child Left Behind was an unqualified disaster.  The Common Core State Standards Initiative is equally bad.  Both assume that all students are created equal--a concept that is totally antithetical to everything we know about education and children. Both emphasize testing that appears to have no relation to actual learning, motivating teachers to merely teach to the test.

But the dumbing down of education did not start with Bush.  Based on a 1977 College Board report, it actually began in the late 1960s/early 1970s, when schools nationwide began replacing content courses with what I suppose we might call "feel good" courses.  You should look at the report--it makes for interesting reading. Likewise, Jeanne Chall was describing the dumbing down of textbooks in the mid 1970s.  Although I can't call up from memory the source (and I don't want to go down to my study to find it), a lexico-syntactic study from about 12 years ago reported that eighth grade language arts textbooks in 2000 were written at the same level as fifth grade textbooks in 1950.  Scary.

There is no question the schools that primarily serve African-Americans and Hispanics are below what any reasonable person would consider "standard."  I lived in Chicago for some years and saw firsthand the bad conditions of these schools and the incompetent teachers who staffed them.  In many districts, poor teachers are commonly assigned to these schools because the good ones refuse to go there owing to high rates of violence. But Lareau's research in Unequal Childhoods makes a compelling argument that these are ancillary factors--the primary factor in these children's poor academic performance is parenting style, which is highly correlated with parental education and income.

My sense is that you and I agree not only that student motivation has declined but also that public education is on the brink. But we have different experiences and thus different perspectives on the factors that have brought us to the edge.

Best wishes,

James

James and Antonio, thank yoiu for your responses.

Antonio, you said "If they do not see a short-term profit, they are not interested."  I think I recognize this in my students. Data in Queensland and perhaps Australia is showing a mismatch between achievement in semester assessments (which are higher) and achievement in long term skill development (which is lower than expected). I think this is more evidence of your point. Students arew working for success now. They want to know how to pass NOW. But long term development of skills, requiring extended effort and focus is not happening.

And James, yoiu said "defy easy solutions, in part because they often are political and social, not simply educational. " I agree whole heartedly. The problems most definitely are social. I'm not sure about political EXCEPT as it feeds into social. Too many of my students have few goals, and without goals there is little motivation.

Taken together, I think that the problems are mostly psychosocial with many inputs, and so difficult to remedy. Helicopter parenting, Inability to recognise the demands and possibilities of future life and how it depends on education, a tendancy to need quick solutions to problems and immediate needs gratification, and even possibly a sense of doom, with global warming and overpopulation.

Mark, you and I have had several conversations about education over the years, and I always find them interesting.  On my end, I see the lack of goals and low motivation as being related the the limited opportunities young people have today.  A bachelor's degree here in the States might help a young person get a manager's position at McDonalds, but it won't be a ticket to a professional position.  This is one effect of the politico-social insistence that everyone must go to college and get a degree.  The degree becomes devalued.  Because a college education has so little value in the marketplace, it has become relatively easy for faculty to dumb down the curriculum.  It is even easier for public school teachers to teach to the test, not to what young people will face in college or the workplace.  Consider the emphasis in our public schools on the self-expressive essay.  Researchers have pointed out for years that the high school curriculum is unaligned with undergraduate standards and expectations, but our high schools nevertheless make no effort to attempt an alignment.  The question is why.

If I may, I suggest you look at my recent article on the commodification of education:  https://journals.beds.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/jpd/article/view/317/514

Best,

James

Dear James and Mark,

I just came across an important video that documents California's education issues K-12. This is 57 minute presentation made for PBS: its title is "Learning Matters: First to Worst (2004)." It can be found on YouTube as a Merrow Report. 

And bringing this issue more up-to-date (2015), there are many articles that indicate that this public education crisis has not improved.

As to a solution, I would suggest to first contrast the public education conditions of the 1950's with those of today, coupled with an appreciation of today's economic and social environment for students and for the government at all levels.

Then,identify the best methods to propagate a new paradigm to the general population, including films, books, and Big Data. Also identify the best methods to influence the elites in the world, such as at the meetings at Davos, Switzerland; for example, exploiting the theories of the "behaviorist' economic models  as described in a monograph titled "Ethics, Trust, and Altruism in Society, Politics, and Business," by Christiane Krieger-Boden, 2011.

As you both know, the problem is a tangled knot ot threads coming from so many sources from many different hierarchical levels. To describe this adequately requires a systems approach, complete with feedback and feed forward loops. (Quite an undertaking.)

Antonio,

Well stated.  Thanks.

James

You are right, but for that to happen Antonio there would have to be political will. I don't see that happening any time soon because it does not fit the quick fix mentality of politics. Also I don't think current media mindset suit this kind of approach. Nd James, yes, I think we generally agree. I absolutely agree that devalued education feeds into the mix. Parenting in too many homes, in a range of different forms, that devalue life goals linked to education is a reaL problem. I named helicopter parenting, but also parenting that makes students feel entitled withouit putting in effort and parenting that destroys goal setting by imp[lying no future for the child and parenting that even if they have educational goals starts children behind the 8 ball because the parents are unskilled. 

The one I am seeing more of is students who feel entitled to a future without needing to put in effort. The other issues described, I have seen over the years haven't changed much. They are a fact of education, but this new one is hard to combat. These students seem to say 'Why bother trying. I will have an OK life anyway.'

They are not motivated to study in the way of curriculum .

may be some fault in curriculum itself. We may be finding it interesting but they may not.

some times they are faster than the curriculum speed.

Nowadays, So many resources are available to acquire knowledge and skill.

I think what is required for them and accordingly curriculum also should be changed periodically to cater present trends

In many schools they are asking students to memorize subject  which they do not like. even exams also on  recollection type.(most part of the question paper).

they are coming to school to get certificate. If we can make it learning is for learning not for exams ,then they may enjoy the learning process

Sai leela

Hi Mark,

I think that the first thing is to be very clear with the term engagement. I often read about how different strategies engage students and what I see is entertain. This is very different from students being cognitively engaged and actively seek to learn.

I believe several things are at play.

1. Due to mass media, students are swamped with information. They do not have the mental filters that a post 25 year old has and so often shut down. This influences their ability.

2. There is a misconception that students are technologically more capable than their parents and teachers. This is not true. Applications directed at children are designed to be user-friendly. Business applications are designed to be functional even if it requires a few more steps. This influences their perception of need.

3. Sadly, we do not teach to the future. Every teacher, and therefore student ,is directed from a political epistemology that seeks to produce a workforce and a consumer base. This influences their identity.

4. Many educational systems have a hierarchal  structure all the way to the classroom. As such, a student can misbehave and the teacher has limited recourse. I have been in school in which an incident is written and sent to a deputy principal to action. From a student's perspective, it is leadership without authority. 

5. My final point is to expand on what James Williams has said concerning motivation and achievement. Dan Ariely has demonstrated in his research that by making a task easier, the perceived reward is less. Their is no sense of ownership. An interesting experiment to demonstrate this can be seen with sport. If you have students engage in a sport and then tell them that they ALL won. They will soon start messing around and not want to play. Ultimately if you remove the possibility of failing, then you also remove the possibility of winning. If we placed minimum academic achievement as a requirement to to transition from grade 3, grade 7 and grade 10, I think we would produce a much higher academic standard within our students and happier more engaged students.

Frank

Thanks Frank. I agree with points 1 - 3, but questions points 4 and 5. Both of these I think confuse the psychology of motivation a little. Student behaviour does impact on the motivation of others through its effect on classroom climate. I am a believer in positive behaviour approaches after helping to set this up where I work. The results have been quite good, expecially in its impact on school climate. What I would say is that there are some students who would benefit from a different model of schooling and if they had the opportunity everyone would benefit.

Point 5 is a negative approach to the issue of goal seeking. I don't think that creating divisive barriers does much for those who already don't believe they can succeed. Lack of self efficacy is a powerful demotivator. A better solution is to reframe success as improvement through effort. To do this we need to describe learning as a continuum through which students move. Coupled with personalised teaching this motivates students. I did this for a period of 5 years from 2000. It showed positive and pleasant results. Geoff masters and ACER are examining this idea through a more high tech approach currently. The basic point is to tell kids what they can do and what they need to do next without judgement. In this model the only failure is lack of effort. It doesn't fix everything but it is at least one powerful demotivator out of the way. As I intimate in the question, I have found student motivation to be much more complex over the last few years. There appears to be other social factors that I can't manipulate as I have been able to in the past.

Hi Mark,

I agree that many of the whole school behaviour approaches that Queensland applies are very good. It is something that the state can be proud of. Unfortunately I have experienced a strongly hierarchical approach in another state, and the impact on student behaviour and teacher moral was almost immediate. As such, I am a firm believer that teaching staff need to have supportive authority within the classroom. What I mean by this is that if a student does not comply with a reasonable request, then the teacher has the option to call the front office and have the student removed. The situation that I experienced within a school setting was that instead of being removed (as this was considered a loss of student learning time), the teacher would submit a paper incident report (which the deputy principal entered into the system at his discretion), the student then gave his/her side of the story, and the deputy principal would attempt to mediate a resolution. So yes, very much support QLD approach, but very wary of hierarchical approaches.

My second point on students needing to fail is also dear to me. I believe that students absolutely need to succeed. But they need how to learn to deal with not succeeding within a supportive environment. I think that the term 'Fail' is the problem. As a society we see fail as both negative and definitive. You are quite correct when you highlight the need to turn this into 'how do you make this a success?' The problem is that students going through the system today do not seem to realise that they did fail something and as a consequence had to improve to succeed. In a previous blog on the distinction between Training and Education, I describe Training as a subset of Education. I think this is a very good example, a student can fail in a training task (such as a maths calculation), the education of the student is then the process that he or she adopts to improve the maths skill into a success. I do not see having benchmarks as barriers, but as demonstrated milestones. Why should a student reach year 12 before they learn that they have restrictions placed on their future options.

I would like to see a situation where a student enters transitional stages of education with a clear knowledge that they have been assessed and found competent at the preceding level. Why should a student who has not mastered earlier skill be expected to struggle with learning new skills that build on those foundations? Similarly, why would we ask an overloaded teacher to modify work for the student when the skills needed are already being taught in another classroom (i.e. the earlier year level). I feel that in the past, when students were held back a year, we adjusted for what I call cognitive maturity. As with physical maturity, their is a variation. By keeping a student back, we align them with their correct cognitive cohort, and they then progress through the rest of their schooling with more confidence as they are performing at the same level as their NEW peers. I don't have statistics, but I would suggest that very few students were held back more than one year level. I would also expect that those who were had a life situation that caused a delay in education.

Just my views Mark, but I do acknowledge that QLD has a very good behaviour management system that is supportive of staff.

Frank

Clearly stated Frank. Your points about success and failure align with mine. I guess we will have to agree to disagree on the milestones issue. I think what you suggest introduces an unnecessary social barrier for the studernts. When students want to learn, I have had no problems teaching to a wide range of abilities in science classes. The flexibility of my approach allows me to spend time helping each student with their specific needs while they do the same or similar task to everyone else.

I find that giving students challenging tasks and letting them work in pairs or small teams works well as a motivating stimulation.

Yes,I do agree with Susan. Challenging tasks and activities always motivate them to learn.They also need different type of activities.

Sai leela

Dear Susan and Saileela, I am aware of many strategies for boosting motivation but what I feel I am noticing is a trending reduction in impact of those strategies and am wondering what, if anything, has changed in the psychosocial world of teenagers that could explain this.

Dear

I think this depending on student them self, teaching method, schools environment which includes peoples labs....., and parents.

Dear Mark,

The following are some more of my thoughts on this subject:

Problem: Students Not Motivated to Learn Science

Context: Science Implicitly Treated as Low Priority by Several Possible Sources, including: Family, Peers, National and Global Leaders, School Administrators, Tax Payers, Social Media, and News Media.

Possible Personal Factors: Complacency, Low Self-Confidence, Inadequate Educational Preparation, Focus on Path toward Careers with Maximal Earning Potential, Closed-mindedness, Inappropriate State-of-mind, and Misconceptions regarding Science.

Assumptions:

Students - Each Student’s Physical, Psychological, and Financial Well-being Is Not an Impediment to Learning.

Teacher – Competent and Innovative.

Scope – Given the Immense Societal Challenges, It Is Not Realistic to Expect a Teacher to Overcome Many of Them.

Approach:

Hypothesis - There May Be a Few Students among Many that Can Be Motivated to Want to Learn Science by Using Neuroscience Techniques.

Background – Three relevant parts of the brain consist of: the left hemisphere (lh), the right hemisphere (rh), and the pre-frontal cortex (pfc). There is a useful heuristic model involving these three parts that depicts the lh as emphasizing routine processing, the rh as emphasizing novelty processing, and the pfc as giving importance to a situation. (Assuming a person is right-handed.)

A technique that psychiatrist Dan Siegel of UCLA uses to open up a person to new ways of relating to others is to develop the, often neglected, rh. He does this by first helping the person to become more aware of his own body. This helps him become more aware of his own inner feeling. From here he is able to empathize with the feelings of others. Once this stage is achieved, the person is more open to ideas that are different from those he has held for some time.

Similar techniques can be tried by high school teachers, using exercises that stimulate the rh, exercises such as using your left extremities to do tasks that you habitually do with your right extremities, listening to instrumental music that is new to you and then discussing it, etc. These may be tried as “warm up” exercises to help open up the minds (esp. the rh) of the students.

In addition, the teacher needs to draw from his/her own experiences or call upon working scientists to talk about their R&D, especially if it solved or was a breakthrough to challenging problems that are important to society. These talks will help the pfc to give importance to the science you are teaching.

Thank you Antonio. You may have hit the nail on the head when you said that an assumption was that the students had no psychological impediment to learning. In fact they may have just such an impediment. They certainly behave as if they do. Even those who should have reasonable life goals and recognise the importance of education and specifically science education are not highly motivated. My current class is divided neatly along interest lines. Those that are personally interested are motivated to engage, those that are not interested do not. Life goals do not seem to be a part of the equation. I am now starting the think that there is a growing misconception of the meaning of learning or perhaps something better described as the value of learning.

This is what I think.

So what I am seeing is a change in the perception of the role of individual subjects in education from having intrinsic value as long term personal development to mere stepping stones to the next year, so if there are no plans to study that subject in the next year, then there is little motivation to engage with it.

MAYBE!