university.nae.school
Mr. Pavlov's Dog Reconsidered...
From Mr Pavlov and Mr Maslow to Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, lots of people have wondered why humans do things. At The British International School Abu Dhabi, we decided to ask our students why they do the work our teachers ask them to do and the results were a little surprising. We gave nearly 100 students from years 7 to 9 a short questionnaire and invited them to indicate what their main motivations for learning were. As a school we have invested a great deal of time and effort in recent years in developing a very successful inter-House competition but House Points didn’t score highly as a motivational force amongst these students. Instead responses such as ‘positive verbal and written feedback from my teachers’, ‘a good report to show my parents’ and ‘the joy of mastering a subject’ scored more highly.
Christopher Lowe
Assistant Head of Secondary
The British International School Abu Dhabi
At our school we will be developing our research in this area of school life. Our students represent over 70 nationalities – are they all motivated in the same way? What are the implications of our findings on our House competition? And how can we tweak our classrooms so that ‘the joy of mastery’ is a top priority? Watch this space…
For a further look at motivation, try our Self-Study course on Engaging your Students.
Ryan and Deci have argued that only when young people are ‘intrinsically motivated’ to achieve well, that is, that they learn because they really want to, because they enjoy the process, will schools truly have succeeded in motivating students effectively. Promises of house points, merit awards, good reports for parents or even a good career in the future, are merely extrinsic rewards designed to flatter our students. Ryan and Deci have gone as far as to suggest that an external reward might even have a de-motivating effect on well-motivated students.
If you want to know more about Ryan and Deci's self-determination theory, please click here.