Shyam Barr

Blog

 

PREFACE

This blog discusses topics that exist between the fields cognitive psychology and leadership, teaching and learning. Although I make connections between research and personal experience (my attempt at bridging the age-old ‘theory-practice’ gap), I write for a general audience. It is as Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi stated in the preface of his book FLOW:

“To take this step is somewhat dangerous, because as soon as one strays from the stylised constraints of academic prose, it is easy to become careless or overly enthusiastic about such a topic” (p. xi)

To avoid carelessness, I will endeavour to include references to journal articles, books and alike (as commonly expected in academic writing), but not at the expense of accessibility and ease of reading. This will be a delicate balance and one I will endeavour to achieve.

To end, I chose the word ‘discusses’ in the first sentence of this preface, to highlight that although the blog articles themselves are very much a dialogue between myself and what I read, I encourage you to share your comments and questions, so that we may start a more authentic discussion. 

 
 

Improve Your Students' Motivation Using This One Key Strategy

“How do I motivate my students?”

This is by far one of the most common questions I am asked.

The first step - listen to the learner in front of you.

Engaging in deep listening is a key method to better understanding the different beliefs that influence student motivation.

As teachers, we often make evaluations of motivations based on what we see – observation of student behaviour or engagement with a task… but there are a set of beliefs that underpin motivation that we, as teachers, can intervene with.

If you think of the iceberg metaphor, beliefs sit below the surface. We don't see them. We only see the behavior or the language and we make inferences from those observations. There is research that argues for the need to make the implicit beliefs (the beliefs that sit ‘below the surface’) explicit before we can do anything with them. It’s a concept I call ‘belief mining’ -A concept that I discuss in depth in my school partnerships, but that was also explored in Episode 6 of the Educate to Self-Regulate Podcast. Our role as teachers is to help students dig up the beliefs from below the surface and bring it into conscious awareness.

Recently, I met with one of my students. Unfortunately, he is on the verge of failing the unit, and had emailed me apologising for his efforts and in some ways resigning from any possible positive outcome.

My response:

“Jack (pseudonym),

Talk to me… what’s happening? Do we need a coffee catch-up (in person or virtual)?

Shy”

When I met him, he shared his struggles with motivation, particularly overcoming procrastination. The procrastination stemmed from a series of motivational beliefs that required rewiring. But, how does one rewire a belief they are not aware of? There was an opportunity for me to play “belief miner”.

One belief that emerged was:

‘Writing requires a lot of effort, but it’s much easier to just talk about’.

This indicated a belief about effort cost vs task value. Simply, the effort was too high for what the task itself offered in value. So, I did two things.

  • First, I prompted him to find personal value in the task for him.

  • Second, we co-generated alternative modes to complete the task (e.g., an oral presentation) that could be perceived as having less effort cost to instigate motivation.

His response: “Wow, this is not a common approach in adult education. It’s often so rigid in the structure of assessment tasks that sometimes directly oppose what we understand about the science of learning”

My response: “I’m invested in you as a learner.”

Let’s change the way we invest in our learners - begin with the notion of ‘belief mining’ to help enhance students’ motivation and their identity as a learner.

Shyam Barr, PhD

Shyam Barr