What if deadlines, imposed goals, surveillance and evaluations were found to all undermine intrinsic motivation?
What if grades, gold stars, and other rewards for performance sabotage a student's desire to engage in learning for its own sake?
Are you prepared to engage with these questions or are they too threatening?
If you are willing to see cognitive dissonance as an opportunity to play with, rather than a crisis to be avoided, I suggest you try playing the game You say you want this, so then why are you doing that? by taking a look at these three books:
Why We Do What We Do by Edward Deci
Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn
Drive by Dan Pink
Showing posts with label Dan Pink. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dan Pink. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
If we don't grade how will we know if children are learning?
Dan Pink organized a very cool project called What's your sentence? The idea is to distill your life - what it's about, why you're here - into a single sentence.
So what's my sentence? For now, this is what I've come up with:
If we want to know if school is addressing it's primary mandate to nurture a child's desire to go on learning, then we need to start asking kids if they like school. While it is important to observe kids during class, it may be even more telling to find out if they willingly engage in learning when the expectations (and often manipulations) to do so are no longer present.
Do kids go on chattering about what they were doing in class when they are out of class? Do they go home and talk their parent's ear off about the cool experiments they did today? Do they beg to go to the local library or book store so they can purchase their next book that they want to read for pleasure? Do you find them Googling cool questions about stuff you didn't think they even knew about?
Asking how we will know if children are learning is a great question, but assuming that learning and grading are synonymous is the first clue that we've been in school for too long. Real learning is found in children not data, and unfortunately, there is no appropriate shortcut to collecting or sharing this information. At best gradesandtests are simply unhelpful in ascertaining whether children are learning and at worst they are harmful towards life-long learning.
So what's my sentence? For now, this is what I've come up with:
He made grading and other arbitrary ranking systems so impossible to justify that parents, students and teachers had to focus on real learning.When I speak or write about abolishing grading, one of the first questions I get in response goes something like this:
If we don't grade, how will we know if children are learning?To this I say, where there's interest achievement will follow.
If we want to know if school is addressing it's primary mandate to nurture a child's desire to go on learning, then we need to start asking kids if they like school. While it is important to observe kids during class, it may be even more telling to find out if they willingly engage in learning when the expectations (and often manipulations) to do so are no longer present.
Do kids go on chattering about what they were doing in class when they are out of class? Do they go home and talk their parent's ear off about the cool experiments they did today? Do they beg to go to the local library or book store so they can purchase their next book that they want to read for pleasure? Do you find them Googling cool questions about stuff you didn't think they even knew about?
Asking how we will know if children are learning is a great question, but assuming that learning and grading are synonymous is the first clue that we've been in school for too long. Real learning is found in children not data, and unfortunately, there is no appropriate shortcut to collecting or sharing this information. At best gradesandtests are simply unhelpful in ascertaining whether children are learning and at worst they are harmful towards life-long learning.
What does this look like in real life? The forward in Kelly Gallagher's book Readicide puts it this way:
Readicide by Kelly Gallagher is one of the few books that appear every year in education. Although the primary focus of the book is on adolescents' reading, or the lack of it, the message is one that will ring true for teachers of grades K-12.
Gallagher defines readicide early on as the "systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools." He then documents just how widely readicide is practiced and discusses its outcomes. Citing recent reports from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, he illustrates how powerful readicide has been in creating aliterates - people who can read but largely do not.
The data available indicate that we are producing more and more aliterates every year. In many cases, we do so with good intentions. State and national initiatives linked to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 have created schools in which lessons are focused primarily on improving reading test scores. As a result, instruction has been narrowed and made even more mind-numbing than in earlier eras (and those eras did not provide much to celebrate). The end result is that NCLB have demonstrated no improvement in actual reading achievement and instead show a disturbing potential for fostering readicide.
The point to be taken here is that we should care not only that children can read but do read; more generally, we should be concerned with encouraging children to want to learn at least as much as we encourage them to learn.
John Dewey states his case in his book Experience and Education:
What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win ability to read and write, if in the process the individual loses his own soul: loses his appreciation of things worth while, of the values to which these things are relative; if he loses desire to apply what he has learned and, above all, loses the ability to extract meaning from his future experiences as they occur?
If you were to ask teachers to identify an ultimate goal for their students, most teachers might quickly recite something about helping kids become life-long learners. If we can agree that this sounds like a laudable goal, then we need to take John Dewey's question very seriously.
That is why I find it prudent to ask at least one question before I ever consider any plan of action or decision that will affect children in the classroom; be it a principal's new rule, a teacher's new lesson or a government's standardized test or policy, we should at least ask:
How will this affect children's interest in learning, their desire to keep reading and thinking and exploring?A child's love for learning is not a fire we have to light, rather it is a flame we must be careful not to extinguish. Just as curiosity is the cure for boredom, the cure for curiosity is worksheets and testsandgrades. Only after years of schooling does a kids natural thirst for learning dissipate and die... but if we are mindful and reflective, we can ensure that children attend the schools they deserve.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Challenging Godin
I think Seth Godin is on to a couple things here. Firstly, we can't test ourselves to a good education system, and secondly, we need parents to properly ally themselves with teachers to refuse our cooperation with the testing debacle.
With that, I have to also issue a challenge to people like Seth Godin who are not educators but are lending a hand from a distance to educators who are progressive. Guys like Dan Pink and Seth Godin need to be able to speak to specific alternatives to traditional grades, sit-and-get-spit-and-forget worksheets and standardized fill-in-the-bubble tests. They need to familiarize themselves with project-based learning, performance assessments and portfolios. They need to be able to verbalize viable alternatives to the instruments that are creating compliance.
They need to lend a hand by citing educators like Deborah Meier, Alfie Kohn, Monty Neil, Linda Darling-Hammond and Yong Zhao - they need to do this so that their following who is predominantly from the business sector can become aware of the real experts in education.
With that, I have to also issue a challenge to people like Seth Godin who are not educators but are lending a hand from a distance to educators who are progressive. Guys like Dan Pink and Seth Godin need to be able to speak to specific alternatives to traditional grades, sit-and-get-spit-and-forget worksheets and standardized fill-in-the-bubble tests. They need to familiarize themselves with project-based learning, performance assessments and portfolios. They need to be able to verbalize viable alternatives to the instruments that are creating compliance.
They need to lend a hand by citing educators like Deborah Meier, Alfie Kohn, Monty Neil, Linda Darling-Hammond and Yong Zhao - they need to do this so that their following who is predominantly from the business sector can become aware of the real experts in education.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Dan Pink: Compliance to engagement
Daniel Pink's books Drive and A Whole New Mind both speak to how education needs to shift from just left brain linear, sequential abilities to also include the metaphorical right brain abilities.
This leads to the question, how do we motivate people to shift away from the factory model of education towards conceptually creative learning. To make this shift, Pink argues that we must move away from traditional carrott and stick manipulators that simply encourage sit and get - or in other words, an education system that was about processing people through compliance.
Compliance may be good enough in training workers to conduct rote instructions on fundamentally simplistic tasks, but ingenuity, advancement and creativity require much more than just compliance - we require engagement which demands far more autonomy, purpose and mastery on the behalf of children.
Pink also identifies the sad irony in that the American education system is currently moving towards even greater emphasis on routines, right answers and standardization precisely at the time when our society is moving away from these these factory model characteristics.
Want more on these topics?
Here is a brilliant interview by Harvard Business Review's blogger Andrew Keen and Daniel Pink.
This leads to the question, how do we motivate people to shift away from the factory model of education towards conceptually creative learning. To make this shift, Pink argues that we must move away from traditional carrott and stick manipulators that simply encourage sit and get - or in other words, an education system that was about processing people through compliance.
Compliance may be good enough in training workers to conduct rote instructions on fundamentally simplistic tasks, but ingenuity, advancement and creativity require much more than just compliance - we require engagement which demands far more autonomy, purpose and mastery on the behalf of children.
Pink also identifies the sad irony in that the American education system is currently moving towards even greater emphasis on routines, right answers and standardization precisely at the time when our society is moving away from these these factory model characteristics.
Want more on these topics?
Here is a brilliant interview by Harvard Business Review's blogger Andrew Keen and Daniel Pink.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Mistrust drives manipulation
Superiors are there to support you not dictate you.
Seth Godin writes about turning the traditional top-down power structure up-side down:
Today's test and punish brand of accountability have left teachers deprofessionalized in a pool of distrust. I've come to know far too many teachers who are numb to top-down, teacher-proofing reform. For them, education reform has become a shopping list of dictates and demands, and so many teachers have come to see their principal or their superintendent as their superior who tells them what to do.
When I hear of school districts that mandate teacher's professional development, I am not surprised to also see their teachers disengaged from their own learning. Undert this climate, everyone comes to see professional development as this thing to just get through.
When interactions between teachers and administrators become more about power, things go awry. Harriet Rubin, a legendary innovator in the world of business-book publishing, sums this up when she said: "Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash."
When you don't trust someone, you resort to controlling and manipulating them.
Mistrust drives manipulation.
In his Harvard Business Review blog, Bill Taylor writes:
Education reform should be less about compliance and more about ingenuity. If the teachers in the field aren't affored the opportunity to influence administration without appearing to be troublemakers, reform is destined to fail a thousand deaths.
Education reform must be less about control and more about collaboration. We would be wise to listen to Dan Pink when he speaks of autonomy, mastery and purpose.
We would also be wise to ponder Thomas Gordon's message:
For teachers, Gordon's words act as a kind of double-edged sword. Just as teachers have a need for collaboration with their administrators, so must teachers collaborate with their students.
This isn't a teacher thing - it's a human being thing.
Seth Godin writes about turning the traditional top-down power structure up-side down:
I always took the position that my boss (when I had a job) worked for me. My job was to do the thing I was hired to do, and my boss had assets that could help me do the job better. His job, then, was to figure out how best give me access to the people, systems and resources that would allow me to do my job the best possible way.
Of course, that also means that the people I hire are in charge as well. My job isn't to tell them what to do, my job is for them to tell me what to do to allow them to keep their promise of delivering great work.
If you go into work on Monday with a list of things for your boss to do for you (she works for you, remember?) what would it say? What happens if you say to the people you hired, "I work for you, what's next on my agenda to support you and help make your [learning] go up?"
Today's test and punish brand of accountability have left teachers deprofessionalized in a pool of distrust. I've come to know far too many teachers who are numb to top-down, teacher-proofing reform. For them, education reform has become a shopping list of dictates and demands, and so many teachers have come to see their principal or their superintendent as their superior who tells them what to do.
When I hear of school districts that mandate teacher's professional development, I am not surprised to also see their teachers disengaged from their own learning. Undert this climate, everyone comes to see professional development as this thing to just get through.
When interactions between teachers and administrators become more about power, things go awry. Harriet Rubin, a legendary innovator in the world of business-book publishing, sums this up when she said: "Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash."
When you don't trust someone, you resort to controlling and manipulating them.
Mistrust drives manipulation.
In his Harvard Business Review blog, Bill Taylor writes:
So much of how we think about strategy, competition, and management remains centered on the zero-sum logic of amassing power: For me to win, you must lose. But almost anything that's hopeful and positive about business today is premised on spreading freedom — inviting all sorts of people, inside and outside your organization, to contribute ideas, improve your products and services, and otherwise have a voice and a seat at the table that they never used to have. For leaders, the most important question today is not How many people or departments or business units do you control? It is How much energy and participation have you unleashed?
Education reform should be less about compliance and more about ingenuity. If the teachers in the field aren't affored the opportunity to influence administration without appearing to be troublemakers, reform is destined to fail a thousand deaths.
Education reform must be less about control and more about collaboration. We would be wise to listen to Dan Pink when he speaks of autonomy, mastery and purpose.
We would also be wise to ponder Thomas Gordon's message:
The more you use power to try to control people, the less real influence you'll have on their lives.
For teachers, Gordon's words act as a kind of double-edged sword. Just as teachers have a need for collaboration with their administrators, so must teachers collaborate with their students.
This isn't a teacher thing - it's a human being thing.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Standardization vs Autonomy
‘How motivated are you?” I hear this question all the time, and it makes me squirm. This question implies that motivation comes in only one flavor—and people either have lots or little of it. This is but one example of the massive disconnect between what education does and what science knows.
There are actually two kinds of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. But that isn’t even the catch; the catch is that these two kinds of motivation are inversely related – meaning that if one grows the other is likely to diminish.
Alfie Kohn unloads a mountain of research in his book Punished by Rewards illustrating that when people are told “do this and you’ll get that”, they tend to lose interest in the ‘this’ and gravitate towards the ‘that’. Kohn uses an old joke to capture this phenomenon:
We are in an assessment paradox. Teachers are being encouraged to teach using differentiated instruction; however, at the same time, they are being torn in the opposite direction with top-down, authoritarian demands for high-stakes standardized test scores.
The true paradox lies in the reality that standardization and differentiation strive to achieve two very different goals. Standardization encourages management while differentations respects autonomy.
If we have to manage standardization, let's take a closer look at the term management. Dan Pink explains the folly of management in his book Drive:
For everything Dan Pink suggests is wrong with managment, I suggest the same could be said of standardization. In fact, I would suggest you try and read the above excerpt again, but this time substitute the word management with standardization.
So if we are not wise to pursue managing standardization, what is the alternative? Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, the two architects of The Self-Determination Theory (SDT), have accumulated decades of research to support the idea that autonomy is at the heart of being human. Ryan and Deci explain:
Because standardization is not natural, it has to be maintained by a managed set of extrinsic manipulators that can only ever be experienced as controlling. Just as management, standardization is out of sync with human nature. A far better model of learning would see us subscribe to both differentiated instruction and differentiated assessment.
All this means that we need to make a choice; we can no longer afford to ignore what science knows. We have got to decide which kind of motivation aligns itself with our ultimate objectives.
It’s time we purged our teaching tool kits of our carrots and sticks and created an extrinsic-free, autonomous learning environment that will provide our children an opportunity to authentically grow their natural, intrinsic love for learning.
The day we can authentically say that our children experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information will be a day that we can say we actually achieved something.
I wrote this for Synthesizing Education.
There are actually two kinds of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. But that isn’t even the catch; the catch is that these two kinds of motivation are inversely related – meaning that if one grows the other is likely to diminish.
Alfie Kohn unloads a mountain of research in his book Punished by Rewards illustrating that when people are told “do this and you’ll get that”, they tend to lose interest in the ‘this’ and gravitate towards the ‘that’. Kohn uses an old joke to capture this phenomenon:
"It is the story of an elderly man who endured the insults of a crowd of ten-year-olds each day as they passed his house on their way home from school. One afternoon, after listening to another round of jeers about how stupid and ugly and bald he was, the man came up with a plan. He met the children on his lawn the following Monday and announced that anyone who came back the next day and yelled rude comments about him would recieve a dollar. Amazed and excited, they showed up even earlier on Tuesday, hollering epithets for all they were worth. True to his word, the old man ambled out and paid everyone. "Do the same tomorrow," he told them, "and you'll get twenty-five cents for your trouble." The kids thought that was still pretty good and turned out again on Wednesday to taunt him. At the first catcall, he walked over with a roll of quarters and again paid off his hecklers. "From now on, he announced, "I can give you only a penny for doing this." The kids looked at each other in disbelief. "A penny?" they repeated scornfully. "Forget it!" And they never came back again."The old man was able to sap the boys' intrinsic motivation for heckling with an extrinsic bribe. What's sad is that this is exactly what good-intentioned teachers do everyday when they use grades to artificially entice students to learn. Whether we know it or not - we are sapping students of their love for learning.
We are in an assessment paradox. Teachers are being encouraged to teach using differentiated instruction; however, at the same time, they are being torn in the opposite direction with top-down, authoritarian demands for high-stakes standardized test scores.
The true paradox lies in the reality that standardization and differentiation strive to achieve two very different goals. Standardization encourages management while differentations respects autonomy.
If we have to manage standardization, let's take a closer look at the term management. Dan Pink explains the folly of management in his book Drive:
We forget sometimes that "management" does not emanate from nature. It's not like a tree or a river. It's like a television or a bicycle. It's something that humans invented. As the strategy guru Gary Hamel has observed, management is a technology. And like Motivation 2.0, it's a technology that has grown creaky. While some companies have oiled the gears a bit, and plenty more have paid lip service to the same, at its core management hasn't changed much in a hundred years. Its central ethic remains control; it's chief tools remain extrinsic motivators. That leaves it largely out of sync with the non-routine, right-brain abilities on which many of the world's economics now depend. But could its most glairing weakness run deeper? Is management, as it's currently constituted, out of sync with human nature itself?
For everything Dan Pink suggests is wrong with managment, I suggest the same could be said of standardization. In fact, I would suggest you try and read the above excerpt again, but this time substitute the word management with standardization.
So if we are not wise to pursue managing standardization, what is the alternative? Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, the two architects of The Self-Determination Theory (SDT), have accumulated decades of research to support the idea that autonomy is at the heart of being human. Ryan and Deci explain:
Autonomous motivation involves behaving with a full sense of volition and choice whereas controlled motivation involves behaving with the experience of pressure and demand toward specific outcomes that comes from forces perceived to be external to the self.
Because standardization is not natural, it has to be maintained by a managed set of extrinsic manipulators that can only ever be experienced as controlling. Just as management, standardization is out of sync with human nature. A far better model of learning would see us subscribe to both differentiated instruction and differentiated assessment.
All this means that we need to make a choice; we can no longer afford to ignore what science knows. We have got to decide which kind of motivation aligns itself with our ultimate objectives.
It’s time we purged our teaching tool kits of our carrots and sticks and created an extrinsic-free, autonomous learning environment that will provide our children an opportunity to authentically grow their natural, intrinsic love for learning.
The day we can authentically say that our children experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information will be a day that we can say we actually achieved something.
I wrote this for Synthesizing Education.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Dan Pink's Drive: Rethink Motivation Video
Dan Pink's book Drive is fantastic. Here is an uber cool video about his book.
Other blogposts on motivation:
A Forever Home for Motivation
Dan Pink on Merit Pay
What gets you through the day may not get you through the night
Pink, Godin, Kohn and asymptotes
Intrinsic Motivation and Autonomy
Why the Why matters
Other blogposts on motivation:
A Forever Home for Motivation
Dan Pink on Merit Pay
What gets you through the day may not get you through the night
Pink, Godin, Kohn and asymptotes
Intrinsic Motivation and Autonomy
Why the Why matters
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Dan Pink on Merit Pay
I subscribe to Dan Pink's free newsletter. I just received his take on merit pay.
Here's Dan Pink:
Q: Dan, there's been a lot of talk lately about "merit pay" for schoolteachers - that is, tying teacher salaries to student performance, especially on standardized tests. What do you think of this approach?
A: A few years ago, I thought this was a great idea. Incentivize teachers and the pay the outstanding one more? What coud be wrong with that? It's logical, straightforward, and fair. However, after looking at 50 years of research on human motivation for DRIVE, I've changed my mind. I think that this approach, despite is surface appeal, has more flaws than strengths - and that there's a simpler, more effective alternative.
Here's my reasoning:
For starters, most proposals for "merit pay" (sorry, I can't use the term without quotation marks) tie teacher compensation to student scores on standardized tests. That's a disaster. It focuses teachers almost single-mindedly on training their students to pencil in correct answers on multiple choice tests - and turns classrooms into test prep academies. (What's more, it can encourage cheating, as Georgia's experience shows.) So let's knock out this approach to merit pay.
A second option is for school principals to decide who gets performance bonuses. Again, there's a certain theoretical appeal to this method. But I've yet to meet a teacher who considers it fair, let alone motivating. Teachers worry that principals don't have sufficient information to make such decisions and that "merit pay" would be based too heavily on who's best at playing politics and currying favor. So let's kibosh this method, too.
A third approach is to use a variety metrics to determine who gets a bonus. You could measure teacher performance using: standardized scores for that teacher's students; evaluations of the teacher's peers, students, parents, and principal; a teacher's contribution to overall school performance; time devoted to professional development; how much the teachers' students improved over the previous year; and so on. This isn't necessarily a bad idea. But it has a huge downside: It would force resource-strapped schools to spend enormous amounts of time, talent, and brainpower measuring teachers rather than educating students. Schools have enough to do already. And the costs of establishing and maintaining elaborate measurement systems would likely outweigh the benefits.
In short, I can't see a way to construct a merit pay scheme that is both simple and fair. What's more, it strikes me as slightly delusional to think that people who've intentionally chosen to pursue a career for public-spirited, rather than economic, reasons will suddenly work harder because they're offered a few hundred extra dollars. Truth be told, most teachers work pretty damn hard already.
Fortunately, I think there's an easier and more elegant solution - one that's also supported by the science of human motivation.
First, we should raise the base pay of teachers. Too many talented people opt out of this career because they're concerned about supporting their families. For prospective teachers, raising base salaries would remove an obstacle to entering the profession. For existing teachers, it's a way to recognize the importance of their jobs without resorting to behavior-distorting carrots and sticks. The science reveals a paradox about money and motivation: In most cases, the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. Raising base salaries would help take the issue of money off the table. Instead fretting about paying their bills on an insufficient salary or scheming to get a small bonus, teachers could focus on the work they love.
At the same time, we have to make it easier to get rid of bad teachers. Teaching, like any profession, has its share of duds. Showing these folks the door, which now is quite difficult, is the right thing to do. It's better for students, of course. But it's also better for the teachers who remain. Just as it's very motivating to have great colleagues, it's incredibly de-motivating to have lazy or incompetent ones.
So . . . if I could wave a magic wand, I'd dispense with elaborate and complicated "merit pay" schemes for teachers. Instead, I'd raise teachers' base pay and make it easier to get rid of bad teachers. That solution is simpler, fairer, and much more consistent with what truly motivates high performance.
Thanks again for reading.
Cheers,
Dan Pink
P.S. Hope you'll also check out the Pink Blog if you get a moment. Our two most popular posts last month explored whether purpose is really an effective motivator and examined the differences between failure and mediocrity.
DanPink.com is my website on business, motivation and creativity. You can also follow me on Twitter @danielpink.
Here's Dan Pink:
Q: Dan, there's been a lot of talk lately about "merit pay" for schoolteachers - that is, tying teacher salaries to student performance, especially on standardized tests. What do you think of this approach?
A: A few years ago, I thought this was a great idea. Incentivize teachers and the pay the outstanding one more? What coud be wrong with that? It's logical, straightforward, and fair. However, after looking at 50 years of research on human motivation for DRIVE, I've changed my mind. I think that this approach, despite is surface appeal, has more flaws than strengths - and that there's a simpler, more effective alternative.
Here's my reasoning:
For starters, most proposals for "merit pay" (sorry, I can't use the term without quotation marks) tie teacher compensation to student scores on standardized tests. That's a disaster. It focuses teachers almost single-mindedly on training their students to pencil in correct answers on multiple choice tests - and turns classrooms into test prep academies. (What's more, it can encourage cheating, as Georgia's experience shows.) So let's knock out this approach to merit pay.
A second option is for school principals to decide who gets performance bonuses. Again, there's a certain theoretical appeal to this method. But I've yet to meet a teacher who considers it fair, let alone motivating. Teachers worry that principals don't have sufficient information to make such decisions and that "merit pay" would be based too heavily on who's best at playing politics and currying favor. So let's kibosh this method, too.
A third approach is to use a variety metrics to determine who gets a bonus. You could measure teacher performance using: standardized scores for that teacher's students; evaluations of the teacher's peers, students, parents, and principal; a teacher's contribution to overall school performance; time devoted to professional development; how much the teachers' students improved over the previous year; and so on. This isn't necessarily a bad idea. But it has a huge downside: It would force resource-strapped schools to spend enormous amounts of time, talent, and brainpower measuring teachers rather than educating students. Schools have enough to do already. And the costs of establishing and maintaining elaborate measurement systems would likely outweigh the benefits.
In short, I can't see a way to construct a merit pay scheme that is both simple and fair. What's more, it strikes me as slightly delusional to think that people who've intentionally chosen to pursue a career for public-spirited, rather than economic, reasons will suddenly work harder because they're offered a few hundred extra dollars. Truth be told, most teachers work pretty damn hard already.
Fortunately, I think there's an easier and more elegant solution - one that's also supported by the science of human motivation.
First, we should raise the base pay of teachers. Too many talented people opt out of this career because they're concerned about supporting their families. For prospective teachers, raising base salaries would remove an obstacle to entering the profession. For existing teachers, it's a way to recognize the importance of their jobs without resorting to behavior-distorting carrots and sticks. The science reveals a paradox about money and motivation: In most cases, the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. Raising base salaries would help take the issue of money off the table. Instead fretting about paying their bills on an insufficient salary or scheming to get a small bonus, teachers could focus on the work they love.
At the same time, we have to make it easier to get rid of bad teachers. Teaching, like any profession, has its share of duds. Showing these folks the door, which now is quite difficult, is the right thing to do. It's better for students, of course. But it's also better for the teachers who remain. Just as it's very motivating to have great colleagues, it's incredibly de-motivating to have lazy or incompetent ones.
So . . . if I could wave a magic wand, I'd dispense with elaborate and complicated "merit pay" schemes for teachers. Instead, I'd raise teachers' base pay and make it easier to get rid of bad teachers. That solution is simpler, fairer, and much more consistent with what truly motivates high performance.
Thanks again for reading.
Cheers,
Dan Pink
P.S. Hope you'll also check out the Pink Blog if you get a moment. Our two most popular posts last month explored whether purpose is really an effective motivator and examined the differences between failure and mediocrity.
DanPink.com is my website on business, motivation and creativity. You can also follow me on Twitter @danielpink.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
#edchat summary: March 23
Tuesday, March 23rd's #edchat focused on discussing how we can attract and retain more great teachers - leaders in education. The discussion touched a number of different topics such as merit pay, teacher preparation programs, job satisfaction, quality administration, standardized testing and accountability. Here is but a taste of the many comments that were made.
@web20classroom: @evmaiden: We need to examine what drives great teachers out of the profession -probably not just $ #Edchat
@jasonflom: Part of the challenge with merit pay is defining "Merit". Test scores alone are too simplistic and subject to too many variables. #edchat
@aldtucker: But merit pay can eventually de-motivate. If it leads to an if-then thing. If you do this... then you get that..@olafelch #edchat
@olafelch: @wmchamberlain It's a chicken and egg situation: with prestige you get good applicants. Without good applicants, no prestige. #edchat
@VanessaSCassie: People are trying to measure teaching with a formula when it should be approached as an art #edchat
I am very interested in this topic because some see the problem here as not a teacher shortage problem, but as a teacher leakage problem. And it might be even worse than we first expected. Not only do half of teachers quit inside of their first 5 years on the job, but we will never know how many great people choose to never even enter the teacher profession in the first place.
It is inevitable for this discussion to focus on teacher pay. Salary is an issue, but some people like Dan Pink (author of Drive) might say we need to pay people very well with a base salary, and then do everything we can to get money out of their faces. Pink's message may only confirm what some have known for 123 years - merit pay is a really bad idea. Abandoning merit pay may might make sense, especially if the Harvard Business Review is correct when they say that money or recognition for good work does not rank very high on employees' motivation levels. Instead, employees list progress as their number one on-the-job motivator.
Finland's education system is built upon a number of paradoxes that have helped promote a lot of trust and respect for the teaching profession - only 10% of the 5000 applicants are accepted to attend faculties of education in Finnish Universities. A lot of people in Finland want to be teachers; it might be important for us to figure out why that is. Would you agree that most North Americans have a ho-hum view on the teaching profession? How many of you mothers and fathers dream of your child becoming a teacher? Something is wrong here.
Unfortunatley, when we talk about teacher accountability, we innevitably end up talking about firing the bad ones. While it is true that some teachers should probably be let go, it may also be true that if we talked about how we can make good teachers even half as much as we talk about firing the bad ones, we might actually improve our education system.
You can check out the entire transcript here. If you want to participate in a future #edchat conversation, please join us on Twitter every Tuesday at 12 p.m. EST/6 p.m CET or at 7 p.m. EST/1 a.m CET.
@web20classroom: @evmaiden: We need to examine what drives great teachers out of the profession -probably not just $ #Edchat
@jasonflom: Part of the challenge with merit pay is defining "Merit". Test scores alone are too simplistic and subject to too many variables. #edchat
@aldtucker: But merit pay can eventually de-motivate. If it leads to an if-then thing. If you do this... then you get that..@olafelch #edchat
@olafelch: @wmchamberlain It's a chicken and egg situation: with prestige you get good applicants. Without good applicants, no prestige. #edchat
@VanessaSCassie: People are trying to measure teaching with a formula when it should be approached as an art #edchat
I am very interested in this topic because some see the problem here as not a teacher shortage problem, but as a teacher leakage problem. And it might be even worse than we first expected. Not only do half of teachers quit inside of their first 5 years on the job, but we will never know how many great people choose to never even enter the teacher profession in the first place.
It is inevitable for this discussion to focus on teacher pay. Salary is an issue, but some people like Dan Pink (author of Drive) might say we need to pay people very well with a base salary, and then do everything we can to get money out of their faces. Pink's message may only confirm what some have known for 123 years - merit pay is a really bad idea. Abandoning merit pay may might make sense, especially if the Harvard Business Review is correct when they say that money or recognition for good work does not rank very high on employees' motivation levels. Instead, employees list progress as their number one on-the-job motivator.
Finland's education system is built upon a number of paradoxes that have helped promote a lot of trust and respect for the teaching profession - only 10% of the 5000 applicants are accepted to attend faculties of education in Finnish Universities. A lot of people in Finland want to be teachers; it might be important for us to figure out why that is. Would you agree that most North Americans have a ho-hum view on the teaching profession? How many of you mothers and fathers dream of your child becoming a teacher? Something is wrong here.
Unfortunatley, when we talk about teacher accountability, we innevitably end up talking about firing the bad ones. While it is true that some teachers should probably be let go, it may also be true that if we talked about how we can make good teachers even half as much as we talk about firing the bad ones, we might actually improve our education system.
You can check out the entire transcript here. If you want to participate in a future #edchat conversation, please join us on Twitter every Tuesday at 12 p.m. EST/6 p.m CET or at 7 p.m. EST/1 a.m CET.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Intrinsic Motivation and Autonomy
Teachers and parents complain regularly that their students or children show a lack of initiative. They aren't self-starters and seem to need more and more kicks-in-the-ass to get motivated. What we may not realize, is that we may to blame.
Dan Pink writes in his book Drive about how autonomy in the work place has helped companies like Google to give their employees the autonomy they need in order to be uber-productive.
What Dan Pink shares with us is that providing autonomy for employees is not only something we must do, but it is something we should do. We should not only because the employee benefits, but because ultimately everyone benefits.
As a classroom teacher, I have decided to provide more and more autonomous time for my students to learn things of their choice. This doesn't mean I give them a blank cheque and wash my hands of them. Rather, I am still their teacher offering the guidance they need, while still actively engaging in their learning.
In an article entitled Freedom helps kids learn more, Richard Ryan and Edward Deci offer this indictment of control and testing:
Deci and Ryan go on to explain Cognitive Evaluation Theory:
Providing choice and autonomy is a human need, and to overly limit or control this in a way that provides children with less than they need is detrimental to their learning. Alfie Kohn writes about choice and autonomy in the classroom in his book Punished by Rewards:
One of the best ways to motivate students is to realize that we can't. We can extrinsically motivate them, but that would only work against some of the very research that shows students require more autonomy and choice rather than control and manipulation.
The best we can do is provide children with an extrinsic-free learning environment where we can work with them to become the mature, logical, creative, free-thinkers we would want them to become.
More and more research has come about to show that human beings are autonomous creatures.
We all, to some extent, want to be kings of our own castles.
Dan Pink writes in his book Drive about how autonomy in the work place has helped companies like Google to give their employees the autonomy they need in order to be uber-productive.
In a typical year, more than half of Google's new offerings are birthed during this period of autonomy. For example, scientist Krishna Bharat, frustrated by how difficult it was to find news stories online, created Google News in his 20 percent time. The site now recieves millions of visitors every day. Former Google engineer Paul Bucheit created Gmail, now one of the world's most popular e-mail programs, as his 20 percent project. Many other Google products share similar creation stories - among them Orkut (Google's social networking software), Google Talk (it's instant message application), Google Sky (which allows astronomically inclined users to browse pictures of the universe), and Google Translate ( its translation software for mobile devices). As Google engineer Alec Proudfoot, whose own 20 percent project aimed at boosting the efficiency of hybrid cars, put it in a television interview: "Just about all the good ideas here at Google have bubbled up from 20 percent time.
What Dan Pink shares with us is that providing autonomy for employees is not only something we must do, but it is something we should do. We should not only because the employee benefits, but because ultimately everyone benefits.
As a classroom teacher, I have decided to provide more and more autonomous time for my students to learn things of their choice. This doesn't mean I give them a blank cheque and wash my hands of them. Rather, I am still their teacher offering the guidance they need, while still actively engaging in their learning.
In an article entitled Freedom helps kids learn more, Richard Ryan and Edward Deci offer this indictment of control and testing:
Too much control over a child's learning - and this includes excessive testing - is bad, a pair of visiting researchers have said.
An emphasis on exams puts stress on the child, and also on the teacher - whose performance hangs on how well his students do.
Deci and Ryan go on to explain Cognitive Evaluation Theory:
Cognitive Evaluation Theory further specifies, and studies have shown, that feelings of competence will not enhance intrinsic motivation unless accompanied by a sense of autonomy or, in attributional terms, by an internal perceived locus of causality. Thus, according to CET, people must not only experience competence or efficacy, they must also experience their behavior as self-determined for intrinsic motivation to be in evidence.
Providing choice and autonomy is a human need, and to overly limit or control this in a way that provides children with less than they need is detrimental to their learning. Alfie Kohn writes about choice and autonomy in the classroom in his book Punished by Rewards:
The rational for giving children choice is threefold. First, it is intrinsically desirable because it is a more respectful way of dealing with others. Second, it offers benefits for teachers. their job becomes a good deal more interesting when it involves collaborating with students to decide what is going to happen.
One of the best ways to motivate students is to realize that we can't. We can extrinsically motivate them, but that would only work against some of the very research that shows students require more autonomy and choice rather than control and manipulation.
The best we can do is provide children with an extrinsic-free learning environment where we can work with them to become the mature, logical, creative, free-thinkers we would want them to become.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Putting The Cart Before the Horse: Why School Reform Is A Waste
Having the opportunity to meet fantastically brilliant, hardworking and caring educators has to be one of the best reasons to use Twitter. About a month ago, I met Aaron Eyler, and it is my absolute pleasure to have Aaron, a New Jersey high school history teacher, guest blog here today. I have thoroughly enjoyed his tweets and blogposts on a daily basis, and I would be remiss if I didn't link you to his posts on rethinking assignment structure, differentiation and curriculum. In fact, you will find a common thread among Aaron's writing - he challenges us to rethink a lot of things; and true to his reputation, he challenges you today to rethink school reform.
That's enough of me... here's Aaron:
-------------------------
In his new book Drive, Daniel Pink discusses his theory of the evolution of human motivation starting from 1.0 and proceeding through to 3.0.
Motivation 1.0: presumed the humans were biological creatures struggling for survival.
Motivation 2.0: presumed that humans also responded to rewards and punishments in the environment.
Motivation 3.0: presumed that humans also have a third drive- to learn, to create, and to better the world.
I love the way Pink gets me to think, but I really struggle with believing that our society has adopted a Motivation 3.0 mentality as he describes it. Before we all go running around proclaiming that Pink’s framework is going to liberate education and kids’ minds I think we need to consider a couple of points.
Why have we moved on to Motivation 3.0? In Pink’s other work A Whole New Mind, he spends a chapter discussing three important concepts: abundance, Asia, and automation. The one that should concern us the most is “abundance”. In my mind, the reason that we have entered Motivation 3.0 (which I don’t know if we have) is because we have lived through the “Age of Abundance”. We lived through a period where people valued materialistic goods and, guess what, people still do. People still dream of owning a home, a new car, new this, and new that. It’s the very basis of capitalism.
The problem here is simple: if you haven’t lived through a period of obtaining more goods than are necessary, how can one see the value of bettering the world by learning and creating without an immediate return of investment? It doesn’t matter if you engage in Motivation 2.0 or not. I think you have to live with it to realize that all of those materialistic goods you strive for never make your life any better and normally leave you with a big, gaping hole that simply craves more “stuff”. I really struggle to acknowledge that anyone can skip Motivation 2.0 when we live in a world that is comprised of “haves” and “have-nots”.
But wait! No one would ever turn away an item that is next to free, right? And what is rapidly becoming the cheapest, yet most valuable, commodity in the world? Knowledge. The ability to learn and to develop mastery and autonomy is being revolutionized by technological innovation and ever-expanding connectivity. People now have all of the world’s knowledge at their fingertips for next to nothing.
Unfortunately, this may even be part of a growing problem. The cost of knowledge is becoming so depreciated through technology (despite its high value), which may, or may not, be turning kids off to school completely and making them realize a bonafide fact: they really may not need school anymore. If you don’t need school anymore or don’t see the value, then where is the motivation to go and be actively engaged?
Here is my point: we need to reform education in such a way that students realize the value of knowledge and learning; not of school. Does it really matter if students go to school or not so long as they are gaining an education and developing an appreciation for knowledge and learning? I don’t think so. What matters is that kids are learning and realizing that education is important to their future and success of their livelihood.
More often than not, we spend a ridiculous amount of time discussing how to reform schools when we should really be focusing on reforming learning. This means a conscious effort on everyone (teachers, parents, administrators, businessmen, etc.) to provide students with concrete evidence and proof that learning will take them to wherever they want to go. Who cares about the length of the school day or the curriculum for a class if kids can’t find any relevance in learning the information? Forget reforming schools. Let’s work on reforming learning and making sure that every kid understands the value of it.
THAT’S what will motivate them to learn and be active in their education and in school.
Aaron Eyler (@aaron_eyler) is the writer of the blog “Synthesizing Education” and can be reached via e-mail at Eyler.aaron@gmail.com.
That's enough of me... here's Aaron:
-------------------------
In his new book Drive, Daniel Pink discusses his theory of the evolution of human motivation starting from 1.0 and proceeding through to 3.0.
Motivation 1.0: presumed the humans were biological creatures struggling for survival.
Motivation 2.0: presumed that humans also responded to rewards and punishments in the environment.
Motivation 3.0: presumed that humans also have a third drive- to learn, to create, and to better the world.
I love the way Pink gets me to think, but I really struggle with believing that our society has adopted a Motivation 3.0 mentality as he describes it. Before we all go running around proclaiming that Pink’s framework is going to liberate education and kids’ minds I think we need to consider a couple of points.
Why have we moved on to Motivation 3.0? In Pink’s other work A Whole New Mind, he spends a chapter discussing three important concepts: abundance, Asia, and automation. The one that should concern us the most is “abundance”. In my mind, the reason that we have entered Motivation 3.0 (which I don’t know if we have) is because we have lived through the “Age of Abundance”. We lived through a period where people valued materialistic goods and, guess what, people still do. People still dream of owning a home, a new car, new this, and new that. It’s the very basis of capitalism.
The problem here is simple: if you haven’t lived through a period of obtaining more goods than are necessary, how can one see the value of bettering the world by learning and creating without an immediate return of investment? It doesn’t matter if you engage in Motivation 2.0 or not. I think you have to live with it to realize that all of those materialistic goods you strive for never make your life any better and normally leave you with a big, gaping hole that simply craves more “stuff”. I really struggle to acknowledge that anyone can skip Motivation 2.0 when we live in a world that is comprised of “haves” and “have-nots”.
But wait! No one would ever turn away an item that is next to free, right? And what is rapidly becoming the cheapest, yet most valuable, commodity in the world? Knowledge. The ability to learn and to develop mastery and autonomy is being revolutionized by technological innovation and ever-expanding connectivity. People now have all of the world’s knowledge at their fingertips for next to nothing.
Unfortunately, this may even be part of a growing problem. The cost of knowledge is becoming so depreciated through technology (despite its high value), which may, or may not, be turning kids off to school completely and making them realize a bonafide fact: they really may not need school anymore. If you don’t need school anymore or don’t see the value, then where is the motivation to go and be actively engaged?
Here is my point: we need to reform education in such a way that students realize the value of knowledge and learning; not of school. Does it really matter if students go to school or not so long as they are gaining an education and developing an appreciation for knowledge and learning? I don’t think so. What matters is that kids are learning and realizing that education is important to their future and success of their livelihood.
More often than not, we spend a ridiculous amount of time discussing how to reform schools when we should really be focusing on reforming learning. This means a conscious effort on everyone (teachers, parents, administrators, businessmen, etc.) to provide students with concrete evidence and proof that learning will take them to wherever they want to go. Who cares about the length of the school day or the curriculum for a class if kids can’t find any relevance in learning the information? Forget reforming schools. Let’s work on reforming learning and making sure that every kid understands the value of it.
THAT’S what will motivate them to learn and be active in their education and in school.
Aaron Eyler (@aaron_eyler) is the writer of the blog “Synthesizing Education” and can be reached via e-mail at Eyler.aaron@gmail.com.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
IQ: Misunderstood and Misused
Reflecting upon one's beliefs can be a very productive use of time, and I can think of no better time to do so than when we have come to mindlessly accept something as a given truth. When questions are no longer answered because questions are no longer being asked.
Intelligence-quotient (IQ) tests are a great place to start.
There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding IQ tests, mostly because of flat out ignorance. Most people don't understand their purpose nor do they understand how to properly use the results.
Here's some history.
Carol Dweck provides us with some insight from her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success:
Sir Ken Robinson expresses concern for the current day misuse of IQ tests in his book The Element:
It is sadly ironic that Binet intended on his IQ test to be a tool used to find ways to properly include children with the opportunity to gain a better education; however, the IQ test, for the most part, has been used as a gatekeeper to exclude children from further education.
I not only find it objectionable to bastardize the purpose of IQ tests, but I also find it objectionable to assume IQ tests are a valid and reliable indicator of a person's potential. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes about Lewis Terman who made the study of the gifted his life's work. Terman took 1,470 children whose IQ's averaged between 140 and 200. Gladwell writes:
Terman is not alone when it comes to placing so much faith in IQ. Gladwell points out that elite universities and high-tech companies place a great deal of importance in measuring the IQ, and that those students with the highest IQ have the greatest potential to be the best employees.
But there was a problem.
Terman's geniuses didn't prove to be all that successful in life. Gladwell explains:
In the end, critics of Terman's project said that had Terman simply chosen random children from the same kinds of backgrounds as Terman's Termites, and ignored IQ, he would have seen similar results.
Terman ended up reluctantly concluding:
Sir Ken Robinson tends to agree with this evidence. In his book The Element, he writes about how we focus on asking 'how intelligent are you?' when we should be asking 'how are you intelligent'. Like Dweck, Goleman and Gladwell, Robinson explains that the IQ test was never to be used to determine someone's intellectual prowess - and standardized tests like the SAT measure a far too narrow defintion of intelligence. Robinson explains:
Kohn confirms what the SAT truly measures:
While there is plenty of evidence to question both the validity and reliability of IQ tests, there is an equal amount of reason to question IQ as a fixed quantity. Carol Dweck's entire premise behind her book Mindset is based on the idea that the view you adopt of yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. She makes a clear distinction between a fixed and growth mindset:
I think we can all agree that there is a huge difference between trying not to look dumb and trying to get smarter. Dweck's point here is that we shouldn't ever see our IQ as a fixed quantity - we should see our IQ as something that can shrink and grow. So is there any evidence to support the idea that IQ can shrink and grow? Sir Ken Robinson offers a rather interesting anecdote in his book The Element:
I defy anyone to call a test that can achieve consistant results from the test-taker 25% of the time reliable. If IQ tests are guilty of all this, why the hell do we continue to place so much importance on these tests? What's worse is that despite all these harmful effects, people claim that we do all of this for the children.
Placing any kind of meaning on IQ tests equates to a kind of educational malpractice.
Intelligence-quotient (IQ) tests are a great place to start.
There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding IQ tests, mostly because of flat out ignorance. Most people don't understand their purpose nor do they understand how to properly use the results.
Here's some history.
Carol Dweck provides us with some insight from her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success:
Wasn't the IQ test meant to summarize children's unchangeable intelligence? In fact, no. [Alfred] Binet, a Frenchman working in Paris in the early twentieth century, designed this test to identify children who were not profiting from the Paris public schools, so that new educational programs could be designed to get them back on track. Without denying individual differences in children's intellects, he believed that education and practice could bring about fundamental changes in intelligence.
Sir Ken Robinson expresses concern for the current day misuse of IQ tests in his book The Element:
Ironically, Alfred Binet, one of the creators of the IQ test, intended the test to serve precisely the opposite function. In fact, he originally designed it exclusively to identify children with special needs so they could get appropriate forms of schooling. He never intended it to identify degrees of intelligence or mental 'worth'. In fact, Binet noted that the scale he created 'does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.
It is sadly ironic that Binet intended on his IQ test to be a tool used to find ways to properly include children with the opportunity to gain a better education; however, the IQ test, for the most part, has been used as a gatekeeper to exclude children from further education.
I not only find it objectionable to bastardize the purpose of IQ tests, but I also find it objectionable to assume IQ tests are a valid and reliable indicator of a person's potential. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes about Lewis Terman who made the study of the gifted his life's work. Terman took 1,470 children whose IQ's averaged between 140 and 200. Gladwell writes:
For the rest of his life, Terman watched over his charges like a mother hen. They were tracked and tested, measured and analyzed. Their educational attainments were noted, marriages followed, illnesses tabulated, psychological health charted, and every promotion and job change dutifully recorded...
"There is nothing about an individual as important as his IQ, except possibly his morals," Terman once said. And it was to those with a very high IQ, he believed, that "we must look for production of leaders who advance science, art government, education and social welfare generally."
... Terman believed that his Termites were destined to be the future elite of the United States.
Terman is not alone when it comes to placing so much faith in IQ. Gladwell points out that elite universities and high-tech companies place a great deal of importance in measuring the IQ, and that those students with the highest IQ have the greatest potential to be the best employees.
But there was a problem.
Terman's geniuses didn't prove to be all that successful in life. Gladwell explains:
By the time the Termites reached adulthood, Terman's error was plain to see. Some of his child geniuses had grown up to publish books and scholarly articles and thrive in business. Several ran for public office, and there were two superior court justices, one municipal court judge, two members of California state legislature, and one prominant state official. They tended to earn good incomes - but not that good. The majority had careers that could only be considered ordinary, and a surprising number ended up with careers that even Terman considered failures. Nor were any Nobel Prize winners in his exhaustively selected group of geniuses. His field workers actually tested two elementary students who went on to be Nobel laureates - William Shockley and Luis Alvarez - and rejected them both. Their IQ's weren't high enough.
In the end, critics of Terman's project said that had Terman simply chosen random children from the same kinds of backgrounds as Terman's Termites, and ignored IQ, he would have seen similar results.
Terman ended up reluctantly concluding:
We have seen that intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated.This lack of correlation has been confirmed by others. Dan Pink's book A Whole New Mind explains:
Daniel Goleman, author of the groundbreaking book Emotional Intelligence, has examined an array of academic studies that have attempted to measure how much IQ (which, like the SAT, measure pure left-brain directed thinking prowess) accounts for career success... The answer: between 4-10 percent.
Sir Ken Robinson tends to agree with this evidence. In his book The Element, he writes about how we focus on asking 'how intelligent are you?' when we should be asking 'how are you intelligent'. Like Dweck, Goleman and Gladwell, Robinson explains that the IQ test was never to be used to determine someone's intellectual prowess - and standardized tests like the SAT measure a far too narrow defintion of intelligence. Robinson explains:
The SAT is in many ways the indicator for what is wrong with standardized tests: it only measures a certain kind of intelligence; it does it in an entirely impersonal way; it attempts to make common assumptions about the college potential of a hugely varied group of teenagers in one-size-fits-all fashion; and it drives high school juniors and seniors to spend hundreds of hours preparing for it at the expense of school study or the pursuit of other passions. John Katzman, founder of the Princeton Review, offers this stinging criticism: "What makes the SAT bad is that it has nothing to do with what kids learn in high school. As a result, it creates a sort of shadow curriculum that furthers the goals of neither educators nor students... The SAT has been sold as a snake oil it measured intelligence, verified high school GPA, and predicted college grades. In fact, it's never done the first two at all, nor a particularly good job at the third.Robinson is not alone in his critcisms of the SAT. Alfie Kohn has written extensively on how standardized tests are at best unhelpful and at worst down right harmful. In his article Two Cheers for an End to the SAT, Kohn writes about what SAT actually does not stand for:
One imagines the folks at the College Board blushing deeply when, a few years back, they announced that the "A" in SAT no longer stood for "Aptitude." Scarlet, after all, would be an appropriate color to turn while, in effect, conceding that the test wasn't -- and, let's face it, never had been -- a measure of intellectual aptitude. For a brief period, the examination was rechristened the Scholastic Assessment Test, a name presumably generated by the Department of Redundancy Department. Today, literally -- and perhaps figuratively -- SAT doesn't stand for anything at all.In The New York Times article Junior Meritocracy, Jennifer Senior writes that IQ tests may be more about measuring socio-economics and opportunity than intellect:
“An analogy people use a lot for this is planting corn,” says Barnett, from Rutgers. “If you want to know about the properties of different kinds of corn, you have to plant it in land that’s well fertilized and well irrigated. If you plant it in soil that’s dried up and rocky, you won’t know, because nothing will grow.” The same, he explains, goes for children. How can one possibly know anything about their minds if they’ve spent their first four years in unstimulating environments?
“People have the idea that with these tests you can cancel out socioeconomic background and get to some real thing in the kid,” agrees Nicholas Lemann, dean of the journalism school at Columbia and author of The Big Test, a history of the SAT. “That’s a chimera. If you’re a 4-year-old performing well on these tests, it’s either because you have fabulous genetic material or because you have cultural advantages. But either way, the point is: You’re doing better because of your parents.
Rather than promoting a meritocracy, in other words, these tests instead retard one. They reflect the world as it’s already stratified—and then perpetuate that same stratification.
“Instead of giving IQ tests, you could just as easily look at Zip Codes and the education levels of the parents to determine who gets the better schooling—you get a very high correlation between IQ and socioeconomic status in the first seven or eight years of life,” says Samuel J. Meisels, assessment expert and president of Chicago’s Erikson Institute, the renowned graduate school in childhood development. “Giftedness is a real thing, no question. But giftedness can be extinguished, and it can be nurtured.”
Kohn confirms what the SAT truly measures:
The SAT is a measure of resources more than of reasoning. Year after year, the College Board's own statistics depict a virtually linear correlation between SAT scores and family income. Each rise in earnings (measured in $10,000 increments) brings a commensurate rise in scores. Other research, meanwhile, has found that more than half the difference among students' scores can be explained purely on the basis of parents' level of education.
While there is plenty of evidence to question both the validity and reliability of IQ tests, there is an equal amount of reason to question IQ as a fixed quantity. Carol Dweck's entire premise behind her book Mindset is based on the idea that the view you adopt of yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. She makes a clear distinction between a fixed and growth mindset:
If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character -well, then you'd better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn't do do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.
If we come to believe IQ is a fixed measurement of our intelligence, then we develop a mindset that encourages us to prove how smart we are. Rather than spending our time getting better at something, we feel the need to use our time showing everyone how good we are. Even worse are the people who spend all their time focusing on ensuring they don't look dumb - rather than continuing to improve and getting smarter.
I think we can all agree that there is a huge difference between trying not to look dumb and trying to get smarter. Dweck's point here is that we shouldn't ever see our IQ as a fixed quantity - we should see our IQ as something that can shrink and grow. So is there any evidence to support the idea that IQ can shrink and grow? Sir Ken Robinson offers a rather interesting anecdote in his book The Element:
IQ tests can even be a matter of life and death. A criminal who commits a capital offense is not subject to the death penalty if his IQ is below seventy... People can also improve their scores through study and practice. I read a case recently about a death row inmate who'd at that point spent ten years in jail on a life sentence. During his incarceration, he took a series of courses. When retested, his IQ had risen more than ten points - suddenly making him eligible for execution.Jennifer Senior's article Junior Meritocracy also speaks to the idea that IQ is not fixed:
In 2006, David Lohman, a psychologist at the University of Iowa, co-authored a paper called “Gifted Today but Not Tomorrow?” in the Journal for the Education of the Gifted, demonstrating just how labile “giftedness” is. It notes that only 45 percent of the kids who scored 130 or above on the Stanford-Binet would do so on another, similar IQ test at the same point in time. Combine this with the instability of 4-year-old IQs, and it becomes pretty clear that judgments about giftedness should be an ongoing affair, rather than a fateful determination made at one arbitrary moment in time. I wrote to Lohman and asked what percentage of 4-year-olds who scored 130 or above would do so again as 17-year-olds. He answered with a careful regression analysis: about 25 percent.
I defy anyone to call a test that can achieve consistant results from the test-taker 25% of the time reliable. If IQ tests are guilty of all this, why the hell do we continue to place so much importance on these tests? What's worse is that despite all these harmful effects, people claim that we do all of this for the children.
Placing any kind of meaning on IQ tests equates to a kind of educational malpractice.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Museum of Education
When museum curators of the future assemble an exhibit on American schooling in the twentieth century, they'll have many artifacts to choose from - chunky textbooks, dusty blackboards, one-piece injection-moldied desks with waraparound writing surfaces. But one item deserves special consideration. I recommend that in the center of the exhibition, enclosed in a sparkling glass case, the curators display a well sharpened No.2 pencil.When Dan Pink wrote this in his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, I enjoyed the thought of what parts of school will become (if they haven't already) become obsolete and archaic.
My addition to this Museum would be:
GRADES
Here are some reasons why grades should be abolished. Each is a different article by Alfie Kohn:
- grades can only really be experienced as a reward or a punishment
- grades provide little to no information for students to use in order to actually improve
- grades distract everyone from our true objective: learning
- grades encourage competition rather than collaboration
- grades encourage students to regard learning as a chore
- grades discourage risk-taking
- grades encourage students to think less deeply
- grades encourage students to fall apart when they fail
- grades encourage students to focus on their ability rather than their effort
- grades encourage students to cheat
- grades encourage teachers to cheat
- grades are a poor predictor of the future
- grades encourage ranking and sorting rather than instruction and improvement
A mark or grade is an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an indefinite amount of material.In my classroom, students only ever recieve a grade on the report card. For the rest of the year, my students only ever receive formative feedback that is either written or spoken.
When I share this with people, I inevitably get asked the question "If you don't give grades, how do you come up with a report card grade?"
For this I have three answers.
- My students collect the evidence of their learning in their paper an electronic portfolios. The paper one is nothing fancy - just a file folder and the electronic one takes the form of a discussion forum that I created using www.freeforums.org, or a class Ning at www.ning.com or class wiki at www.wikispaces.com.
- I am a professional. I spend 2 hours a day (or more) with each of my students for 10 months of the year. I get to know them quite well, so my professional judgement and intuitive thinking count for a lot - and have proven to be quite accurate (there is a wealth of evidence to support that teachers assessment of their students may be the most accurate form of assessment we can depend on)
- I ask the students to self-assess. It is amazing how close they come to picking the same grade that I would pick. Interestingly enough, when there is disagreement between me and them, they are usually too hard on themselves - and the odd time a kid over-inflates their grade, I either to decide to let it go or have I have a conversation with the student and make the adjustment.
For more on the abolishment of grades take a look at some of Alfie Kohn's books:
For more on abolishing grading, check out this page.
To learn more about teachers who have or are abolishing grading, see the Grading Moratorium.
To learn more about teachers who have or are abolishing grading, see the Grading Moratorium.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
What gets you through the day may not get you through the night
"...engagement as a route to mastery is a powerful force in our personal lives. While omplying can be an effective strategy for physical survival, it's a lousy one for personal fulfillment. Living a statisfying life requires more than simply meeting the demands of those in control. Yet in our offices and our classrooms we have way too much compliance and way too little engagement. the former might get you through the day, but only the latter will get you through the night."
Dan Pink wrote these words in his book Dive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. For me as a classroom teacher, his words carry a mean punch.
I am more than ever committed to creating a learning environment for my students where they can engage in more autonomy in their learning so that they can develop mastery.
This inspired me to clean out my school's science prep room, which had become a dumping ground for storage, and turn it into a science experiment room where students can actively engage in science experiments of the students choice.
The first observation I made was that too often teachers blame students misbehavior on the kid when really we should see the misbehaviour as a message - and the message may be that we are not providng children with an autonomous and engaging curriculum.
Just today, I had a grade 8 boy design and impliment an experiment that he thought of. The ironic part is that when I planned the experiment for him and asked him to do it a week ago he accomplished absolutely nothing and was even less engaged. But when he felt a sense of autonomy, he became rather productive.
Sadly, he is the kind of boy that would typically be given no autonomy because he misbehaves and is difficult to trust. It's a vicious cycle that both the boy and teachers continue to fall into - over and over again.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Pink, Godin, Kohn and asymptotes
Dan Pink and Seth Godin both refer to asymptotes in their books Drive and Linchpin.
I found myself agreeing with Seth Godin when he wrote, "asymptotes are sort of boring." But my tune quickly changed after reading both Dan Pink's book Drive and Godin's Linchpin. I found myself oddly fascinated with how they used analytic geometery to show how learning mastery can be achieved.
Essentially, asymptotes occur when you have a line that forever approaches a point but never gets there.
Pink explains in his book Drive:
Godin takes a slightly different perspective on the pursuit of mastery in his book Linchpin:
Grades are a man-made attempt at counting something that you can't count - mastery of learning. How many students are duped into thinking that the pursuit of that A or 100% is the asymptote they should be striving for?
We set kids up for failure when we use grades to guide students as they pursue mastery, because they encourage students to think of learning mastery as linear, as opposed to an asymptote.
When students come to see the pursuit of mastery as a destination, rather than a journey, they can't understand how anyone could be attracted to something that is so elusive and so frustrating.
Alfie Kohn explains how research has come to differentiate between students who have a 'learning orientation' and a 'grades orientation'.
Did you notice what I labelled the y-axis? Can you see how the objective of an asymptote changes depending on whether you put learning or grades on your y-axis?
This is exactly why I become so bothered when I see educators become distracted by attempting to define and standardize what constitutes as an A or 90%, when the real problem is that grades, by their very nature, undermine learning and mastery.
For more on abolishing grading, check out this page.
I found myself agreeing with Seth Godin when he wrote, "asymptotes are sort of boring." But my tune quickly changed after reading both Dan Pink's book Drive and Godin's Linchpin. I found myself oddly fascinated with how they used analytic geometery to show how learning mastery can be achieved.
Essentially, asymptotes occur when you have a line that forever approaches a point but never gets there.
Pink explains in his book Drive:
This is the nature of mastery: Mastery is an asymptote. You can approach it. You can home in on it. You can get really, really close to it... The mastery asymptote is a source of frustration. Why reach for something you can never fully attain? But it's also a source of allure. Why not reach for it? The joy is in the pursuit more than the realization. In the end, mastery attracts precisely because mastery eludes.I love how Pink shows the cons of pursuing mastery is at the same time the very reason mastery is so appealing.
Godin takes a slightly different perspective on the pursuit of mastery in his book Linchpin:
Ten percent of applications to Harvard are from people who got a perfect score on their SATs. Approximately the same number are from people who were ranked first in their class. Of course, it's impossible to rank higher than first and impossible to get an 820, and yet more than a thousand in each group are rejected by Harvard every year. Perfection, apparently, is not sufficient.We have a lot of bean counters in our world. They are busy little people who love to count stuff - and in education, these bean counters love to add up grades. In doing so they wrap themselves in a blanket of grades. Keep in mind though that this blanket is wholy and entirely fabricated.
Grades are a man-made attempt at counting something that you can't count - mastery of learning. How many students are duped into thinking that the pursuit of that A or 100% is the asymptote they should be striving for?
We set kids up for failure when we use grades to guide students as they pursue mastery, because they encourage students to think of learning mastery as linear, as opposed to an asymptote.
When students come to see the pursuit of mastery as a destination, rather than a journey, they can't understand how anyone could be attracted to something that is so elusive and so frustrating.
Alfie Kohn explains how research has come to differentiate between students who have a 'learning orientation' and a 'grades orientation'.
Did you notice what I labelled the y-axis? Can you see how the objective of an asymptote changes depending on whether you put learning or grades on your y-axis?
This is exactly why I become so bothered when I see educators become distracted by attempting to define and standardize what constitutes as an A or 90%, when the real problem is that grades, by their very nature, undermine learning and mastery.
For more on abolishing grading, check out this page.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The behaviourism infection
"There is a time to admire the grace and persuasive power of an influential idea, and there is a time to fear its hold over us. The time to worry is when the idea is so widely shared that we no longer even notice it, when it is so deeply rooted that it feels to us like plain common sense. At the point when objections are not answered anymore because they are no longer even raised, we are not in control: we do not have the idea; it has us."
This quote could be used to describe any idea that we come to mindlessly accept as a given truth, but when Alfie Kohn wrote these words in his book Punished by Rewards, he was referring to Behaviourism.
Behaviourism is the belief that everything we are can be reduced to our behaviours.
It has infected our homes and schools.
And, for the most part, we don't even know it.
When parents and teachers choose to do things to children, we are subscribing to behaviourism. For example, if I use bribes or threats (rewards and punishments) to make children do their homework, their chores, be polite or even to learn - I am really saying that I don't care why they do what I want them to do - it is good enough if they just behave it.
Alfie Kohn, and many others, including me, propose a better way. Rather than doing things to children, we would rather see parents and teachers work with their children.
Rather than ripping my child away from the play area after they stole another child's toy, I might sit with them for a moment and model or discuss the proper way of sharing. Rather than giving my students zeroes or deduct late marks from their late assignments, I would work with them to find out why it was late and then help them to actually learn whatever it was that I found important enough to make into an assigment.
For more on how to work with children, rather than just doing things to them, I have a couple books to suggest to you:
Working with > Doing things to. Period.
This quote could be used to describe any idea that we come to mindlessly accept as a given truth, but when Alfie Kohn wrote these words in his book Punished by Rewards, he was referring to Behaviourism.
Behaviourism is the belief that everything we are can be reduced to our behaviours.
It has infected our homes and schools.
And, for the most part, we don't even know it.
When parents and teachers choose to do things to children, we are subscribing to behaviourism. For example, if I use bribes or threats (rewards and punishments) to make children do their homework, their chores, be polite or even to learn - I am really saying that I don't care why they do what I want them to do - it is good enough if they just behave it.
Alfie Kohn, and many others, including me, propose a better way. Rather than doing things to children, we would rather see parents and teachers work with their children.
Rather than ripping my child away from the play area after they stole another child's toy, I might sit with them for a moment and model or discuss the proper way of sharing. Rather than giving my students zeroes or deduct late marks from their late assignments, I would work with them to find out why it was late and then help them to actually learn whatever it was that I found important enough to make into an assigment.
For more on how to work with children, rather than just doing things to them, I have a couple books to suggest to you:
- Unconditional Parenting, Punished by Rewards and Beyond Discipline by Alfie Kohn
- Drive by Daniel Pink
- Mindset by Carol Dweck
- Hold on to your Kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate
- Kids are Worth It! by Barbara Coloroso
Working with > Doing things to. Period.
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