What They Don't Teach You During Teacher Training: Part 6 - Motivation

• Part 1: Time Management

• Part 2: Parents

• Part 3: Vulnerable Children 

• Part 4: Bullying 

• Part 5: Colleagues

• Part 6: Motivation

This series of blog posts covers areas that I feel are often missing from the PGCE year and teacher training in general. That's not a criticism - there simply isn't time to cover everything but I have been using my extra pandemic time with the university library and the World Wide Web at my finger tips to search for answers to questions that have been perplexing me for some time. It turns out that many people have thought about these things a lot more than me so I'm excited to be sharing the insights that resonated the most.

...

For my final entry in this series I want to share the research that I have done on motivation, and more specifically motivating students, because after all what is teaching if not motivating children to do productive work, grow and learn? As a child I remember thinking that the teacher "controlled" the class, but as a teacher I realised quickly that it isn't true. A bad teacher coerces the students into behaving, a good teacher makes them want to behave well. And while it seemed that content was something that was poured into me and the students I now realise that I was lucky. Learning came naturally to me and I was intrinsically motivated to learn. When I met students who were not like me, later as a teacher, I really felt quite helpless.

During my PGCE I had carried out research on a reward and sanction classroom management system that the school I did my Teaching Practice in used. As part of the literature review (bibliography at bottom of post) I took hard look at extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and what I found was illuminating but incredibly complex. What I found out will, I hope, change my teaching forever. 

The Basic Principles of Motivation

1. Intrinsic motivation (motivation that comes from within the student themselves) is more effective than extrinsic motivation. Since teachers cannot make students be intrinsically motivated teachers need to cultivate self-esteem and self-discipline so that intrinsic motivation can grow and be careful not to damage students' intrinsic motivation either. 
2. It is necessary to provide extrinsic motivation when a student does not have intrinsic motivation. This may be a reward or a sanction. Both rewards and sanctions can be effective if used correctly. Remember that even a cross look or verbal reprimand is included under the idea of sanction. Rewards are generally thought of as being more effective than sanctions however the devil is in the detail... 
3. Students are incredibly sensitive and averse to being manipulated, with an exception for only the very youngest students. Students can be very suspicious of praise, often believing that teachers praise the least able students because they need the most encouraging. For this reason public rewards and praise are best used for groups and private rewards and praise for individuals, because it will make the praise seem more sincere. 
4. In order to promote intrinsic motivation teachers should aim to praise effort and process rather than ability. If students think you think they are good at Maths they may be unwilling to try for fear of proving you wrong. What is more, to make praise a useful part of feedback it should be as specific as possible. "Great work!" is nice to hear "I can see that you planned out your paragraphs well" is more gratifying because it seems more sincere and is undoubtedly more helpful for the student. 
5. Rewards work best when they are unexpected. Rewards which are routinely given out and expected by students can become outright demotivating. It should go without saying that rewards are most effective when they are something that the students really desire.
6. Sanctions work best in environments with high levels of trust (your classroom, hopefully) so building relationships and consistency with students is important. 
7. Allow students to keep their dignity in tact. It is hard to stay focused and alert all day. Students report that public reprimands are the most likely form of sanction to make them stay quiet and switch off. Remember that compliance does not equal learning so like with praise keep warnings, corrections and sanctions as private as possible, or use them anonymously when in public ("I'm waiting for one set of eyes").
8. If students believe a rule to be unfair the chances of them complying are low, so it is important to stress why the rule is necessary ("We have these rules to keep everybody safe" rather than "Do it because I said so!"). Doug Lemov calls this principle Purpose over Power. Likewise when giving a sanction make sure that students understand that it is to help them learn to manage or correct their behaviour, not just a punishment. 
9. Taking away a privilege can be one of the most effective kinds of sanction because humans have 'Loss Aversion'.
10. A telephone call home or a good or bad report can be one of the most powerful motivators for most children and young adults. If you call to say something positive keep it clean with no ifs or buts for the biggest impact. 

When I think back to my own time in education two teachers stand out for being at opposite ends of the spectrum. One was utterly lovely but she used to praise us even when we got the answers wrong and pretend that we had given her the correct answers. Perhaps she thought she was being encouraging but we got the impression she thought we were all a bit dim. The other was a real character and used to regularly complain that he didn't know what he had done to deserve students who wrote as badly as us. Of course, the second was horrendous for our motivation but our confidence was dented with both extremes. Like with most things in life, rewards, praise, corrections and sanctions need to be done in moderation. 

Bibliography

• Bear G. et al (2017) 'Rewards, praise and punitive consequences: relations with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.' Teaching and Teacher Education July 2017 65 (10-20) DOI: 10.1016/j.tate.2017.03.001
• Cameron, J. and David, W. (2002) Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation: Resolving the Controversy. Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey, 2002
• Dweck, C. (2016) 'Praise the effort, not the outcome?Think again' TES Magazine https://www.tes.com/news/praise-effort-not-outcome-think-again 
• Payne, R. (2015) 'Using Rewards and Sanctions in the Classroom: pupils perceptions of their own responses to current behaviour management strategies' Educational Review. Nov2015, 67 (4), p483-504. DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2015.1008407
• Naughton, C. & McLaughlin, T. (1995) 'The Use of a Token Economy System for Students with Behaviour Disorders.' B.C. Journal of Special Education. January 1995 19.
• Rose, N. (2017) 'Why Punishments and Rewards don't work.' TES Magazine https://www.tes.com/magazine/article/why-punishments-and-rewards-dont-work

What They Don't Teach You During Teacher Training: Part 5 - Colleagues

• Part 1: Time Management

• Part 2: Parents

• Part 3: Vulnerable Children 

• Part 4: Bullying 

• Part 5: Colleagues

• Part 6: Motivation

This series of blog posts covers areas that I feel are often missing from the PGCE year and teacher training in general. That's not a criticism - there simply isn't time to cover everything but I have been using my extra pandemic time with the university library and the World Wide Web at my finger tips to search for answers to questions that have been perplexing me for some time. It turns out that many people have thought about these things a lot more than me so I'm excited to be sharing the insights that resonated the most.

...

Before even writing this I am already starting to regret having put Colleagues onto my list of blog posts because it is such a difficult area of teaching to navigate. And I'm not an expert, but I have worked in a LOT of different schools, often only popping in for a supply lesson or an after-school course and then back out again but the atmosphere that you breathe in is unique to every premises. Schools are, like businesses, a microcosm of society and the members within it, with the general mood being greatly influenced by the management. But let's take a look at why schools can be particularly difficult places to sail the treacherous waters of office politics. 

1. Schools are very flat organisational structures. There is a Senior Leadership team, often only one or two people, and maybe some coordinators for different year groups and subjects. Then all the teachers rub along together irrespective of experience, competence or temperament. In Italy this unusual set up (for the world of work) is made even more er... complex by schools being run on a democratic basis. The Teachers' Collegio Docenti reigns supreme over the Head. This makes school politics utterly unavoidable.
2. Teachers spend the most of the school day in their classrooms in charge of their class/es, and beyond the Pre-school, mostly alone. They are not used to taking orders and they are also very busy. 
3. Teachers tend to be in teaching because they care about teaching rather than for the money, which means that teaching can be an ideologically charged profession and although pedagogical ideas go in and out of fashion like wheel going round and round, school policy changes can produce a big reaction in the staff meeting (or its aftermath) because people have very strong ideas about the right way of doing things. 
4. Teachers and admin often stay in one school for much of their teaching lives resulting rigid power structures and domains which are invisible to a new teacher. I know because I stepped on the toes of a rather zealous Union Rep in my first meeting at a new school and was made to pay for the rest of the year! I also know of a secretary with an unofficial veto over which teachers to appoint for what positions.

With these peculiarities in mind let me share the points of the compass that I use when starting at a new school.

• If you can talk to a teacher who works at the school before you accept the job and find out if the school pays on time (no job is worth the stress of a school where you have to strike to get paid), what kind of overtime is expected and if the management are approachable. When you go to interview try to visit the staff room if the school has one (Ross Morrisson McGill has a nice chapter on UK staffroom politics in Teacher Toolkit: Helping You Survive the First Five Years). During the interview, if your interviewer is very stiff and serious then this is probably going to reflect the school's internal culture. But in the current climate, if you need a job this is not the biggest worry on your mind so onwards...
• Be very nice to everybody, but especially the admin team and janitors. Learn everybody's names as soon as possible. Ask for permission before arranging trips, changing materials etc from your SLT and your new colleagues.
• Do not badmouth the management to anyone! There are spies. I joke, but no, really. Some schools can be like Bridesmaids others are more like Game of Thrones. You cannot escape school politics but you can at least be diplomatic and discreet.
• Try not to get sucked into arguments about pedagogy. Every method has its advantages and disadvantages.  Take the good and leave the bad, and try not to roll your eyes too hard when they say "We are no longer going to plan anything. We will get everything we need from the children's own questions" if you are an old fashioned traditionalist sage-on-the-stage (like me), or when the Head says "I want to see students' handwriting exercises on my desk by Thursday!" when you are an avant-garde modern guide-on-the-side kind of teacher. Work out how to provide evidence you have done what has been asked and get on with doing your thing.
• Take on your fair share of extra duties and if you can, pair up with another teacher to make the workload more manageable if the project is big or long lasting.
• Avoid unproductive whinging with colleagues, and try not to spend too much time with those who do. If you want to change something, collect evidence that there is a problem and offer solutions. Be the change you want to see in the school, to paraphrase Martin Luther King. If, for example, you had little-to-no help settling in when you started, offer to give new teachers a tour of the school, explain the electronic register etc.. and if you are fortunate your kindness will be repaid many times over.

What They Don't Teach You During Teacher Training: Part 4 - Bullying

• Part 1: Time Management

• Part 2: Parents

• Part 3: Vulnerable Children 

• Part 4: Bullying 

• Part 5: Colleagues 

• Part 6: Motivation

This series of blog posts covers areas that I feel are often missing from the PGCE year and teacher training in general. That's not a criticism - there simply isn't time to cover everything but I have been using my extra pandemic time with the university library and the World Wide Web at my finger tips to search for answers to questions that have been perplexing me for some time. It turns out that many people have thought about these things a lot more than me so I'm excited to be sharing the insights that resonated the most.

...

Bullying, or 'bullismo' as we know it here in Italy, is a funny term. It is very hard to define and means different things to different people in different places around the world. For some it is groups of students ganging up on an individual and and being physically aggressive, for others it's more than that and can include the spreading of rumours, exclusion, harassment, extortion and intimidation and even simply an individual abusing their power. Whatever it means to you, it can be hard to deal with as a teacher as much of it may happen outside of the classroom. The following statistics and information were taken from Understanding School Bullying, its Nature and Prevention Strategies by P.K. Smith which gives a very comprehensive and complex overview of bullying in schools around the world.

Bullying varies with age. Younger children tend to be more physically aggressive, while older children tend to be more verbally aggressive. 

The more children are online the more cyberbullying can be a problem. Cyberbullying can be especially perplexing for a teacher as it mostly happens outside of school hours. About half of cyberbullying victims do not know who the bully is but since, more often than not, cyberbullying involves individuals from the same school parents may ask teachers to intervene. Some schools and teachers in this circumstance choose to get involved and others will not.

Mythbusting - Who bullies and gets bullied?

12-15 years of age is the time when children are most likely to bully with students increasingly less sympathetic to victims up until the age of 14 or 15. This means that middle schools are particular hot spots for bullying, with September of the first year being a flash point as a class pecking order has yet to emerge. At Primary School younger children will attack others indiscriminately before finding out which victims make the most rewarding targets (the ones least able to cope).

Sexist bullying is the most common type of bullying but many young people also view homophobic bullying as more acceptable than, for example, racist bullying. Children with special needs are the most likely to be bullied with students with ADHD being up to 8x more likely to be victims as well as 3x more likely to bully. Since bullying is quite a complex social phenomenon it is interesting to note that autistic students may often be victims but that they often find it hard to know when something is bullying or not.

Locations where bullying is most likely to happen are in the least supervised places with the playground, followed by corridors, toilets and the canteen. These days, perhaps due to greater awareness of bullying in schools and better supervision, bullying rates are dropping for traditional bullying but are rising for cyberbullying.

So far perhaps not so surprising. I was most interested in the book's look at the psychological profiles of bullies, victims and defenders. Bullies are often portrayed as not very bright thugs or bully-victims unconsciously acting out their own pain but in reality many bullies are socially intelligent and manipulative although they often have callous and unemotional traits. They may recognise others emotions ('cognitively empathetic' Smith calls it) but do not share and feel other's emotions (affective empathy). Bullies frequently disengage morally from their behaviour, saying things like "I didn't start it," "He deserved it," and "It was just for fun." Bullying for most bullies is a way of increasing social status and power. And it works, children tend to perceive bullies as popular even if they are not well liked by their peers. 

Victims may be less socially literate, with lower levels of emotional stability and lower self-esteem. Often victims can have over protective, or especially critical and distant parents but children with bullying siblings are also more likely to be bullied at school. Children and young people who experience bullying are particularly at risk of severe depression if bullied, often because bullying can become a vicious cycle. Bullied girls and victims who bully are most at risk of committing suicide. 

Children who are prepared to intervene and stand up for victims of bullying tend to be popular and emotionally stable. Something to bear in mind perhaps, if you are trying to help a victim make new friends!

In one study cited in the book of cases when bullying stopped, 25% of victims said it was because they got help from school, 23% transitioned from one school onto the next level and 11% changed class or school. 20% of students said that changing their coping strategies was the thing that stopped the bullying, like learning new skills, making new friends and trying assertive non aggressive strategies. 

It is really important to know that the victim and aggressor roles are not fixed. Especially in the case of girls, bullies can become victims and vice versa over time. The good news for victims of cyberbullying is that it cyberbullying usually lasts for less than a month.

So what can we as individual teachers do about bullying?

• Be visible. Make an effort to patrol areas of the playground and school at break time which are harder to supervise. A particularly effective colleague of mine with a difficult class dynamic used to pop up at break time unexpectedly, even if she wasn't on duty, to check that nobody was getting excluded from games.
• Be watchful for small acts of bullying like eye rolling, back turning, laughing cruelly and sarcasm amongst groups of students. Bullying isn't always obvious so it's important that you get to know your students really well.
• Encourage parents and children to communicate and talk about bullying at school and especially cyberbullying where they must take the lead. Good communication with parents has been shown to be a protective factor for children.
• Signal that bullying is unacceptable very clearly and that there are consequences for students who bully. 
• Create a sense of community. Choose pairs and working groups yourself and break up cliques. After lunch the aforementioned colleague asks pupils who they played with at break time and praises those who played with someone they didn't normally play with. 
• Keep chats with bullies and victims private and individual. 
• Respond quickly to incidents of bullying.
• Avoid "one off" anti-bullying lessons which may only underline the fact that other pupils may wish to choose to support the bully. 
• Teach everyone in the class what to do if they witness bullying. Students should know that they should not join in or laugh and should walk away and tell an adult (especially if the bully is violent!) or tell the bully to stop and encourage others to do the same.

Verywellfamily.com has a helpful article on this called 15 Ways to Prevent Bullying in Your Classroom.

The Support Group Method

Below is an intriguing method also known as the Seven Steps method which, according to Smith, has been shown to be immediately effective in 80% of cases of bullying and 76% of the time stops the bullying. It is controversial because the bully is not made to admit guilt or acknowledge the suffering that they have caused, but is perhaps effective precisely because of this very feature.

1. The Facilitator talks to the victim privately who shares some account of their suffering (at this point many teachers would get parents involved in order to explain the method they intend to use).
2. A group meeting of 6-8 students is set up without the victim. This group is a mix of bullies and friends of the victim, some of whom will be nominated by the victim. 
3. The Facilitator explains to the group that the victim is having a difficult time but does not discuss the bullying incident/s.
4. The Facilitator explains that they are not looking to blame or punish anyone but expects everyone to take some responsibility for improving the victims safety and wellbeing. 
5. Each group member thinks how they can make the victims feel happier or safer...
6. ...and shares their ideas with the group.
7. Facilitator ends the meeting giving the group responsibility for following through with their ideas and tells the group that they will follow up with everyone and the victim with individual meetings a week later. At this point the facilitator may also contact the victim's parents to tell them how the meeting has gone.

I think that this method is very interesting for older students especially and it would have been interesting to have tried it with a particular middle school class that I had. When confronting teenagers over bullying behaviour the response that I had was that it was everyone's fault but theirs or to deny events.  This method puts the focus exactly where I would have liked it: on making things better and moving forwards without stigmatising the victim. I think the strength of this method is also that if it doesn't work you still have the traditional approaches of consequences and sanctions to fall back on.

Would you give it a go?