Understanding Motivation in Adult Learning: Strategies for Success

hi everyone apologies in advance for how terrible my voice sounds over zoom i'm trying to

i've been teaching a class over zoom and i listened to some of my recordings and oh i just absolutely hate it but i'm so

glad you're here today and um i was just peeking into the chat box and i saw some familiar names in there that made me

feel so good um i get a little nervous presenting over zoom even teaching over zoom i see just my face in a

box and i just think oh my gosh um it just feels not very natural to me but i'm gonna do the best i can because

i really really believe in this topic and i'm just so happy that you're here today to learn

with me and kind of experience some of the things that i've gone through and trying

to learn more about what motivates our students to learn and come to class and keep up with the program

so i'm going to um uh share my slides here so we've got this

straight up and i've got um there we go so

we're talking right now about um adult learning theory specifically dealing with motivation and i just want to kind

of um bring you along in my journey a little bit i've been in adult education now for

about nine years and before that i taught in public schools for about 20 years so i've been into

education pretty much my whole adult life and um i guess i've just always been

um thinking about like what makes students want to learn what can we do

as teachers what do they need to do what will get them really excited about learning and that

really kind of became a huge um issue from me and my own research because we were having i don't think it's just our

program but i know i was really really frustrated with so many students just not coming to class um you know we'd see

you'd see maybe 18 names on the roster and then by the time the class ended there would be 50 of them were gone and

you know some of them would re-enroll or some of them would move on but um you know i always thought

what what can i do what what can i do to to to keep those students and to keep them motivated

and then i thought well i can in my position i'm lucky enough that i can do research and try to figure out

what's going on and what's new in brain research and adult learning theory um but the other thing i

can do is try to help the teachers that i work with to maybe um

get past the frustration and into feeling like we were able to make a difference that there was something that

we could do so i did a lot of research and then i had

the opportunity usually our program has the ability to let me teach classes

which i love because it keeps my skills fresh and just honestly that's my favorite

thing in the world to do is teach so i signed up to teach a ged class in the evenings and um i thought well you know

what i'll practice some of the things that i've been learning about before i present to the teachers because um you

know it's always a good idea to kind of put some of your ideas into practice in retrospect it probably wasn't the

best time because um those of you who know me and my situation know that pretty much everyone in our office sort

of left for other jobs around that time period so um i was really busy

maybe a little too busy and i was very stressed so i wasn't probably bringing my a-game but in a way i think that was

good because it showed me what the teachers go through because you know many of them have full-time jobs

and they have so many other things going on and so a little bit of stress is normal but we can't communicate that

necessarily to the students we still have to bring our a game so i tried to bring my a game and um

so what i did was um i started as i said by doing

a lot of research into theories of motivation so

then um as i said i tried to apply them to my students specifically the ones where they just stopped coming to class

and they seemed to lack motivation and i tried to feel like um maybe not what did i do wrong but

maybe like what could i learn from this so that i could communicate it to um you know the teachers i work with and um i

did i did learn a lot i really did um so backing up just a little bit i wanted to kind of take you with me along this

process so in my research um i found basically three theories of motivation that are

stressed in adult learning theory and um you'll notice that these are not necessarily mutually exclusive so it's

not like you have people who say oh i only believe in attribution theory or some who say i only believe in

self-efficacy theory um they kind of work together and but it's each one has sort of its

own um characteristics and it really has a lot to do with the human brain and psychology

um because motivation is basically what takes you to the point where you want to do something and it's something

you know could involve some work it could involve um you know effort it involves time but

what motivates you to do that what what makes the brain go from um oh i don't want to do this at all you

know this this sounds painful this sounds bad into yes i definitely want to do this i want to i want to learn

something new what brings us to that point so the first theory is attribution

theory and it basically says we're motivated by that sort of emotional reaction

but it's motivated by past performances and how we attribute our past successes and failures so before i try something

new or learn something new i say to myself um have i been successful at this in the past or have i found success and

and if i have then i'm ready for that pleasure again

um i think for example i've been trying to relearn the piano um i took piano lessons when i was a little girl and

um my i left when it got too hard basically was theory and reading music and i was like yeah this isn't for me

but um my dad has nch alzheimer's he loved the piano and this is basically the only thing he still remembers and so

i thought well this will bring me kind of closer to him so i'm going to learn the piano

so um you know what brought me to that point well luckily i am somebody who loves to learn

things because i have had a lot of successes in that area i usually find that if i put the time and the effort in

um i'm pretty smart and if i practice i'm going to get it and then i'll be able to play piano with my dad which is

which is my dream so um that for attribution theory it says i am

motivated to learn something new because i know that i have been successful in the past and i like that feeling

that's attribution theory um then we have self-efficacy theory which is not that different from

attribution theory except the focus is on our own self-assessment of our ability

so i mentioned that a little bit when i said i know i'm good at learning new things and i know if i practice i'm i'm

going to be good at the piano again that's my self-assessment i have a pretty um

strong opinion of my ability to learn new things now i'm not good at a lot of stuff trust me

um you've never seen me try to run so um

but so i'm not good i'm not trying to say oh my goodness my you know i'm great at everything i'm certainly not but i am

good at doing research and practicing things and learning things so that's my my belief in myself my self-efficacy is

very strong when it comes to learning new things and then the last one that i found um

really referenced a lot was the self-determination theory and this sort of reminded me of um back in the day

when i studied uh carl jung in psychology class in college where you know we're we're always searching for

that which will make us feel whole and make us feel complete and this theory is that we everybody has this sort of

innate need to feel competent connected and in control and so when we're motivated to do something new or learn

something new it's because we want to feel that competency we want to feel that we're connected

um so those were kind of the three and as i said if i were to visualize these i

would visualize them as separate pages and in a book i would visualize them as something working all together in sort

of the the psyche of our students so let's talk a little bit about attribution theory first of all and

there are three sort of mean aspects where like i would tell my students new vocab to learn um but the first one is

the locus of control so in attribution theory remember we are attributing our successes and and

failures to a certain feeling and that's what motivates us but a lot of that has to do is what we feel we have control

over um and that's called the locus of control so your internal locus of

control is where you feel like you you personally are in control of the situation

the external locus of control is where you feel that the environment or others around you are acting upon you and you

really don't have control of a situation at all so i'm sure that you can guess that when

we're talking about attribution theory it's important to have a really strong internal locus of control

again bringing up my example of learning the piano i feel strongly that i am able to do this i have control over my piano

lessons i have control over my time and my effort i have my piano all tuned up and ready to go um actually belong to my

mother-in-law and it's very old piano but it's tuned up um these are all things that i can control i tell my

husband and my children um you know mom's learning the piano and they they are

god bless them very supportive gee mom sounds great you know or sounds like you hit a few clunkers there um these are

all things that i have control over but if i don't feel that internal locus of control i'm going to have a difficult

time attributing my successes to what i'm able to do um the other thing is the assessment of

stability so i had sort of like a had to open my mind a little bit with this one because

normally when we're talking about stability stability is seen as a as a good thing

but in attribution theory um the assessment of stability is really if something is stable that

can is not always good so what we're talking about here is an event so if an event is stable that's

where you feel it will always be this way so um that's where you know i'm going to

tackle um a math problem to to help my my son with his math and um

which never happens anymore because both my kids have gone far beyond my mathematical ability

but um if i say in my head i have never been successful at math before um

so i'm not going to be successful this time that's the event is stable so that's my

assessment of the stability of the event whereas if an event is unstable it means that it can change it's very um

uh it's it's very relevant to what's going on right here in the moment

and again this goes back to our locus of control can i change the stability of the event

if i can then i might be successful at something that before i was unsuccessful at

and again perceptions of control you can see these all work together how much control do i actually have

over this situation and again locus of control whether it's located internally or externally

and then how much control do we have so let's take a look at this in process so i found this little

picture i'm a visual learner so i love these pictures and here's our gingerbread man looking all happy

because he or she um has an internal locus of control and you make things happen look what i can do i create my

future um he's she's here she is so smiley and you know like i control myself where is our our sad little

person over here is like the world is just beating them down you know things happen

to me why bother why does everything happen to me that's your external locus of control

it's hard to for this this little um person here um on the right to feel motivated to make

any sort of changes as far as you know education or learning because why would they when you know bad things keep

happening to them doesn't make any difference um so again you can kind of see how that

locus of control makes such a difference um in attribution theory so i thought and i i did this with my um

teachers when i when he did my presentation with them i tried it out on them first and it was funny because some

of us shared students and so i always changed the name of the student um to protect the truth the innocent and i had

a couple teachers not he'll say i know who that is so um i thought i'd practice a little

bit as i said some of the things i was learning i wanted to kind of practice in the classroom and then i was sort of

present to the teachers and now i'm presenting to you um some of the things i found so

i called them case studies because i kind of was thinking of this journey as sort of like a

a journey of my own knowledge so these students were all presenting me with this unique

opportunity to learn from them so here we have nadia and um nadia is a student who started my class stating she

was going to get her ged in order to get a better job after the first two weeks she stopped

coming to class when i called her to see what happened she stated that her boyfriend had taken the one car that

they had and she had no way to get to class i suggested taking the bus but she said

she couldn't figure out the bus schedule and would try to study that and would get back to me

after another week of no shows i called her again and emailed my calls went to voicemail and my emails were left

unanswered i'm sure this is a situation that many of us have experience with but looking

at this from attribution theory my question would be do you think nadia has an internal or external locus of control

um so i invite you to pop over to the chat box now and share um with me and with your um

colleagues what you think i'm just gonna pop the chats up here okay wow shirley you're fast okay

oh my goodness of course beautiful beautiful yes indeed that that's a perfect example of someone with

an external locus of control um she feels she has no control over the situation you know she would come to

class but boyfriend took the car what's she going to do and then my suggestion for the bus schedule was something that

she also felt she had no control over she didn't understand the buses so this gave her an opportunity to just you know

opt out of coming to class and so you know my question then came to now it was it was too late for me to

reach nadia in this situation but i wondered what i could have done before it got to this point um

and that kind of brought into mind now i know some of you might be thinking in your

head and i know some of my teachers feel comfortable saying you know linda we're not

therapists here you know i'm not gonna take class time valuable class time exploring everybody's locus of control

um you know absolutely not no i wouldn't expect you to do that um but if you had a similar conversation with someone like

this knowing that she has this external locus of control and probably is not even aware

of that um because many of us are not aware of um you know our own perceptions and

attribution theory and you know our students are older they might have been like this for years and years and years

um is there anything that you can do and you know that the what i would have done

i think in this situation is i would have i would have backed up and i would have thought about the point where i was

suggesting that she'd take the bus and i wouldn't want to resolve the issue for her because that just feeds into

that external locus of control where now i'm taking over and now i'm controlling it but i might have said

something like you know would you be able to come into the office um

you know or meet with me over zoom and i'll just kind of you know i can answer some questions about the bus schedule or

you know maybe we can talk a little bit about uh what you could do to to correct the situation

because um you shouldn't have to you know rely on on the boyfriend especially since you know

he took the car and that was you know not very he's not very supportive so you know what what can we do so i think um

for myself and again i said these case studies are me learning as i go now that i recognize that she has that external

locus and you know now i don't think she recognizes that there are ways to bring students into the conversation and

problem solving so that they're able to um resolve the problems but you have to sort of bring them there because they

might not know that they have that ability and then in doing so they start to take back some of that control

so at the end of this if we have time i'm just going to ask you all you know just kind of go back to some of these

case studies and let me know what you would have done where you would have stopped the train

before i fell off the tracks um but i just i think it's it's interesting um just to kind of

look at that situation and go okay i recognize what's going on in nadia's brain and and not be um i think

for me anyway being in education so long it's very easy to just write these students off and just say well they'll

never you know it's just frustrating i i can't help those who can't help themselves you know um i care more about

this than they do they don't want to come to class that's their business and i just feel like there's a point where

we can um have a conversation with a student before we get there so anyway that's

perfect you guys got the idea beautiful so one of the things i think that i learned

in doing my research is that awareness comes with um from within so i had to really do a lot of thinking

about my own theories of motivation um and where i stood on things and also um

thinking about people i know in my life who have um external locus of control and need that internal locus and

sometimes it's good to have a friend who can kind of drag you back from that as well because i tend

sometimes to be oh it's just faith it's just the way it is you know adult learners they don't come to class oh

maybe you know it is what it is um and that's one thing i found myself saying it is what it is a lot especially during

the um pandemic and it's just you know they're it's good sometimes to have someone who can kind of bring you out of

that and remind you of what you do have control over so

i have these two little outlooks here my um the teachers i work with it looks like one of those you know magazines

where you take a survey to see what you agree with but i think it's kind of um interesting to

just take a look at these two outlooks and see where you fit yourself in and then see if you feel

comfortable with that or maybe it's time to kind of have a little bit of awareness about that

because um sometimes we can um without even knowing it

um bring that kind of uh attitude to the students and and i'm don't know when you know any of you would do that but i know

for me personally you know i was getting to the office at eight in the morning um and working you know several

different jobs at one time and then uh until 4 30 my class started at five and when i came into class i didn't always

have the best attitude um and it wasn't always being a good listener because i was kind of wrapped up in my own

um outlook and i i did feel at that time period that there was a lot acting upon

me and that i didn't have control over so it's important to just kind of um take a look at your own outlook and

i had a video at the end but i don't think we'll have time for it but i do recommend to any of you if you haven't

seen it on youtube and there's a link um on this but it's david foster wallace's

um uh speech that he gave at commencement and it's it's about um this is water and

it's basically the story begins with these two fish who are

swimming side by side two young fish and older fish swims by them and says hey boys how's the water and they look at

each other and they say what the heck is water um and so the idea is that sometimes we're in this this

environment that we create for ourselves where it just feels like everything is acting upon us and we forget that we can

change our our attitude toward that that we do have control and so if we forget it i guarantee our students are

forgetting that too so the second um thing we had referenced to an

attribution theory was the stability of events and i mentioned that unstable events

can cause successor failure but they can be easily changed when one regains control over the event

so even though an unstable event it sounds like oh my gosh that's unstable it must be

bad actually in attribution theory it's it's a positive thing because if you get a

negative response then you know that you have the ability to change certain things

because it's unstable it's not always going to be that way um the stable events are those that the

students believe cannot be changed so this is something where they feel it always happens this way you know life

will never work out for me because i always lose my job uh you know i always fail my classes

and they don't recognize their ability to control it because they feel it will always be that way

so here's another case study for you my friend darren who i am pleased to say um did recently get his ged

yay so um darren took his rla ged practice tests but he did not get the score that

indicated he was ready to take the rla test he stated

totally came to class today after working all night didn't get any sleep hey i bet if i got some rest maybe have

some breakfast i would have scored a lot higher would you say that darren had an

internal or external locus of control and would you say that darren has a good perception of his own control over the

situation and finally what would darren's concept of the stability of the event be

do you think there's a lot of questions there so if you just want to answer one of them

that's fine i'm really focused here on the stability of the event because that kind of leads to the other ones

oh look at you oh my goodness brook's on top of things yes yes yes internal absolutely look at

you yes and it's it's an unstable event he says okay i didn't do well on the test

but i don't it's not always going to be that way because i have control over things and this is what i have control

over i should have gotten a good night's sleep i should have had some food in my belly um

i think actually i misprinted this in his case it would have been a good day because he was a night shift worker but

um yeah absolutely and he's going into this saying okay well this is what i can do to make it different

and then my response um when he you know wanted to take retake the practice test is you know i i said i

really and and because i had done my research on this i was um using all the words i said i really appreciate you ha

that you know that you have control over over this that you um you know that you can

do better for sure obviously good night sleep breakfast but my question to you would be what's going to

that you can change because you have that strong control um but problem solved with me um you know when what are

your days off um you know when can you arrange your your work schedule um you know what's it like

when you get when you get home do you have a chance to eat something and kind of taking him with that and keep on

going with it because sometimes students do um think that they're telling us what we

want to hear sometimes and we're like yeah absolutely but you know also we can do some damage if we don't talk them

through that process because you know let's say he he goes to retake the test and he hasn't done those things because

he just um you know lost control of the of the um

all the things going on in his life and then he's going to have two negative and that's really hard to come back from so

definitely very good and like i said he did get his ged so okay so again i just want to stress you

you don't have to be therapists here um if you obviously no one has the time for that um for sure

but um you don't have so you don't have to determine the locus of control but once you get a sense of their perception

of the situation you can raise their awareness that there are other ways of looking the event that has that looking

at events that have occurred um you know and there's nothing wrong with taking just a few minutes you know even if it's

a whole class just to kind of erase some of that um negative language as well um

you never want to say something like oh you shouldn't feel that way or whatever because you know that is a quick way to

get students to shut down but it could be something where you know you say okay um you know class i i seen none of us

you know had a really successful time writing this paragraph i'm i know what i can control i can control the way i

teach this this subject to you because i feel like i did not do a good job teaching it to you because um you know

nobody learned here and then i said and this is what you can control is you can give me time to redo it and then we're

gonna all work to so kind of using the words like control and and showing them um

that this is water um and they they can control how they react to situations

so the second um theory of motivation was self-efficacy and self-efficacy refers to the

student's individual belief that they have the capacity within them to achieve their goals

it's often context or task specific the problem is of course because it's based on past experiences

okay they and many of our students have experienced failures with schooling and

learning um they often come into us with low self-advocacy so they're not coming into

us with us um you know yay

i i i'm always successful when i learn um so we have to kind of work to have them recognize it and then we have to

work to build on those successes show them the successes in other words um so how do we do that we need to help

students experience successes in the classroom by breaking up tasks so they can experience many successes and get

familiar with the feeling of success that's a lot of successes there um but yeah don't save the the big success

moment until the very end um or you know when you get your ged then it's time to celebrate every class has opportunities

for students to be successful um and those feelings of success will slowly build

that self-efficacy um so we need to draw attention to these successes um oftentimes they just they

don't even notice it they're so used to failure that they're just like oh i did a terrible job

um and we need to give them that specific reference to fall back on so i know you're able to do this because you

did a great job focusing and um you know studying the other night and um really being specific about our praise um and

that will build up that self-efficacy with students it's kind of like building up a wall that's

slowly been broken down over time so this is just some ways that can

determine self-efficacy one is of course performance outcomes and like i said we don't want to wait

till the end of the class um you know the end of the session because for many of our students they need that

every every time they come to class in fact if they don't get it even on the first day if they don't experience some

success they're probably not going to come back um so we have to work on those

performance outcomes verbal persuasion um i've been known to use this very

often not just on students but on husband and children as well um you know it's my husband oh uh the way you

cleaned out the dishwasher was such a big help to me thank you thank you so much you know sometimes i feel like he

should know that you're supposed to clean out the dishwasher sometimes people need those words

and build them up um so vicarious experiences as well if you ever noticed in class if one student

does well then you've got some of the others looking kind of given side eye like what do i have to do to get some of

that success so sometimes um you know in showing praising someone

for something you know and it doesn't have to be getting a perfect score on a test it could be something like you know

you focused on your writing for a full uh 20 minutes and you know that's amazing because that's really hard to

focus that amount of time on creating your essay um and then someone else is listening to this and saying oh i could

do that too um and then the physiological feedback i

love this because they've done these studies that show that when people are successful it actually activates the

pleasure center of the brain and so um you know the brain gets those little endorphins flowing and um everybody

feels good when you have that high self-efficacy so it's all a positive thing

so here's my third case study so um this is my first night of class and i thought it would be a good idea to

give students a little practice ged test just some sample questions on the first night that they could get an idea of

what the test would be like and see what they still need to work on um i was thought i was very clear with them that

i didn't expect them to get all the answers that we were just practicing this so they could have some um

experience in ged questions but two of my students left that evening they didn't discuss their scores they didn't

you know talk about how they did and they never returned to class um when i called them i emailed them

they made some excuses and then they just kind of dropped off the face of the earth there

so according to self-efficacy theory what do you think i did incorrectly in motivating these students

so here's a question for you what did i do incorrectly it's okay you can judge me i've judged myself that's how we

learn right yes cheerleading is definitely necessary there you go yes terry absolutely

there was no time no opportunity given for them to to build successes i started right out

from the gate and i had my my own objective um absolutely peg's got it right you don't do that practice test

first up test phobic performance anxiety you know you got students coming in with that

um you know the low self-efficacy anyway and then they get some questions that they can't answer and they're just like

this is not for me you know i'm i'm not going to be successful i i just can't do this and

you know i almost always started class out or told

my teachers to start class out with some like practice tests kind of thing um

but um you know it's i didn't have

exactly melissa right the relationship building i didn't have that relationship with them to really get the information

like if it had been later on if i had known them really well they would have been like oh that's just my teacher just

you know um seeing what i know and it's it's safe you know for me to make mistakes and we'll talk about it as a

class it's okay i didn't know them well enough i hadn't built that relationship and yeah all of you are absolutely

correct so yeah don't don't start the first night with a test lesson learned right and you know it's

funny because i thought i was communicating with them that i didn't expect them to um you know to do well

but what i was really doing for many of them is kind of setting them up to fail they felt like well this is what's

expected of me um so yeah so obviously you know we can go back if we have time and look at some

of these what what you would have done differently um and you know i i know

that i would not do that again and actually talking to some of my teachers um they were just like oh my gosh i

always start class with that too it gives me an idea of what their levels are like and i said well you know that's

what the tave results are for or you know that may be what the um second or third

uh week of class might be that but in the beginning we need to build those relationships and build those successes

start with the successes for sure okay oh you guys are so good okay so

the last one um is the self-determination theory of motivation and um again this is sort of like the

holistic version um so when students are going to feel motivated but they have a need to

feel competent connected and they need to feel autonomous as well and again like i said these theories are not

mutually exclusive when we're talking about autonomy we're talking about control right and we're talking about

connection we're talking about building that relationship and building on successes again confidence that's all

self-efficacy so all of these sort of work together um

and obviously as i mentioned before i can't say this enough um works with self-efficacy high self-efficacy is

based on past successes many of our students have experienced failures with school and learning and i'm not just

talking about one or two failures i'm talking about to the point where many of them dropped out of school

um we need to create successful experiences for them to build on and i'm not saying that we need to make sure

that we give them like baby work or whatever one plus one is two yay great job they'll see through that in a

heartbeat right they're they're adults they're not going to be placated too for sure but what we can do is we can break

up difficult tasks we can provide them with the processes we can give clear directions all of these um and we can

allow students to feel success and make choices on what they will study when and how long that's where that autonomy

comes into play as well um and we can do that while maintaining our um you know high

objectives while we can maintain our high standards we just may need to look a little bit as to how we're doing that

for sure so this is something that one of my research books had recommended and this

is for those who are not motivated to do work so um this is actually uh something i have tried and i swear by it so

um and it really kind of makes you think a little bit about why we procrastinate or why we don't do things um you know i

was talking to my daughter because the house really needed to be cleaned and i said you know i could start out by

saying oh my gosh this house always needs to be cleaned i cannot keep this house clean i don't understand why you

and your brother there's toothpaste that i could do all that and kind of set my brain up for the sort of negative

mindset you know none of these things i have control over or i can simply say i'm going to work on this task for 20 30

minutes i'm not setting the fact the whole house is going to be clean

i'm not saying that um it's all going to get done in 23 minutes i'm just going to work on it

and then do that and then give yourself a break so you know five minute break um during that break time i allow my

students to you know check their phone or um we watch a youtube video um or we listen to a song or some of them like to

take a walk around and just a really really quick five-minute break and then get back to the task and as you're doing

it you're you're talking to yourself at the same time which sounds stupid but we my students and i did it and i do it now

all the time and it actually really works and when we're talking to ourselves we're saying things like

i know i'm not going to get all this done but this is what i can control i can

control the fact that i'm going to work on this task for 20 25 30 minutes whatever you know

you set for yourself your goal i can do that and that's totally manageable

and i i swear by it my students loved it um it really kind of took away some of the um the the curse of say write an

essay to saying okay we're going to work on the opening paragraph for our

constructive response and it does not be perfect it you know what we're going to control here is our

time and our effort so we're going to work hard for 30 minutes let's set a timer and when we're done we take a five

minute break and we're going to do something fun um whatever you decide is fun for you you know you do that

then we're gonna get back at it again and then we praise ourselves you know to say wow i did a great job i focused for

this amount of time therefore i deserve this reward um it it's amazing it really does work so anyway just some ideas

because i always get people who ask me what do you mean break up the tasks so people can find successes

there is an example of a way to break up a task um

and make it kind of fun too it turns into sort of a game and then of course if you're rewarding

yourself after you know focusing hard for 30 minutes then you're experiencing success and you talk yourself you say i

did it yay me um and then you know you're building that um

self-determination you're like i can do this i can do this so a couple quick um

things about what we want to be thinking of what we take away from today is

first of all you want to look at the source of the student motivation and look at how the student views the

nature of their ability and then look at the focus for learning so student motivation uh we talked about

internal and external locus of control and so motivation can also be intrinsic or you know internal or it can be

extrinsic or external to the situation and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second because that's always a

huge issue in um you know learning theory is whether it's better to have intrinsic or extrinsic motivation

it's intrinsic um and then of course looking at how the student views the nature of their

ability we're talking about growth mindset versus fixed mindset and then the focus for learning what are we

actually doing so i'm not going to read this whole thing

to you because i will run at a time but this will all be shared with you of course but we know extrinsic motivation

is external to um to ourselves so that's like the candy or the pizza party or you know the the the binding box that kind

of thing where it's like you know you you get this external motivation to be successful but it's not coming from

within so what's wrong with that well everybody does it okay sometimes it gets us over

the hump for sure but the problem is is that the extrinsic motivation will then replace intrinsic

motivation especially if you have students who don't have that internal locus of control so instead of going to

school for um you know their own purposes to learn to ultimately get their ged or

continue on in college whatever but then because i'm going to school because we're going to have a pizza party or i'm

going to school because i'll get 700 um it takes the place of um what should be internal and then when

the extrinsic motivation is gone there's nothing there anymore there's no intrinsic

motivation also extrinsic motivation motivators are often short-term so once that motivator

is gone then students lose interest so

so it's not wrong to give candy it's just wrong to only give candy um so how can we make sure our students are

more intrinsically motivated um obviously making sure the content we are using is interesting current

relevant never teach skills and strategies out of context put those worksheets away

it doesn't work towards motivation for sure um

set up learning experiences that allow them to be successful we've talked about this as well give them the reasons

they're learning it give them the context scaffold the new material so they're able to see that success

reward the process not the product so in other words you know the time and the effort these are all things that they

have control over so we reward that as opposed to rewarding um perfect score uh again the parts of the process for

which they have control and then if they do have extrinsically motivated goals such as like getting a

better job or making more money for the family those types of things then help them to break those goals into into

steps so that they have that intrinsic motivation as well um looking at the face of graduates from years past may

not necessarily be um an extrinsic motivator for your current student who is reading at like a fourth grade level

so you might need to break that type of thing into steps so that that extrinsic motivation becomes more internal to the

students you will get there it's just this is this is what we're working on right now

so how do we know that we will trigger their intrinsic motivation that looked like me i don't understand how you don't

understand um again working on that mastery orientation towards learning

okay we talked about this the culture of empowerment in class really comes from finding out what

students are thinking rewarding the process stressing the growth mindset you you

know you're not always going to be bad at this that's that's you know that's not something

that i won't even you know think have you thinking about right now i want you to think about what you can do right now

um noticing the internal factors the students have power to change and then

recognizing that such as their time their effort and definitely staying away from

negative language like you shouldn't think this way or come on this is easy you aren't even trying um that really

can just feed feed feed right into that low self-efficacy and that's fixed mindset which is where they think i'll

never get it i have no control over this i will always always fail so here's my case study number four

um tomas started my math class having been very successful in language arts but nevertheless his scores in math

shows some real issues i started class by reassuring him don't worry i hate math too i've never been good at it but

i promise that i can show you some tricks that will help you get through this

it seemed like i had bridged to divide with him but he just stopped coming to class after the first week and i didn't

hear from him again what did i do wrong um what could i have done differently so

let's start with the what did i do wrong so let's let's talk first of all because i should kind of focus my question here

would you say that i had a growth mindset towards learning math or a fixed mindset towards learning math and now

you'll know my secret about how i feel about my learning math yes definitely good shirley

exactly yes exactly so i definitely do have a fixed mindset towards learning math i

struggled with it in the past and um i need to work on that i really do and that's definitely something i don't want

to communicate to my students um if i'm going to foster a growth mindset in the class i have to at least pretend to have

one myself now i do have a growth mindset about many things but for some reason math is a real

um stickler for me and i'm working on it but i don't need to share that with my student he was probably thinking in his

head well what the heck is she going to be my teacher you know like

i don't get it and so i thought i was sharing you know something that would be supportive and the reality was is i was

just um supporting his fixed mindset so definitely if you have like i said first thing is awareness when you recognize it

in yourself that's important and then you can make sure you help your students with it

oops where did my oh i can't oh there we go

all right so how can teachers impact motivation in a negative way by designing instruction around program

goals and not student goals exactly right we get that all the time this is our program goal you have to get your 40

hours and you have to do this you have to do that let's talk about the student goals okay let's get the students on

board with that because that's just feeding that external locus of control they're like i don't care what you need

to get these hours this is what's relevant to me um

failing to connect literacy goals to realistic personal goals for students i've been guilty of that

um i'm teaching a class tonight on illusions and figurative language and i've pulled out like my favorite poem

the highwayman you know and thinking are they going to really enjoy that i don't know we'll see um

placing an inappropriate emphasis on tests and grades um forgetting to treat adult learners as adults i've been

guilty of that one in the past and um relying on one form of content delivery

how can we motivate them in a positive way by creating student-centered classrooms where learning is

contextualized the students have choice helping students to set realistic personal goals as the focus of literacy

learning encouraging positive self concepts focusing on inputs students can control

feels like we're kind of repeating ourselves here but sometimes it needs to be said this is

water right these are all things that we have control over

as teachers and definitely things that our students will learn to have control over as well

um so here's a quick case study because we're

gonna plowing along i tend to talk a little too long all right

so this actually um happened to me uh two years ago and no actually it's quite a bit more

time ago but anyway i was excited i was going to be teaching my first language arts bootcamp class i was filling in for

a teacher for a couple weeks and i remembered how much i enjoyed reading to kill a mockingbird by harper lee

life changing when i was in ninth grade absolutely loved it um got my class set of books i was like yay this is going to

be great we're going to foster reading skills by reading this well-loved novel with an important theme

after the first week of class several students stopped coming when i emailed them to invite them back to class they

said the novel wasn't interesting and they could just read on their own i assigned them some work in ged academy

and one of them kept working online the others just dropped out completely so here's the question as far as like

all these motivation theories um what did i do wrong oh my gosh lindsay that's hysterical

highwayman came riding in the left he didn't have self-determination well that and he got shot but still i mean yeah oh

my goodness yes absolutely terry we you know you have to give the students choices and things exactly

you guys get it um never you know put your reading prefaces on a student they have to have that by and when we think

of the objectives that we have to accomplish in a reasoning through language arts class

you know we can accomplish those objectives by giving students autonomy when it comes to their reading material

as long as they're not you know choosing something that's completely inappropriate but checking with them

what they like what their plans are for the future and we never want to assume um i did a practice uh ged question with

a group and it was a little excerpt from anne of green gables it's in the practice section on ged.com and one of

my students came up to me said um i would love to read that book with my daughter um do you have a copy of that

and i thought oh anna queen gables who would have thought of course so you never want to assume but we always have

to have that conversation with them and give them those choices that's where autonomy and control comes in

exactly oh you guys just get it beautiful all right so just a couple of things to

think about when it comes to um your materials that you choose and how the materials that we choose can

um you know bring out that motivation so just thinking about whether age

appropriate i know many of our students are reading writing math skills at like fourth fifth grade level but we

shouldn't necessarily be using materials that are created for fourth graders right um

unless your student said that they prefer them they might feel some comfort with some

of that material but um we want to make sure that we choose materials that are context driven and

appropriate and that the students have that type of choice we need to make sure our materials that

we choose are not culturally exclusive that they are contextualized to our students needs as adult learners

um we need to learn about the students you know we need to actually have

conversations with them and find out how instruction can work for them find materials that will be relevant to them

and then we definitely don't want to be dismissive of their needs um you know we can't just

give up on the materials and then you know think about like why it's not working for them talk to them and have

that conversation that's when they start to regain that internal locus of control and then they find success and

self-efficacy grows and slowly but surely you build that motivation

um okay so i'm looking at the time we don't have a huge amount of time yet

time left but just some things and kind of all of you said this in the chat box i'm super

happy that you did that because i've had actually teachers who resist this they're like no no i choose the

materials and i think most of the time it's people who were in um taught in elementary schools for a long time and

there's this idea that students shouldn't have the ability to choose content

and you know we have so much freedom in adult education and we're working with adults who have

such um vast and different stories and so definitely letting them choose some topics that are interested to them um

and then of course providing that feedback clear actionable specific and timely um be that cheerleader right

reinforces that mindset you are in control you are doing it you know not just you are doing a great job but you

are focusing your time be specific about what they're doing that is great um one thing that i have been guilty of is

saying something like oh you're such a great reader and that again reinforces that fixed mindset oh he's you know

student in the class is thinking well he's a good reader but i'm not and again we don't want that so our feedback

should be um specific it should be timely and it should stay away from things like you are such a good

whatever because um we want to reward the process that everybody's going to and then awareness awareness of their

surroundings um oh i skipped language language is culturally sensitive precise stay away from that fixed mindset praise

i just talked about awareness of the surroundings you know why are you doing it this way

um well that's the way blah blah is that working for you you know is this something where

you feel that you have control over how you're doing this um understanding that brings back that

control and ultimately um will improve their self-worth which leads to better motivation and there's nothing wrong

with having discussions like this in the classroom students love to learn about themselves and their minds and how

they're learning it's all psychology and it's kind of fun and especially those who have children

because then they can see how you know their children are learning and they can see if there are any sort of

patterns that maybe they could transfer to their children as their learning

um so okay i did it

i always go over time but it's 3 26 and so we have a little bit of time for questions and comments and then um

ellen's going to pop back in and show you about um a survey that you need to complete but

there's my email address i know a lot of you we know many of us have been doing this for a while

but for those of you who don't know me i'm pretty good about answering emails um so definitely let me know anything

you come up with um we used to have this great like i asked um email chain where everybody kind of shared ideas and stuff

but we kind of stopped doing that so i would love to know what everybody's doing and and also if you have any case

studies of your own sometimes it's kind of neat to kind of go through and say all right

something went wrong here what was it and what could i do to change it so let me pop over to

chat box oh you guys are sweet oh i'm so glad yeah it's so funny the teachers were

saying the same thing they're like i like your examples because it shows that you can make mistakes too and i say oh

yes oh yes we're all learning i think the only thing that i ever get kind of

grumpy about is when i feel myself going to the place where i'm like oh you know they'll never learn

they just drop out that's what they do i never want to get to the point where i don't recognize the water around me

and recognize that i have control over how i handle it um because i think if we do that we tend to get really negative

and grumpy and then that transfers to our students so um awesome oh my gosh you guys are

really really sweet um i'm glad i brought you with me thank you for going on my journey and um

oh here's ellen pop in it ellen i did actually manage to finish on time but i rushed at the end

linda you did a fantastic job and i'm going to echo one other person's in the uh the comment in the chat box about

your voice your voice is absolutely perfect so thank you so much