A question I hear in all of my classes, in the blogs and stories I read online, and in conversations with friends and colleagues is: What do we need to do to equip our young people for the new and changing workforce? As I made my way through Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, I found plenty of great advice.
Pink first shares that the best way for students to get the skills they need is for them to feel excited and motivated by what they are tasked with. Just like us adults, to feel engaged and bring out their creativity students need to have a level of autonomy over what they are doing. One road block to their autonomy however, is report cards. Too many students walk through their classroom doors with the sole goal of getting good grades. In doing so, they avoid taking risks or pursuing concepts and activities of interest and instead focus on pleasing their teacher. Grades thus become a reward for compliance, rather than a reflection of learning. This needs to change. To do so, in addition to providing students with autonomy they must be encouraged to go as deep as they wish on topics of interest to them. This encouragement, Pink points out, helps to facilitate mastery. Mastery is a mindset, requiring each of us to see our abilities as infinitely improvable. I believe this is the lesson we want to ingrain in our students, as it is integral to their future success in the workforce. Finally, Pink suggests that rather than focusing on compliance we need to approach classroom learning around intrinsic motivation, around the desire to do things because they matter, because they are part of something important. By approaching student learning with an intrinsic motivation orientation, we can help students see the big picture - enable them see why they are doing what they are doing. And, ultimately help them explore how what they are doing is relevant to our world.
These are some of the ways in which Pink helped me answer that big question of how we prepare our students for our changing world. I hope it's helpful to others as well!
Pink first shares that the best way for students to get the skills they need is for them to feel excited and motivated by what they are tasked with. Just like us adults, to feel engaged and bring out their creativity students need to have a level of autonomy over what they are doing. One road block to their autonomy however, is report cards. Too many students walk through their classroom doors with the sole goal of getting good grades. In doing so, they avoid taking risks or pursuing concepts and activities of interest and instead focus on pleasing their teacher. Grades thus become a reward for compliance, rather than a reflection of learning. This needs to change. To do so, in addition to providing students with autonomy they must be encouraged to go as deep as they wish on topics of interest to them. This encouragement, Pink points out, helps to facilitate mastery. Mastery is a mindset, requiring each of us to see our abilities as infinitely improvable. I believe this is the lesson we want to ingrain in our students, as it is integral to their future success in the workforce. Finally, Pink suggests that rather than focusing on compliance we need to approach classroom learning around intrinsic motivation, around the desire to do things because they matter, because they are part of something important. By approaching student learning with an intrinsic motivation orientation, we can help students see the big picture - enable them see why they are doing what they are doing. And, ultimately help them explore how what they are doing is relevant to our world.
These are some of the ways in which Pink helped me answer that big question of how we prepare our students for our changing world. I hope it's helpful to others as well!