Rewards

My interest in motivation and the role rewards and emotion play continues.  Effortful control, literacy, and fear all have roots in these processes.  Genetics seems to influence some of them, but education has incredible potential to enhance and develop motivation, through the use of emotional connection, relationship building, creativity, and goal setting. I'd like to know more to help my faculty learn ways to capitalize on ways that the brain works best, to work with teams to create programs and interventions that help students overcome learning obstacles, and to support my district's efforts to create exemplary schools where students' learning differences are affirmed and supported through experiences and collaboration with others.

Flex the Physical Environment

An ideal physical learning environment is, most importantly, flexible in function and form.  So, furnishings should be able to be moved around and reconfigured easily, work surfaces would be variable for different needs (stand-up desks, walkstations, exercise balls for seating, etc.), and wireless computer access would make cords less of a hindrance. Even teachers who desire to flex learning spaces are hampered by the heaviness and bulk of desk/chair combinations and the fixed nature of some technology.

Temperment and Learning

Many factors go into motivation and engagement, and one of the reasons, in my mind, that extrinsic rewards get so much attention is because developing intrinsic motivation is a complicated business, affected by many factors.  The idea that having a sunnier disposition enables one to persevere in tasks, perform at a higher level, and expect good results can be appealing.  Even this one factor--positive affect--is complex:  Which comes first, success or positive affect?; Can smiling itself affect a-ffect?; Is it true what mom used to say that acting happy when you are feeling sad helps you overcome difficult situations?; Is disposition teachable?  It seems like there is room in the research to affirm all of these, and yet there is the corollary to engagement that a healthy dose of fear has its benefits too.  Motivation and engagement is a fascinating, complicated business.

Pedagogical Framework

A pedagogical framework can be useful to administrators and to help teachers evaluate the many approaches that they may have experienced as students themselves, to see if they fit into a cognitive model.  Many former experiences don't, yet we are all influenced by that mental model of what teaching looks like.  For example, a new teacher who believes that walls filled with various aids to learning may be encouraged to change these up frequently, to maintain novelty in the classroom.  Incorporating student input into the types and rotation of such aids to understanding, as well as the generation of such, will produce a more brain-active model.

As the lead person for two buildings' school improvement plans, I think that the model could provide us with direction in general achievement gains as well as targeted gap-filling.  Students who are not achieving are rarely taking that route to make our day difficult.  Instead, there are factors over which we have control that may not be in place, leading students away from achieving at a high level.  Teachers should examine the environment, formative assessment, meaningful application, and climate of acceptance that makes sure that all students think success belongs to them. The model could be used by our SI team, to help structure reform strategies that will lead to higher achievement for all.

Brain change

Just as the ability to see within bones and cells changed the process of disease diagnosis and treatment in a medical setting, so also the ability to look into the brain should change the way that learning diagnosis and treatment in a school setting is conducted.  Bringing this science to the art of teaching ought to transform our learning spaces, our learning practices, and our results or learning output.  

While all change takes time, educational change seems to be one of the slowest to effect, in part due to the fact that every teacher and administrator has been a student and carries with him or her a mental model of what teaching and learning looks like.  The brain of each of us has changed along the way to becoming a school leader, and the new ideas that brain science brings may conflict with that prior knowledge, making it very difficult to assimilate new ideas and practices into old schema.

However, knowing now what we do about the brain's capacity for change, need for novelty, and interconnected processes, the potential for major improvements in learning are monumental, if adult learning conditions are able to be structured to affirm brain-friendly ways of knowing.  Again, however, educators may have a view of development of professional skills that involves passive taking in of information rather than active, job-embedded observation, action research, risk-taking, and sharing of results--both good and less-than-good--with a larger community.  Mental models are strong constructs, and many times, a traditional model of education is affirmed by the broader school community, again because of the model we carry in our heads that determines what school should look like.

New models exist, yet local factors may make it difficult to assimilate the results of these schools into existing schema.  So many variables are part of the term "school community" (e.g. student demographics, experience of faculty, student support, school culture and climate, availability of resources, language differences) that it can be difficult to understand how one school's successes can be replicated in another setting.  90/90/90 schools are those that have had phenomenal success not despite mitigating factors of poverty and traditional underachievement, but because of a belief that diversity is desirable, because of a will to adopt changes to capitalize on strengths, and because of a focus on results.  

Working backwards from results to classroom activities is a process that is guiding the improvement of schools in Michigan. It has the potential to do great good, in the long run.  In the short run, it is another of the many tasks that fill the inbox of busy school administrators.  I have confidence that schools will improve, that the process will take time, that the stories of dramatic turnarounds will inspire others to let go of past practices, and that student results will drive classroom instruction, bringing a whole new mental model of school to those young people who aspire to become school leaders some day.

Making Connections

Many of my students are English language learners.  As they encounter academic content, they may gain the knowledge needed to succeed  while they may lack the soft academic skills needed for long-term learning stamina. My brain has developed and grown (physically and metaphorically) through the experiences I have had, and the positive experiences I have had learning in the past have lodged in my long-term memory, for retrieval consciously or not.  Of course, this is true for all, yet many in my own student body have experiences and memories of learning that may be much less positive.  Not only may content be unfamiliar and language inaccessible, but the brain's landscape may be disinclined toward processing the school environment.  The brain's amazing ability to change due to experiences makes the work and success that happens for English language learners one of the most rewarding experiences for educators in my district.