Alfie Kohn is an author and lecturer on human behavior, education, and parenting. The author of eleven books and scores of articles, he lectures at education conferences and universities as well as to parent groups and corporations. In his book Punished by Rewards? he raises important and interesting ideas what motivates people, including children.
So much of motivating children, particularly in schools involves either a reward or punishment. But research is very clear in demonstrating how this doesn’t work. It may be more obvious how punishment may not work. Call them ‘consequences’ they are still punishments used to manipulating behaviour rather than working with them to achieve things. The same goes with rewards. By the virtue of them being controlling they are likely to be counter-productive in the long run. Yes kids like to have the reward itself (the money, pizza, sticker…) but no-one, including children like to have the things we desire used as levers to control our behaviour.
A classic cognitive performance test is to provide a participant a candle, box of matches, box of drawing pins and ask them to attached the candle to the wall in a way that the wax will not drip on the table. You can see the solution in the picture. Here’s the thing. Groups that were given a cash incentive for completing the test took on average 3½ minutes longer to complete it.
This is very contrary to our everyday experience in life and education. So how do you motivate people? Particularly children? The most successful form of motivation is what is called intrinsic motivation. Motivation that comes from within you, rather than extrinsic which is an external motivator (reward/punishment). Kohn also points out that a lot of educators refer to motivation when they actually mean compliance – getting the kids to do what they want them to do Motivation is something children are born with, you don’t have to bribe them show you how they can count to a thousand million or read roadsigns. But research shows that through the school system this intrinsic motivation starts to tail off sharply, usually around the time streaming and grading starts to kick in.
So what do you do instead? The characteristics of intrinsic motivation are:
- novelty
- challenges
- extend capabilities
- increase capabilities
- explore
- learn new things
- choice
- purpose
What are you struggling to be motivated in doing? Perhaps going to the gym? What is motivating you currently? How can you motivated yourself more intrinsically? You may find by introducing some of the elements above you find it easier to strive for what you want. Perhaps learning to use some new machines – so many of us get stuck in a set way of doing things, try learning new things and add some novelty.
Have fun!
