Motivational Reflection

A search on this blog for “dopamine” will return a post about Feedback & Motivation along with most of my posts about neurotransmitters, of which dopamine is but one. In rereading my posts, I was reminded of the role of dopamine – one of the “feel good” neurotransmitters – in motivation.To quote myself:

If you’ve been following this blog then you know that the “feel good” neurotransmitters–serotonin, dopamine and endorphin–can be released by the brain in response to external stimuli such as exercise, laughter, singing, listening to music, and, perhaps the most powerful of all, positive feedback.

Positive feedback can make most of us feel good, and receiving that feedback can be motivational. In December, 2006, I applied to the Google Teacher Academy and part of the application process was to make a movie on one of two topics. I chose “Motivation and Learning” and made a Flash animation on the topic. Dopamine plays a starring role in the animation. (For the curious, I was accepted and attended the academy in February of this year. Quite stimulating!)This past Wednesday, August 29, was the opening day faculty meeting at my school, and the debut of the professional development activity that I created back in June. (The Prof Dev Series link at the top of the page will take you to a listing of the posts about that activity.)Being asked to create the activity was in and of itself a hugely motivating force. The actual time spent on creating the activity, and writing blog entries for each portion, proved to be an enormously satisfying and creative endeavor. Each day’s efforts and results motivated me to want to return the next day to continue the process. It was the very act of creating that provided my intrinsic motivation, and if there was any extrinsic motivation involved it was purely seeing the blog post and seeing the updated digital file for the activity.My next several posts will be about the activity and the following day’s speaker. For now, I am off to enjoy the glorious sunshine of this Saturday morning!

STATES of Mind & the Small Yet Mighty Amygdala

Throughout your life you have probably experienced a vast range of emotions, and on a daily basis you undoubtedly go through a variety of states. Emotions are a chemical response to an external stimulus; they are a physiological and biological happening. From what I gather, states are like moods, making them a combination of how you feel emotionally, physically, and generally. If that’s the case, it would seem we are always in one state or another, or progressing from one state to another.

With our “selves” experiencing emotions and states, you can begin to understand how feedback can be so important. According to Eric Jensen, “the longer a person is [in] a stable state, the more likely he or she is to re-enter that state at another time.” This is a clear case of the more you do something, the better you are bound to get at doing it. Learning is Heavily Influenced by Brain Chemistry, an article on the Oshkosh Area School District site, provides a clear rationale as to why and suggestions for how to manage states.

There is a part of our brain that handles our emotions. The amygdala is a small, almond-shaped nugget located underneath the hypothalamus and next to the hippocampus. While the amygdala is very small and buried deep within the center of the brain, it has a very large responsibility – to monitor your emotions and process your memories. According to Sprenger, “emotional stimulus and novelty are the two biggest attention-getters. … Active emotional engagement appears to be a key to learning.” Given the powerful combination of these tasks, it is no wonder that emotional memory is the strongest memory we have, and therefore something we would want to be able to positively manage.

Jensen provides some practical suggestions for how we can help students to become metacognitive about their emotional states by considering:

• The questions we ask students.
• The postures, movement, and activities we use and incorporate in classroom activities.
• The personal encouragement we provide.
• The attitudes and opinions we hold of them.
• The respect and affirmation we give them.
• The hobbies and habits we encourage and support.
• The learning and successes they gain.

Feedback & Motivation

Marilee Sprenger notes in her book Learning & Memory – The Brain in Action that “the single most dynamic influence on the brain’s chemistry may be positive feedback.” If you’ve been following this blog then you know that the “feel good” neurotransmitters–serotonin, dopamine and endorphin–can be released by the brain in response to external stimuli such as exercise, laughter, singing, listening to music, and, perhaps the most powerful of all, positive feedback.

This brings me to my previous post, Intentional Wording, where I suggest that the words we use in providing feedback make a difference in how that feedback is perceived and valued. Generic statements usually are devalued because they are said too often to too many people, do not contain any specific comments that cause the listener to feel they are known by the speaker, and do not provide sufficient useful information.

In Teaching with the brain in mind, Eric Jensen states that feedback must be of good quality, accurate, timely, corrective and positive. Since more mistakes in learning tend to happen when something is first being learned, there are a number of ways to provide regular feedback that will assist the learner in making changes to their learning. Some of Jensen’s suggestions (page 55) for providing feedback include:

• model building
• peer editing
• pair-sharing
• using spell-check
• student presentations with audience feedback
• using a video, audio tape or mirror
• using a checklist or rubric

Besides using words as feedback, it is not uncommon to use a reward system as a motivator or as feedback. You’ve probably heard the spiel: if you perform such and such, then we will do thus and thus, or you will receive this and that. The implication of these words is that the activity should be done in order to receive the reward. Unfortunately, such a system impedes the goal of learning, which is learning for learning’s sake. Ideally, we want to foster intrinsic motivation and not extrinsic motivation. Purdue University Calumet’s School of Education has an online textbook by Edward Vockell, Educational Psychology: A Practical Approach, that contains much useful information. In particular, I refer you to Chapter 5, which is all about motivation, or skip directly to the chapter on Intrinsic Motivation.

Returning to Sprenger’s book, she sums this up in a paragraph that says it all:

Positive feedback raises serotonin levels and is itself a reward. We need to talk more with our students and give them the feedback they need. Recognition is more powerful than rewards. Celebrating at the end of a unit gives students an emotional memory that may help motivate them for the next unit. This celebration cannot be based on test results or behavior, however–or it becomes a reward.

And I love Sprenger’s solution for dealing with students who ask her what they will “get” if they score well on something.

I simply walk up to the student, take his hand, and shake it. The issue is usually dropped.