Why Are Some Kids
Engaged and Motivated--and Others Are Not?
How
it is that two children, with the same advantages or disadvantages, can
experience such different levels of success? Are motivation and engagement
inborn, or are they cultivated? It's the "nature vs. nurture"
question all over again, and for parents and teachers at their wit's end, the
implications are serious: disengagement and demotivation in childhood can lead
to a lifelong sense of failure.
Of
course, those involved in the cycle place the blame elsewhere: politicians
blame teachers, teachers blame parents, parents blame society, and society
demands solutions from...politicians.
Maybe
there's a way out of this cycle, however. What if motivation and engagement
are actual skills that can be taught? If this is the case, it might be
possible to reverse a child's downward spiral before he gives up and resigns
himself to a life of underachievement.
The Cycle of
Disengagement
Educational
theorists have long understood that a person's environment influences
motivation and engagement, but new research is showing that the blame doesn't
rest squarely on the shoulders of impoverishment or a poor education. We've all
seen children from difficult conditions succeed, and children from advantaged
situations fail...so there must be something more going on behind the scenes.
According
to the research, the culprit is a particular learned constraint that leads to a
cycle of helplessness. In other words, significant experience of a
constraining condition can eventually lead to unconscious self-constraining.
This
certainly seems true of animals. Take, for example, our golden retriever, Bear.
Having lived in rural Tennessee most of her life, she is accustomed to lots of
space to roam. So when we arrived in Manitou Springs, Colorado for the summer,
she immediately took off to explore the town. With Manitou's strictly enforced
leash laws, we worried that she would be hauled off by animal control. So, when
Bear returned from her adventure, we attached a long leash to the front porch so
that she would be unable to venture more than a few feet out into the yard.
After several weeks Bear became accustomed to being constrained. Curiously, the
other day when I let her outside without the leash, she walked out into the
yard a few feet and plopped down. She had gotten so used to being constrained
that she actually limited her own range even when her leash was not attached.
Is
the same thing true with children? Motivation researcher Andrew Martin from the
University of Sydney conducted a series of studies to find out. His discovery
was powerful: the conditions of demotivation and disengagement can be understood and even reversed. Of great interest to our
team at Passing the Baton International, he also found that a specific
mentoring intervention can alert children to the ways in which they constrain
their own potential, and it can help them remove those constraints.
For
example, imagine that a child has been asked to complete a difficult academic
task. According to Dr. Martin, a demotivated and disengaged child approaches
the task through a five-step downward spiral:
Anxiety:
("I don't know what to do.")
Failure
avoidance: ("If I do nothing I can't fail, can I?")
Uncertain
control: ("I don't have what it takes to succeed.")
Self-handicapping:
("I can't help it that I can't succeed.")
Disengagement:
("I might as well not even try.")
The Cycle of
Engagement
In
response, Dr. Martin devised a six-step mentoring intervention in which parents
and teachers can help disengaged children retrain themselves toward engagement:
Self-efficacy:
("I have what it takes to succeed.")
- Mastery
orientation: ("I can figure this out.")
Valuing
of situation: ("I'll be a better person if I try hard."
Persistence:
("I will push through even if it is hard.")
Planning:
("I can act in a way that increases my chances of success.")
Task
management: ("I will figure out the steps to success and tackle them one
by one.")
With
an adult training them and walking by their sides, Dr. Martin found that
children experienced a statistically significant increase in their ability to
stay engaged in difficult tasks. As a result, their motivation and
engagement increased, they experienced greater academic resilience, and even
their behavior began to improve.
Going
through the six steps of motivation and engagement doesn't guarantee success,
of course, but it's good to remember that guaranteed success isn't the goal.
Rather, the goal is to convince kids that having a certain attitude and
planning in a particular way increases their odds of success. Over time their skills at problem solving improve,
which affects both their academic and social abilities.
This
is great news for parents and teachers. If your children are frustrated by
their work and ready to give up, teach them (as Stanford professor Dr. Carol
Dweck does) that their brain is a muscle that grows stronger with exercise.
Help them learn a new way of thinking about their difficulties, and walk side
by side with them as they learn to think about their abilities in a new way.
And
it's not just true for children - anyone who has become accustomed to failure
can work through these six steps to begin gradually reversing the downward
spiral and finding a greater level of success.
Patterns
of failure are not inevitable. Isn't that great news?
