Dan Pink's "Drive"

The following is a reaction I wrote after watching the video located here: Dan Pink's Drive

Regarding the experiments to which Pink refers and the conclusions the scientists reached, I am reminded of Ayn Rand's character John Galt who posited that one can buy the physical productivity of another human being or even "steal" that productivity at the point of a gun, but only a human being who wills the use of his or her own mind can sanction the trade of his or her mind's product. The mind cannot be forced, and apparently, neither can it be bought.

The conclusion that motivation can be narrowed down to three decisive factors - autonomy, mastery, and purpose - is easily translated to the education paradigm.

First, it is important that we give our students (by way of training, coaching, and otherwise developing our teachers to offer and encourage) some degree of choice in both the processes and products we make available in the classroom.  Myriad ways exist for integrating student choice into lesson design.  Teachers can use menus, point "score" tables with different combinations of assignments adding up to the student's chosen point goal, or group work wherein students can take on chosen roles in the group that best suit them, to name just a few. By encouraging our teachers to offer their students choice, we will increase the buy-in from students with regards to their own educations as they begin to feel and cherish the autonomy that guides that experience.

Second, it is imperative that we create a climate in which differentiated instruction is not just something that great teachers do from time to time but rather the order of the day, across the board for every child in every classroom. Differentiated instruction allows students to demonstrate their mastery regardless of their starting point. Through solid, research-based differentiation strategies, students find ways to use their strengths to accomplish goals, to practice their areas of weakness, and to accomplish the objective at the highest level of which they are capable. In this way, we give children opportunities to progress toward and demonstrate the mastery that Pink concludes is pivotal to success.

Finally, as educators, we must make the learning in our classrooms relevant to our students. In this, students will see a purpose to the learning and learn to explore their own inner purposes through the classroom work.  When we present students with lessons and materials that speak to them, we show them the purpose of our day's objective. When we go a step further and let students bring their own interests into the classroom (song lyrics during a poetry unit; receipts from a shopping trip while teaching percentages, decimals, or tax), we show them that the purposes that are important to them are the very reason that we strive to teach them to think more critically, evaluate more objectively, and produce with more investment and profit.

I can see where one might watch that video and think that it only pertained to business and the world of workplace organizational theory. Presenting it here, however, in our context, made it impossible to think about anything but how to motivate students to reach out and grasp the education we make available to them and to squeeze the very marrow out of it of their own volition.