The Myth of the Unmotivated Student

Speaker 1 Hey there. Nick here at Human Restoration Project. At some point, every exasperated teacher has thrown up their hands and repeated some version of these kids just aren't motivated. Yet schools respond to unmotivated kids with the same tool kit every single time. Carrots and sticks, points and prizes, lunch detentions, indoor recess, and on and on. Viewed through the lens of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, we start to see how the daily experience of school conspires to frustrate and thwart almost everything we understand about motivation. However, when these needs are met, achievement and well-being improve, and behavioral and emotional disengagement decrease. And it's not just for students. Teachers whose needs for autonomy are supported report greater self efficacy, job satisfaction, vitality, and less exhaustion. It seems like a no brainer. If you want your students to do better, feel better, and be more engaged, and if you want to be less exhausted, you'll want to hear what my guest today has to say about self determination theory and agentic engagement. Doctor. Erica Patel is an award winning researcher and professor of education and psychology and associate dean of research in the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. Her areas of expertise include the nature and determinants and development of motivation, education practices that support motivation and achievement, and research synthesis methods. I had the privilege of attending a workshop led by Doctor. Patel at the Student Power Summit this past spring on student motivation and engagement in culturally diverse classrooms. And I immediately knew we would need to bring that conversation to our listeners.

Speaker 2 Thanks so much, doctor Patel, for joining me today. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Nick. I'm excited to talk with you. You've spent decades

Speaker 1 looking and showing just how our current school motivation toolkit that I described backfires on us. It's a totally loaded question, but are some kids just unmotivated and why does it feel like the carrots and sticks work?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I would let me start by answering that question directly. I do not think there's such a thing really as an unmotivated kid. We have to think about it's more it's more about what people are motivated for, what students are motivated to do in particular, right? So, we all have different interests and goals and backgrounds, and those things are determined what we are motivated for and sometimes what we're not particularly motivated to do. Right? So if we get, you know, for the teacher who feels like, oh, I just had this kid who's just like not motivated. It's probably a matter of what they're being exposed to and and for the particular task or the particular set of tasks that maybe you feel like they're not internally driven to do those things. And, you know, there's still individual variation though. Right? Like some people there's gonna be tasks in school that some people are more motivated for than others. But for teachers, it's a matter of finding where the where the in is with that student or with every student. Like, what is the aspect of what we're doing that I can leverage to find so that the student can find the internal resources within themselves, find that internal motivation so that they can engage with what I'm asking them to do. And then on the other hand, sometimes the things we ask students to do aren't particularly engaging. Right? So, then it's a matter of like, maybe we need to rethink some of the things that we ask students to do in school. So that those internal motivational resources can be utilized and realized in in learning activities in school. So, I mean, the other part of the question you asked me is like, why does it feel like carrots and sticks work? Well, because when students don't have, like, internal motivation for some particular task and maybe, you know, sometimes justifiably so and sometimes maybe it's not justifiable, maybe it's something they really would need to do to accomplish goals they have. You know, we have to rely on external factors to motivate. Right? So carrots and sticks or, you know, candy and stickers or punishment or, you know, like withdrawn recess or, you know, whatever it is, calls to your parent or whatever the things teachers are going to use or just threats more often than not. It's just like, you have to know this. The threat is just bad grades and like, you know, disapproval. Those things work. They're great motivators. But that doesn't mean you've created authentic, you know, authentic engagement or long term learning. You probably have it. You you created temporary compliance.

Speaker 1 You know, if you think about the metaphor of doing your taxes, like I'm not necessarily super motivated, authentically motivated to go through all the rigmarole or pay someone to do it. Like, I am motivated in that context to not have to pay thousands of dollars in fines and fees, that's fine as an external motivator. But I suppose if we wanna have school be different than filing taxes, we're gonna have to have a different paradigm, a different way of thinking about authentic engagement and motivation at school. And that's another thing I wanted to ask is, right out the gate here, what you're describing is just a different way of approaching that problem of motivation. How can we better understand these two different ways? The one coming out of sort of the compliance and control and the external motivators,

Speaker 2 the one coming from a more authentic or agentic place. How can we understand that better? I like your example here. Let's let's talk about this example as a way to think through the difference. Right? So you do your taxes because you will be punished if you do not do your taxes. Right? And you learn what you need to know to do them. Right? Do you really like and, like, if I asked you right now about all the details of doing taxes, would you be able to tell me, like, all the like, what do you learn actually? Like, do you actually learn deeply about the whole tax process? Or do you really just, like, learn enough to get by in that moment and then essentially forget everything you need to know until the next time you have to do taxes

Speaker 1 is my question for you. Really more really more like the latter, you know.

Speaker 2 So and that's what kids are doing too. When the only thing you have to get them to learn is like your is is carrots and sticks, prizes and threats. Right? They will learn what they need to learn to get to be compliant so that they either get the thing they want or avoid the punishment that is, you know, very temporary and proximal to the task. And then they won't have engaged in a way that will necessarily create long term learning. Sometimes it happens accidentally. But if it you know, if they don't have the internal drive to engage, the quality of learning is impoverished. Right? So instead of you know, sometime you may sometimes still have to use carrots and sticks. I don't wanna be like, they're never gonna be useful. They probably will you know, you'll probably have to use them sometimes, but you should not prioritize them. The prioritize the priority should be trying to find internal ways to motivate people. So they motivate themselves. Right? So trying to find like connect new learning activities to what people are already interested in. Trying to explain why something is important. Sometimes people just understand the value of engaging and learning deeply. That can be the difference, right? Between just like doing something to get the prize or avoid the punishment versus like, oh no, I'm actually going to try to engage in this because it's important even if it's boring. Right? Because you can see the purpose of why it's important to like learn your letters in the alphabet or like basic math strategies that like in in the moment are like, oh, I don't really care about this. But if you can see the purpose of learning that, it can change your internal motivation to engage along with lots of other strategies people use like creating choices, allowing people to personalize things. Even sometimes just changing the content and topic itself. Like not everything there's not everything that is important for everyone. Right? So some personalization can can go pretty far in helping people find that internal motivation.

Speaker 1 Yeah. We're talking about those two these two different paradigms. The one that, you know, in my layman's context, I would say the the carrots and sticks of schools really coming out of this behaviorist, one of driven by, I don't know, like, the ideas of BF Skinner, putting pigeons in a box and achieving, you know, these external rewards by pecking letters and sort of centering that as our way of thinking about students in their relationship to the tasks of school. Right? For completion, you'll get these points and the accumulation of them as some kind of proxy for learning. And what we're talking about here is saying, well, it's actually like intention with the real goals of school. If we want kids to be motivated by ideas or motivated by the things they're learning themselves having intrinsic value, that kind of authentic engagement comes from somewhere else. Let's take that into, I guess, the theory part. Why why does this different idea of motivation, I guess, how how does that work? If the behaviorist one is to say like, oh, we'll get you to do the things that you don't wanna do by giving you little treats or electric shocks, How in the world does this other one actually work to do the things that we want people to do in their education or in life? Right.

Speaker 2 So you you hinted at it You or briefly explained it really in your your preamble, in your introduction. So, how do motivation theorists who study self determination think about it? They think that people have internal psychological needs. Right? So that everyone it's not just students. Everyone has this need to feel autonomous, to feel competent, and to feel related. Is and what do we mean by that? Like, by autonomy, we we want to feel like we we're doing the things that we want to do. That we whatever behavior we're engaging in is because we endorse it. It feels like consistent with who we are, with our sense of self. And confidence more obvious, like we want to feel like we know what we're doing, like we are good at something or that we can become good at something. We know how to make progress towards, like, developing mastery. And then the relatedness one also, you know, pretty intuitive. We want to feel connected with other people And, like, like, people care about us and it's mutual. We care about them. Right? So if that's we all have these needs to feel that way. And we will both seek out opportunities to feel that way and avoid situations that don't make us feel that way. And the environment can support those feelings or not. Right? And when the environment, like, when the, you know, in the classroom, when our teachers we feel like our teachers care about us and they've expressed caring and, like, they've created tasks that we feel, oh, I know how to do this. I know how to get better at this, or I'm doing a good job. Even if I've made mistakes, I'm making progress. And that you feel like, oh my, you know, I have I'm doing what I want to be doing in this classroom, in this learning environment. That's when, like, those needs are what underlies thriving, right? And feeling motivated, right? Because we're both driven to find those things and we experience those things as resources to us that support our well-being, allow us to learn, lots of context. Right? Be engaged. Okay. So the goal is a super long way of explaining. Right? Like, teachers want to be thinking about, like, what can I do that's going to help my students feel that way? And also help them not avoid the learning context I've created because the learning context does not make them feel that way. So because if if I create a lot of pressure or if my students feel disconnected from me or in other people in the class, other peers, or don't feel confident, don't know what they're feel like they never know what they're doing, they're not making progress, That's what's gonna thwart students well-being and engaging engagement and learning. And also encourage some avoidance if possible unless I have all these carrots and sticks like not allowing them to be avoidant.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Super That was a long answer. I don't know if that was good. That was the exact answer. And frankly, it prompted like a a light bulb moment for me that I'll explain here in a second. But just thinking about that, it reminds me of that old game from like the eighties or nineties called it was mousetrap. And I don't think anybody ever played it, but we love to build that little mousetrap and like watch the Rube Goldberg kind of effect go through it. That's how it feels with these systems of carrots and sticks, you know, like, there's you kinda put a student through the one side and then through all of these different, I don't know, interventions and things, and hopefully, the behavior comes out. But the I guess the moment I had there while you were connecting the dots for us was that really these are two different toolkits to meet these different needs. And in an educational context, if a goal is like human thriving, which is what you said, we're gonna need a toolkit that creates the conditions for autonomy, competence, relatedness, and structures and systems to support those things. If a goal is, I don't know, get your math homework done, maybe a tool for that is take off five points for every day it's late. I'm not saying that's good or bad or whatever, but different toolkits for different things.

Speaker 2 Why I wouldn't think about them as so separate though because Oh, interesting. Okay. You can create rewards and accountability tools in need supportive ways. When you involve the person, right? Like when the when it becomes like, I see you need you want, like, some help self regulating. Like, maybe you're like, you wanna do it, but you're not quite. Getting people involved and creating their own accountability, it can be still very need supportive. It's a way teachers typically use rewards and punishment that makes it kind you know, lean toward really controlling and pressuring. But they can be used in ways that are still need fulfilling. It's just harder.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah. It's like it's like a fine line just being conscientious and intentional about the ways that we are either frustrating and thwarting these needs or, you know, supporting them in these different ways. When you, doctor Patel, are studying this, talking to students or having them write diaries, like how do we know or how do we evaluate student motivation? Sort of off the beaten path here a little bit. But if I'm thinking, are kids needs being supported in these ways? How do I as a teacher or you as the researcher know these practices are supportive of

Speaker 2 these basic human needs? That's so interesting. Well, so the what do I do? Yeah. It's really like so I don't do, you know, I use I have my own favorite techniques, and I don't do all the possible Classified. Okay. That could be done. I'm sort of a boring researcher who uses a lot of self report and observations to measure various aspects of motivation and engagement. And unfortunately, those are the most common tools we have because we can't, you know, you just can't directly observe a concept like motivation. Right? Because it doesn't physically exist. Right? This is in people's heads. We can't mind read. So when we measure various kinds of motivation, we're asking people to tell us how they feel, and we try to create fairly precise questions that get it different kinds of motivation. So when I ask a student about, like, do you feel autonomous? Right? I describe that as being a need. We'll ask them, like, well, in this classroom, do you have a sense of freedom? Do you feel like you can do the things you wanna be doing? Do you feel like you have choices? Right? So it's mostly self report And sometimes observation, we'll observe for engagement. That's something we can observe. Like, our students, you know, seem to be on task. Are they participating? Like, raising their hands, talking in response to questions, asking questions? We really can only observe behavioral engagement, not so much other forms of engagement like emotional engagement or cognitive engagement because again those things are internal and you can't observe emotions and cognitions directly.

Speaker 1 At least not yet. We'll we'll see if there's Not yet. Somewhere in the future, some other scientist will finally get them.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure we want that technology. Do we want that? I don't know. That's a whole different podcast.

Speaker 1 That is. I'll have you back on in six months, and we'll talk about that. I'm sure Ray Bradbury has a story or, you know, somebody wrote about that way back in the day. But because one one thing that I'm super interested in is in in our work with teachers, you know, we get a lot of pushback because pedagogy is so personal and some it doesn't matter like how much evidence you show somebody, know. Sometimes they just need, I guess, the right thing at the right time. But what for you, you know, in this work? Because clearly, you know, you're so so vested and prominent in in this field. What to you is like some of the most compelling stuff that you could share with listeners about supporting these ideas and these shifts that we're talking about? So the like the most compelling evidence I have. Yeah. Like when you look at it, you're like, oh, I think this is great. Great. I think the compelling

Speaker 2 evidence is that there is the volume. Honestly, it's more than one. There's not one study that's like, finally, like now we can see this is, you know, what Erica is saying and the other hundreds of scholars that do this, you know, similar research with Erica. Puts the whole question to rest. Just this settled. The yeah. The the compelling evidence is that there are literally thousands of studies that have converged on the things I'm saying today. So I mean, my personal studies I find are really that I find really compelling as studies I've done where I've asked students to report the practices their teachers used on a daily basis. And I've had them do it for six weeks. So really long periods of time. These were high school students who can do that. And basically, every time they were in, these were science students, every time they were in science class, I asked them to tell us in like a self report measure where, you know, there's specific questions and they're just rating like, to what extent did your teacher give you choices, to what extent your teacher did this and that and the other, provided a rationale, gave you an opportunity to ask questions, various practices that are aligned with supporting needs. We have them tell us this every single class day and also tell us like, so then on that day, how engaged did you feel behaviorally, emotionally, cognitively? We don't use those words with students, but those are the kinds you know, that's the purpose of the question. And then also how you know, to what extent did you feel autonomous and competent and related? And what we find is that we can look in, there's no image. So I can't can't use my finger to describe what the data looks like, but we can see Listeners, imagine the line moving in your head. Imagine a line fluctuating from day to day. And what it looks like is on days where students report that their teachers use more practices that, you know, we know to support needs, like giving choices and rationales and question opportunities and being open to students' emotions and and all these kinds tailoring tasks to their interests. When teachers did those things, students experienced an increase in feeling like their needs were being met that day relative to the prior class day. And also, know, showed an increase in feeling engaged that particular day when teachers are using those practices. And when those practices go back down, students needs and engagement go back down relative to the prior class day. So it was very clear like how motivation fluctuates with teachers practices that are aligned with those needs. And on the flip side, we also measured like things that would be thwarting. So like on days teachers used like work that is commonly conceived as busy work or suppressed, especially suppressed students opinions or comments or questions or used a lot of commands and direction like like without opportunity for students to like be interactive with that. Those were the days when students reported more disengagement, and more just controlled motivation. Like, the reason I'm doing this is I don't have a choice. So that's some of the most compelling evidence, like, in a single study. I feel like I have other compelling evidence, though. There's been meta analyses of, interventions where we train teachers, you know, to do autonomy supportive strategies or they didn't get training. And what we see in both those interventions and the meta analyses of many, many, many interventions is that it's pretty clear like the teachers who are trained to be autonomy supportive have students who report being more engaged and have higher achievement.

Speaker 1 And I'm so glad you tagged on that outcome at the end there too because I think there is I don't know if it's just a voice that I have in my head, but knowing that that some people view this as, I guess, utopian. Right? They'd say like, oh, yeah. In a perfect system or for these students or whomever. Some people just think like if I can get students to do the task, that's the victory in itself.

Speaker 2 I think it's better than nothing, I suppose. I'm not gonna you know, I I like to be you know, have a balanced view and I think Yeah. Don't go wrong. Compliance is possibly better than nothing.

Speaker 1 Yes. It's like a stepping stone towards like a more better. Yeah. That's that's what was a more better version of motivation. But I I wanted to ask you about some of those other outcomes that are that are, I guess, longer term or even shorter term or academic related. Right? So if we say, no, the end goal is for them to really, I don't care about these other things that they just do their math homework. Right? I'm picking on math teachers. I'm so sorry. I respect all of you. You do an important thing, but you'll you'll be I'll be picking on you here for a second. But then we're saying like, oh, that's gonna undermine in the long term something else. Right? There's a trade off there as as opposed to and again, I'm maybe putting up a false binary, so feel free to to to beat that down too. But on the other hand, if we're saying, oh, we can be autonomy supportive in ways that are gonna, I don't know, lead to human thriving in these other ways, what are those other outcomes that you're looking at that supporting autonomy, competence, relatedness really do support, I guess, term, long term towards

Speaker 2 I don't know. Well, I mean, I would say one of the things that having a more autonomy supportive and need supportive approach to instruction, it will support motivation in the moment and engagement in the moment for the duration of, you know, for the duration of which that autonomy support lasts. It'll also support though students ability to self regulate. Right? So, you know, if you give people opportunities to regulate their own learning, you know, like they can't learn how to do something if they never do it. Right? Just like anything and self regulation is one of those things. So, that's one of the, I think one of the pathways to why we see long term benefits of students who are allowed to they have the autonomy support in order to develop self regulation skills that pay off in the long run versus students who are if you have a very controlling school environment and a student who has only experienced a very controlling school environment. Well then, once they're in a situation where it's now they have to self regulate themselves, whether it be in work or a new school environment, like they get to higher education, they don't know how to do it. Right? They just they don't know how to regulate their own learning and their own motivation because it does require regulation.

Speaker 1 Oh, that that was always something I brought up when I was teaching high school and we'd be in PD and I would always be ringing that gong of saying like, if we want kids to self regulate, we can't just complain about it. We have to let them practice self regulation. You get better at making choices.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You have to teach them. You create you create structures for them to, you know, learn how to do it also. Right? You provide guidance. Right? But then but you also have to let them actually do it and not just be like lots of carrots and sticks so that you do everything whenever I want you to do it.

Speaker 1 And I'm sure just like that fine line that we keep drawing between those external motivators and the autonomy supportive ones, not necessarily to the exclusion of one or the other, The same for these ideas about structure and control because I think there is this false binary around like autonomy is viewed as like a free for all. So providing autonomy just means, oh, just letting kids do whatever they want. And again, some of the skepticism creeping into my voice here, and like, really that's not it. Like, we have to provide some structure and some level of control, ideally residing in students if we're self regulating for a lot of that. But like, what what really is the difference between structure and control? How do we avoid overdoing it without this? It seems almost like, I don't know, to use a baking analogy. Right? How do you How do you bake the souffle just right without it going overboard, You're

Speaker 2 picking up on like a area that really annoys motivation researchers, right? Oh, good. I'm just I'm just This is great. It's good. Hoking at it. Annoys them in the sense that, like, this is this is the complaint. Like, I can't give autonomy support because there's no structure, and it's actually the opposite. They're not inversely related. They're actually positive relate positively related to have both support for autonomy and support for relatedness and also structure, which is support for confidence. In fact, if you don't have structure, you're probably undermining the support for the other needs as well. Right? Because what did I say? I started and you started this, the preamble with being like, all three needs are important. Competence being one of those three needs. Well, how confident is a student gonna feel in an environment they have no idea how to navigate? Because there's no like routines, there's no rules, there's no like guidance, there's no feedback, like all those things are are paramount to creating a good learning environment. Right? Not just because but they're not controlling. They don't have to be controlling. They are support for competence. Right? So the the the danger is that when teachers, like, go from being be sorry. I'm like, can't talk.

Speaker 1 Anyway Hey, it's the middle of July. I mean, it's every all bets are off. Yeah. It's the problem is when teachers go from providing structure to to leaning into

Speaker 2 providing pressure. Like creating pressure and too much control and you know, and controlling every aspect of what students do without also involving the students in creating the structure, right? So, you know, it's important for teachers to set up some groundwork, create rules, create routines, have expectations that are clearly communicated, give feedback, give guidance, but it should be somewhat interactive. Students should be able to weigh in on that structure to some extent. Right? And teachers should be able to explain the rationale for their, you know, for their initial choices so that students see how it is meant to support them. Right? How it's meant to allow them to accomplish their goals and like find their interests and develop. Right? Not just like because the teacher because it's convenient for the teacher. And, like, it's their choice and the only person the teacher thinks about is, like, their own perspective. It's I wanna also highlight so that's that's the danger, but structure is critical. And on the at the same time, there's a danger when autonomy support isn't autonomy support. It's not about giving choices and hearing perspectives and, you know, creating situations where students' interests are brought into the instruction and, like, connected to what's being learned, it is instead chaos. Right? And the absence of any structure. It's just like you do whatever you want. That's not autonomy support at all. That's not gonna make people being like, you have no guidance and like, you know, no support. It's it's not it's not gonna make people feel autonomous or competent. So Yeah.

Speaker 1 I so appreciate you plugging that competence part back in because it just makes so much sense if you're feeling competent in both navigating the environment as in I know sort of how the the structure and flow and how I am to, you know, interact even if that's not pressuring and controlling. If I have a say and there's, you know, some rules of engagement, I suppose, that's gonna help me feel better in navigating in the environment. And on the flip side of that, not to throw content out the window, but feeling competent in what you're doing in school. There's so many people who say, you know, I was a former history teacher. Like, oh, history was my least favorite subject. I was never a history person. So, like, we really come to identify strongly about, like, what we're good and what we're feel bad doing. So getting kids to feel good about content, I think, is a really valuable thing too because of that relationship to identity. The old Sun Tzu quote about, like, you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had. I guess we send our kids to the schools we have, not the ones we wish we had. But in that ideal environment, if we could if a motivational scientist like yourself, you know, could redesign school or change one facet of school overnight, what thing would you change to have it be more autonomy supportive, competency supportive, relatedness,

Speaker 2 all the wonderful things we're talking about? You already you know I hate this question because I I I wish there was a magic bullet. And there's We're gonna wave the wand. Right? I know. Well, but there's not. Even if we you know, even if I could definitely make something happen, it wouldn't solve like, there's no one thing that's gonna solve the problem. I guess I guess what I would say is that, let's say this whole system stays the same. Right? And we can't change anything structurally quickly. I guess I would wish that teachers would just, like, fully internalize this concept that we've been talking about this whole time that, like, these needs are critical to people's functioning, including their own functioning. Like, even if teachers would sincerely sit and reflect on their own experience and think about, like, well, when have I thrived? When have I felt like I've learned the most and I've done the best job? They would ultimately I have no doubt in my mind. They would come up with situations where they felt autonomous and confident and related. Right? And that other people had made them helped them feel that way or what they were working on just naturally allowed them to feel that way. And and knowing that and understanding that that applies to their students as well, and then having a practice of being like, okay, is my plan for today? Like, what I'm doing, is this are these things and my mindset and, like, the way I'm going to talk to students today in this class? Are all those things going to help students get their needs met? Right? And can I adjust any you know, like it's never going to be perfect? Some students are just going to hate math. But like, can I adjust to, have that student who hates math have a slightly better experience? Right? And even just that small change, I think would make a huge if most teachers were doing that and I know it's hard because there's a lot of pressure put on teachers. Right? And they themselves don't always have their needs being met. And, you know, principals and parents and the system of, you know, in your district or the federal government, they're all contributing to sometimes teachers feeling that way. Students And too contribute to teachers feeling that way. So I don't wanna say this is easy, but, having that practice and, like, being, like, you know, reflecting on what can I do to help students get their needs met would improve things for the students and the teachers themselves? Because what we find was that when students, you know, feel like their needs are being supported by their teachers, they're more engaged, and then teachers have a better experience themselves and their needs are being met. So it does create this reciprocal you know, this reciprocality that allows everyone in this situation to thrive better. So that would be like, that would be my main, like, if one thing were to change, that would probably improve things a lot even without changing anything else structurally. Yeah. Do you want me to think it's more than structural to change?

Speaker 1 No. I think that's again, that's exactly where the conversation needs to happen. Right? To say there there is no magic bullet. Here's where we can leverage what we've got here today. And as you were speaking about that, I even wondered if we could take this conversation up a level to, like, school leadership who if it's the case that, like, autonomy supported teachers or teachers who feel autonomy supportive are going to be autonomy supportive of students, then sort of building a system from the ground up to say if we want self regulation, if we want, you know, kids who are competent, if we wanna build communities so we feel like we're in this together and we can support each other, how can we create those models and environments for teachers to feel that they have that Mhmm. So their needs are met as well. So that way, we're hitting at the level of, right, holistic systems and structures and not teachers feeling like they have to, I don't know, they're there with the crowbar trying to, you know, lift the whole building up by themselves. It's, they're gonna feel even more burned out if that's

Speaker 2 the case too, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, we could we could just, like you said, level up. If, you know, principals and district administrators and parents also understood this concept that would and, like, are thinking about, like, what can I do? Also, to ensure that my teachers' needs are being met so that they're gonna do a great job with the students and also create the conditions that teachers are going to be able to support students' needs. That would be helpful also. There's probably a lot of changes that could happen that would allow teachers to be more autonomy supportive and need supportive in their classes. I wouldn't I would say, you know, sort of top of the list is sometimes an excessive emphasis on testing can be one of the things that teachers will say like, I don't have time to do these strategies because I'm busy trying to make sure my kids are going to test well on something. And like, I just need that. I need to just like make sure they like engage at all. We don't have time to find a pathway for their internal motivation because they need to do something right now.

Speaker 1 Right? Yeah. There's like a survival level thing. Right? I don't have time to think five steps down the chain when I'm just trying to get through this day. Right.

Speaker 2 So, I don't want you know, I also don't wanna say there's no place for testing. There absolutely is a place for testing. But, sometimes the emphasis on testing as being the main thing to strive for is is a major barrier in, helping teachers find ways to support their students' internal motivation so that they, you know, so that they can learn more and actually experience more positive developmental growth.

Speaker 1 It's the irony, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's a real catch 22. Is that the right use of that term? Maybe. Sure.

Speaker 1 Overall with You're right. Run it by our our English teachers. So again, I'm I'm having again, maybe it's just the second cup of coffee for the day, but I'm just I'm running through all these insights as you're talking and maybe there is room for, I don't know, teachers or teacher teams and school leaders to sit down and, take inventory of like autonomy, competence related, supporting structures or practices or whatever, and then the thwarting ones. And even just seeing like, hey, what's the low hanging fruit that maybe we could we could work to change, you know, like have that conversation altogether. Maybe there are some real things you can't change the state testing requirements. Like, we we can't get rid of that, but is there a way that we could, I don't know, leverage it from a different perspective to have students understand the value of, right, or have conversations with kids about how they feel about the testing so that way we're all on the same page. It's not, you know, something being done to you imposed upon you by us. Right? We can understand where we're coming from here. Maybe that won't cover all kids, but that taking that inventory could be a starting point. Yeah. I I think the most effective change is gonna happen,

Speaker 2 and come from teachers and students also and, you know, administrative working together to make a plan that suits their local environment. Right? Because they're they're the ones who know the people in that school the best and also the pressures that they face. It's, you know, it's very difficult for somebody external to just be like, these are the things you do. Right? I can give advice and that's why I I kind of like making sure that teachers when I do give professional development sessions, I try to emphasize the theoretical ideas even though sometimes teachers come in with like, I just I want some practical tips. Like, can you be practical? Can you not be an academic? And I'm like, I can. For once in your life. I can try, though it's hard for me. But but actually, I think it would be ideal if you understood like the big concepts so that you could and I'll give you my suggestions for like things I've tried personally or I've heard other teachers try but that doesn't mean those are gonna exactly work for you because you have your kids and like your situation. So it's best if you like understand the big concept of these needs and like how that how motivation works and then be reflecting on that and come up with the specifics of like how can you realize that theory in your practice.

Speaker 1 What's so cool about what you just described is like that's an autonomy competence relatedness supportive practice because it's trusting teachers as professionals and experts in their students and their community, you don't know where they're coming from and you don't know their kids. I'm assuming that teachers either are or are moving to be those things. So giving them a framework from which to think differently and then saying, oh, here's how I can do those things knowing my kids in context. Like, that's you're modeling that for them. And I just think that's such a it's it it would be ironic if you said you have to do in the controlled way, do these four things to support autonomy. And I'm gonna be doing an observation checklist and giving you, I don't know, negative points if you don't do these things on your evaluation.

Speaker 2 No, we never do that. We try to just give them information. When we work with teachers in my research team, we try to give them information about the theory and suggestions for strategies they can use. And then it's always about, like, so now you're gonna have to figure out which ones are gonna work for you given who you are and who your kids are and your classroom. And then it it we're we're not done then. Right? Like, just like in a autonomy supportive classroom and a real classroom with kids. Right? It's like, well, we're always here to help you. Like, make a plan. We'll review your plan. We'll give you our feedback based on our perspective, and we can, like, iterate on this. You can see how it works and then brainstorm what went well or what went badly with us. And that's how I think change actually happens. And if those same kinds of experiences can happen with teachers and their principals and maybe scholars like me, we we could probably make some good inroads into that are supporting student motivation and learning.

Speaker 1 Wow. Treating teachers as partners in this work, what a crazy idea. This is just wild. Thank you so much, Doctor. Patel, for taking the time to talk with me today.

Speaker 2 My pleasure. This has been so fun.

Speaker 3 Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player. Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org. Thank you.