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 toolkit 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. And when that results in disengagement, we tend to blame the student instead of the environment.
However, when these needs are met, achievement and well-being improves, and behavioral and emotional disengagement decreases. 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.
Guest Information
Dr. Erika Patall 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 Dr. Patall 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.