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No physical punishment or fear or as a form of discipline at school.

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No physical punishment or fear or as a form of discipline at school.

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Child discipline - probably the least enjoyable part of parenting.

It can be frustrating, discouraging and exhausting. It is one of the most common and toughest challenges of parenthood.
Have you ever wondered: "How can we discipline kids without using punishment?"
As it turns out, using punishment is not the only way nor a good one to successfully discipline a child.

In this article, we will look at why these disciplinary measures are not good.

We will also look at 4 effective ways to discipline children, ways that can:

modify children's behavior,

develop their characters,

protect their mental health, and

help you develop a close relationship with them.

The best part?

No more nagging, yelling, threatening or punishing.

So let's get started.

What Is The Difference Between Discipline And Punishment?

Many people use discipline and punishment interchangeably.

But they are not synonyms.

Discipline and punishment are not the same thing.

Discipline is the practice of training someone to behave in accordance with rules or a code of behavior.

The word, discipline, comes from Latin disciplina ( teaching, learning or instruction), and discipulus ( disciple, pupil).

To discipline means to teach.

To teach is to show and explain how to do something. It focuses on teaching the desirable future behavior.

To punish is to inflict suffering for the past behavior.

But the difference between discipline and punishment goes deeper than just the meaning of the words.

There is also a difference in how a child's brain reacts to them.

Punishment is not just philosophically bad. It is actually harmful to brains.

Parents, we want healthy brains for our kids, right?

So keep reading and you'll find out why and how punishment is bad for our kids' brains, and what to do to discipline.

The Science Of Discipline vs Punishment

Here is a famous conditioning experiment done by Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov.

A dog salivated when it was being fed.

So Pavlov came up with an experiment. Whenever he gave food to his dogs, he also rang a bell. After repeating this procedure a number of times, he rang the bell on its own.

Now the bell on its own caused an increase in the dog's salivation.

This experiment showed that the dog had learned to associate the bell with food and a new behavior was formed. This is called classical conditioning. The bell was originally a neutral stimulus but then became a conditioned stimulus. The salivation was a conditioned response.

Based on this result, it seems natural to conclude that if a negative consequence is associated with an undesired behavior, a dog, or even a child, will eventually learn to adopt a desired behavior instead due to the fear of negative consequence.

Sounds good, right?

But wait ... does this theory apply to human children?

Well... yes... but there's more to it.

You guessed it, it has to do with the human brain.

The Human Brain

Neurologists believe that human brain is composed of three brain regions.

The three brain regions are:

Reptilian brain - controls bodily functions such as breathing, heart beat, digestion, fight or flight reaction and other survival functions without our conscious effort.

Mammalian brain - also called the emotional brain, is responsible for strong emotions such as fear, rage, separation anxiety, caring, nurturing, etc.

Human brain - also called the thinking brain, it is where learning, reasoning, problem-solving, decision-making or sophisticated thinking takes place.

So the difference between discipline and punishment is that:

Discipline invokes the thinking brain, while
Punishment impacts the emotional brain.
Fear And The Brain

How do human brains react to fear?

Let's say, you are hiking in the wild and suddenly, a large animal jumps out in front of you. What would you do?

If you are like most people, you would instinctively take a step back without thinking.

Then, on a closer look, you notice that it's only a playful and friendly dog. So you relax after making this conscious judgement.

Here's what happens in your brain:
Danger triggers an alarm (and fear) in our emotional brain without first going through the thinking brain.
Because when you're in danger, you can't afford to think!

Stress hormone, cortisol, is released to equipped the body to fight back or get away (or jump back) quickly.

This is called the fight-or-flight mechanism.

All of these happen automatically without us thinking about what to do next. This mechanism is valuable for human survival.

Get it?

Great, let's tie it all together.

Punishment And The Brain

Punishment is fear-based coercive discipline.
And frequent fear is not good to brains.
Here's the thing:

Young children, especially toddlers and preschoolers, are curious.

They are ambitious and they are fearless.

But they don't know much about safety.

They don't understand why they are expected to behave a certain way.

And they don't follow reasoning that well.

So, many parents resort to using fear, or coercive measures such as corporal punishment, time-out or berating, to discipline.

Kids get into trouble a lot and therefore, in these homes, kids are threatened by fear of punishment a lot.

Note that it is not just punishment that can cause fear. The threat of punishment can also induce fear in kids.

These parents hope that fear will condition their children to abandon the undesired behavior and adopt the desired one, much similar to a dog being conditioned to adopt a new behavior.

But the fact is:
Frequent fear can really mess up a child's brain, in many unexpected ways.
1. Mental Disorders

When fight-or-flight mechanism is invoked, the emotional brain takes over while the thinking brain goes offline.

If the event is life-threatening or causes intense fear, a special memory is created and stored separately from normal memory.

This type of special memory is etched in our brain and makes us feel miserable to ensure we will avoid it in the future.

So, fear can indeed condition us to change our behavior.

Well, here's the problem.

This type of fear conditioned memory is what underlies mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) later in life.

Because the creation of this special memory (and the recall of it) does not need permission from our thinking brain, it is hard to avoid the harmful mental effects.

To parents, being harshly punished may not appear to be a life-and-death situation that can result in intense fear.

If we're hit or yelled at, we may be able to recover quickly.

We can vent to friends, distract ourselves with other activities or stop seeing that person again.

Our world is full of options.

But for children, especially younger ones, parents are their entire world. Parents are the main or sole providers for food, safety and all other necessities.
Children have no choice when it comes to choosing their own caretakers.
It's about survival. It is life-or-death.

And let's not forget, from a child's perspective, adults are huge physically, almost like giants.

To kids, harsh treatment by caretakers can and often do feel like a life threatening experience.

2. Stress Hormone Elevation

When fear is presented frequently, the chronic elevated level of stress hormone will cause serious health problems for the child in the long run - brain shrinkage leading to memory and learning difficulties, suppressed immune system, hypertension, depression and anxiety disorder just to name a few.

3. Emotion Dysregulation

Fear is not the only emotion that can cause our thinking brain to become disconnected. Other types of stress, such as anger or rage can, too.

Because a frequently punished (or threatened to be punished) child is constantly in an alarmed state, the child's fight-or-flight reaction kicks in easily even when they face mild frustration.

When that happens, the emotional brain becomes in charge without the thinking brain's participation.

The child can react emotionally by acting out or having uncontrolled outbursts.

They cannot access their thinking brains.

They cannot effectively regulate their emotions.

Indeed, studies find that if the parenting style is harsh or punishment is the predominant type of discipline, children from these homes exhibit weaker emotional regulation and more impulsive aggressive behavior.

Emotional Regulation and self-control are some of the most important skills young children should learn. Parent's influence on the child's ability to acquire those skills is paramount.

A child also learns to modulate emotions through attuning to and observing their parents' reaction.

If parents are harsh whenever their child makes a mistake, the child learns to be harsh when others make mistakes.

Is that the lesson you want your child to learn?

Emotion is also contagious.

A punishment centric environment can induce persistent negative emotions in children making it even harder for kids to learn to self-control.

4. Bidirectional Influence

Sometimes, punishment can create a self-fulling prophecy.

While a child's negative behavior leads to parents' negative response, parents' punitive reaction also leads to or amplifies a child's externalizing behavior.
The impacts are bidirectional.
A child's behavior and the parents' responses can feed on each other and spiral into ever increasingly punitive punishment.

Eventually, the punitiveness of the punishment may escalate to abusive level.

5. Externalizing Behavior

Numerous studies have found that harsh or punitive punishments, especially those in the form of physical punishment, will lead to future aggression in children even though it may deter the child's negative behavior in the moment.

Punitive punishments are also implicated in Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD).

6. Become Bullies And/Or Victims
Children who are harshly punished may become bullies or victims of bullies themselves.
Some children also exhibit disruptive behavioral problems as they grow up.

When parents try to change behavior by fear, they are modeling how to use superior positions or strength to intimidate. They are also normalizing abusive behavior.

When these children go to school, some learn to do the same to other children who are weaker than them.

Some become victims of bullies themselves because their parents' action has shown them that such behavior is acceptable.

Sometimes, their parents' behavior has also caused the children to feel powerless in escaping or changing the situation. These children are then conditioned to feel powerless to escape if they end up in abusive relationships as grownups.

7. Worse Academic Performance

The world's longest running longitudinal Panel study started in 1968 by University of Michigan reveals the relationship between punitive discipline and children's school performance.

What did they find?

Researchers found that homes that use punitive discipline, such as punishment, lecturing or restricting activities (that are otherwise not affecting academic studies) are associated with lower academic achievement compared to homes that have warm parent-child interactions and use reasoning to teach.

The chain of psychological events that leads to the development of a disciplined child is a complex process.

Classical conditioning that works well for dogs simply does not work well for human.

Unfortunately, punitive punishment is prevalent because parents often get the immediate behavioral change they want. So they mistakenly think that it "works" but soon they will find out it doesn't in the long run.

Using harsh punishment to fear-condition kids is ineffective at best and harmful at worst.
Even when it seems to work, the child has to pay a high price.
Effective Discipline Strategies

You must be thinking:
"If we don't punish, how else can parents discipline their child and make them behave?"
For many parents, punishing is the only way they know how to discipline.

But discipline means to teach. And you don't have to punish to teach.

Imaging how effective it would be if a teacher used punishment to "teach". Right?!

Without further ado, here are 4 effective disciplinary measures that can help you adopt no punishment parenting.

#1 Be A Role Model

Have you noticed that when you make a certain move, your dog or cat will not imitate you, but your child will?

The ability to learn by observing and imitating others is unique to human.

Scientists discovered that a specific neuron circuit in the brain, called the mirror neuron system, is responsible for that capability.

This neuron system not only allows us to imitate others' action but also understand the intentions of action.

This discovery may partially explain why it is so important that parents model the way they want their child to behave.

Therefore,

if you want your child to be respectful, you respect your child.

if you want your child to be kind, you are kind to your child.

if you don't want your child to hit, you don't hit your child.

if you don't want your child to be cruel to others, you aren't cruel to your child.

etc.

(Disclosure: I get a small commission for purchases made through the links below.)
Parenting From The Inside Out
#2 Use Positive Discipline And Positive Reinforcement

Let's think about it.

And be honest.

As a kid, when you were punished, during the punishment, did you think about why you were wrong and what you had learned?

Or did you think about how mean your parent was, how you wished you were not caught, how unfair the punishment was and how angry you were?

When parents focus on using punishment to discipline, the child doesn't usually learn the right lesson. The child learns to be distrustful, vindictive and revengeful.

However, studies show that punishment is often not necessary nor is it effective in disciplining children.

But no punishment does not mean no discipline.

Researchers have found that non-coercive discipline, contingent encouragement, monitoring and problem solving are far more effective in disciplining.

Positive discipline is one example of such a no-punishment disciplinary strategy.

Positive discipline is based on mutual respect and positive instructions. It fosters learning instead of focusing on punishing.

To help children stop undesired behavior, the first step is to understand the reasons for that behavior and address the root cause.

Parents should also help kids understand the natural consequences of their own actions.

Use encouraging words as positive reinforcement to motivate children in a constructive way.

Here is an example:

My daughter used to drag through the morning routine. Every morning was the same struggle. She took her time playing while brushing her teeth. She could be brushing for 30 minutes and was still not done.

Identify root cause - I sat her down and tried to find out why she did that. After asking some questions, I found out that she really wanted to play, but I never gave her time. From the moment she woke up, I rushed her through every step ...

ok, get up now!

hurry, go potty!

hurry, eat your breakfast!

hurry, put on your clothes!

brush your teeth, fast!

are you done yet? we need to hurry ... etc.

She felt that she could only play while brushing her teeth. So the problem was she never had time to play in the morning.

Address the source of problem - we brainstormed. Eventually, we decided that I would wake her up 15 minutes early every day. So in the first 15 minutes after she wakes up, she gets the free rein to play and I won't rush her. Afterwards, she will focus on getting ready for school.

Explain natural consequence - I explained that we could not be late. So from now on, when it's time to go to school, we will leave no matter what, even if she still hasn't changed out of her pajamas, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, etc. We will just GO. That is the natural consequence.

Use encouraging words - When she was able to get everything done on time by herself, I would praise her for being efficient and making sure she wouldn't be late.

By following these steps, I was able to diffuse the conflicts and resolve the issue we had every morning.

No punishment needed. Just a natural consequence.

"What About Time Out?", you may ask.

What Is Time Out?

Time out, also known as corner time, is a psychological behaviorism strategy developed by Arthur Staats through experiments performed on his own children.

Originally, time out means time out from reinforcement.

The idea is that removing the child from the reinforcing activity for a brief period of time can discourage inappropriate behavior.

This form of discipline is especially preferred in the western countries over reprimanding, scolding or spanking. Many pediatricians and positive discipline advocates even name this as an alternative to punishment because it is not seen as a punitive measure.

Now, here is a word of caution on using time out ...

Although there are many studies on the benefits of using time out to discipline, most parents do not use time out the way it is used in research.

Many parents simply take the name "timeout" and the basic idea and then make it an alternative punishment, not an alternative to punishment.

Here are some examples of time-out used inappropriately:

timeouts that last for one or two hour.

timeouts that require the child to sit still and not move an inch.

timeouts that require the child to face the corner.

timeouts that require the child to stand in front of other kids to be humiliated.

timeouts that are carried out in closets or a locked place.

timeouts that are accompanied by scolding before and/or afterwards.

etc.

These treatments are just as harmful to children as other types of coercive punishments.

In a 2003 study at UCLA, researchers found that in brain imaging, the effect of rejection looks the same as the effect of physical pain.

So when timeouts are used as punishment by isolation, humiliation or fear, they can be just as detrimental to children's brains and mental health.
Positive Parenting
#3 Be Consistent

Being consistent truly is paramount in no punishment discipline.

In studies on parenting styles, researchers have found that authoritative parenting style is the best parenting style in almost every dimension.

One striking trait of this parenting style is that although authoritative parents do not have as many strict rules as their authoritarian counterparts, authoritative parents are extremely consistent in enforcing those rules..

If you are reading this article, you probably have already read this advice many times in other articles or blogs.
But being consistent is so much easier said than done!
Have you found yourself lapsing once in a while when you're too tired to carry out the consequence? Or when you're too exhausted to deal with another crying or whining?

In the morning, I am often tempted to change my daughter's outfit, brush her teeth and comb her hair for her. I can do these tasks so much faster. Then I won't have to listen to her screaming, crying and pleading when it's time to go and she still isn't ready.

But then, my daughter won't have the opportunity to learn to get ready by herself efficiently. She also won't experience the natural consequences necessary for her to realize that her action (or inaction) has real consequences in life.

Every morning, I need to bite the bullet and suppress my urge to take over the entire routine for her. She had to learn. And she did.

It's not easy. But it was worth it.
Be consistent. Do not lapse. ... etch this onto your sleep-deprived mind. No-Drama Discipline
#4 Reevaluate Age-Appropriateness and Parental Goals

It may come as a surprise, but effective discipline needs to be age appropriate.

I don't mean whether a particular form of discipline is age appropriate.

I mean you need to reevaluate whether your expectation of your kid's behavior is realistic and age appropriate.

Why?
Because baby brains, like baby bodies, do not come to this world complete.
They need time to develop and grow.

In the thinking brain, a region named pre-frontal cortex is needed to learn complex ideas such as discipline.

But pre-frontal cortex does not get to develop until around age 3.

So kids younger than three simply cannot comprehend the concept of discipline, at least not in a brain-healthy way.

With babies and toddlers, what parents need to do is to safety-proof their houses, closely supervise and redirect the kids' attention when they make mistakes.

But as any parent who has ever taken care of a young child can attest, it is a very exhausting job.
It IS very exhausting.
However, as a parent, you need to decide on the trade-offs.

What is more important?

Use punishment with less energy
Results: Children acting like perfect angels on the outside from a young age but troubling mental health on the inside when they grow up.
OR

Use patience with more energy (much more)
Results: Children learn when they are able to learn and grow up with healthy brains.

Which one do you prefer?

I hope the answer is clear.

Now, if your kids are older, do you find yourself struggling with your child not listening all the time?

If this happens frequently, then it's time to reevaluate why you need your kids to listen to you all the time.

Contrary to popular belief, obedience is not a virtue.

There are things everyone, children or adults, need to obey, e.g. the law, airplane evacuation instructions, order in the classroom, etc.

But there are so many other things that no one should have to obey. Because we are all individuals with our own mind and liking.

Children are people, too. They have their own minds and at times want to do things different from what we want them to do.

Ask yourself: are you parenting or are you dictating?

If your parental goals include raising a person who has an independent mind, critical thinking skill, confidence in themselves and not blindly following instructions, etc.

... basically, if you want your child to become a leader, not a follower, then raising them like a dictator won't let that happen.

So, reevaluate what are the must-obeys in your house.

Then think about whether these musts are more important than developing your child's independence and judgement, and having a close loving relationship with your child.

Simply put:
Pick your battles.
Here is an example. In our house, we have a must-obey shortlist:

safety

health

harm to others, including people, animals or properties

external constraints such as time, energy, resources, finance, etc.

Things related to the above are often must-obey in our house.

Say, if we can't afford to buy this toy, we can't afford to buy this toy. Sorry, but that's final.

But for almost everything else, we respect our child's preferences and decisions.

Ok, let's recap.
To effectively discipline without punishment:

Model good behavior.

Use natural consequences to replace punishment.

Develop your must-obey list that is age-appropriateness and meets your parental goals.

Hold a family meeting to discuss all the rules.

Agree on the natural consequences that you know you can follow through on.

Be consistent in enforcing them.

Neuroscience has taught us that life experiences during a child's formative years are critical in brain development and character building.

If we can fill our children's lives with positive learning, they will benefit and flourish for life.

References

The Evolutionary Layers Of The Human Brain

Pavlov's Dogs. By Saul McLeod

The "triune brain" is the hypothesis of neurologist Paul MacLean. By Fragua Neiva

Does stress damage the brain? By Bremner JD.

Managing Stress: Principles and Strategies for Health and Wellbeing by Brian Luke Seaward

Fear conditioning, synaptic plasticity and the amygdala: implications for posttraumatic stress disorder by Amy L. Mahan and Kerry J. Ressler

Limbic system - Emotional Experience by Srdjan D. Antic, M.D

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/fam/17/4/598/

The Role of the Family Context in the Development of Emotion Regulation. By Amanda Sheffield Morris, Jennifer S. Silk, Laurence Steinberg, Sonya S. Myers, Lara Rachel Robinson

Children's misbehaviors and parental discipline strategies in abusive and nonabusive families. By By Trickett, Penelope K.,Kuczynski, Leon

Childhood maltreatment is associated with altered fear circuitry and increased internalizing symptoms by late adolescence. By Ryan J. Herringa, Rasmus M. Birn, Paula L. Ruttle, Cory A. Burghy, Diane E. Stodola, Richard J. Davidson, and Marilyn J. Essex

Fear conditioning, synaptic plasticity and the amygdala: implications for posttraumatic stress disorder. By Amy L. Mahan, Kerry J. Ressler

The Role of the Family Context in the Development of Emotion Regulation. By Amanda Sheffield Morris, Oklahoma State University, Jennifer S. Silk, University of Pittsburgh, Laurence Steinberg, Temple University, Sonya S. Myers and Lara Rachel Robinson, University of New Orleans

The Relation between Mothers' Hostile Attribution Tendencies and Children's Externalizing Behavior Problems: The Mediating Role of Mothers' Harsh Discipline Practices. By Nix RL, Pinderhughes EE, Dodge KA, Bates JE, Pettit GS, McFadyen-Ketchum SA.

Parental Reactions to Children's Negative Emotions: Longitudinal Relations to Quality of Children's Social Functioning. By Nancy Eisenberg, Richard A. Fabes, Stephanie A. Shepard, Ivanna K. Guthrie, Bridget C. Murphy and Mark Reiser

The Child's Behavioral Pattern as a Determinant of Maternal Punitiveness. By Raymond K. Mulhern, Jr. and Richard H. Passman http://www.jstor.org/stable/1128948?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

The Contributions of Ineffective Discipline and Parental Hostile Attributions of Child Misbehavior to the Development of Conduct Problems at Home and School. By Snyder J, Cramer A, Afrank J, Patterson GR.

Immediate and Sustained Effects of Parenting on Physical Aggression in Canadian Children Aged 6 Years and Younger. By Benzies, Karen, Keown, Leslie-Anne, Magill-Evans, Joyce

Slapping and spanking in childhood and its association with lifetime prevalence of psychiatric disorders in a general population sample. By MacMillan HL, Boyle MH, Wong MY, Duku EK, Fleming JE, Walsh CA.

Friendship as a moderating factor in the pathway between early harsh home environment and later victimization in the peer group. By Schwartz, D., Dodge, K. A., Pettit, G. S., Bates, J. E., & The Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. (2000)

Harsh parenting strategies undermine learning

Parenting Practices and Child Disruptive Behavior Problems in Early Elementary School by Elizabeth A. Stormshak, Karen L. Bierman, [...], and Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group

There is no convincing evidence for operant or classical conditioning in adult humans. By Brewer, William F., Weimer, Walter B. and Palermo, David S.

The Mirror Neuron System and Observational Learning: Implications for the Effectiveness of Dynamic Visualizations. By Tamara van Gog, Fred Paas, Nadine Marcus, Paul Ayres and John Sweller

Parenting Through Change. By David S. DeGarmo and Marion S. Forgatch

Effective discipline for children. Paediatr Child Health. 2004 Jan; 9(1): 37-41.

Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion. By Naomi I. Eisenberger, Matthew D. Lieberman, Kipling D. Williams, 2003

You Said WHAT About Time-Outs?! By Dan Siegel, 2014

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Discipline vs Punishment - What's The Difference (4 Effective Discipline Strategies) - Parenting For Brain

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Child discipline - probably the least enjoyable part of parenting. It can be frustrating, discouraging and exhausting. It is one of the most common and toughest challenges of parenthood. Have you ever wondered: "How can we discipline kids without using punishment?"

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In order for textbooks to work, it's vital that the knowledge being studied is frequently tested in a variety of contexts. This ensures a holistic understanding of the concepts being studied, and prevents "shallow" textbook learning - that which is memorised a few days before the test and forgotten a couple minutes after it.

StudyTime's "stop and check" sections of their Walkthrough guides are designed to build self-awareness and active learning through frequent testing. The stop and check sections consist of one to two questions in the middle of a concept or chapter: a gentle nudge to the student to pause and reflect, and test whether they've been actively learning the information, or just mindlessly following the lines on the page: a tendency we're all guilty of.

If they struggle with the questions, and the knowledge has not yet "stuck", the reader can simply go back a few lines and try again with more intention and purpose. Studies have shown that failure first learning actually helps you to register the right answer more powerfully. Moreover, attempting to test yourself before you begin prevents you from making the same mistakes again in the future.

Too often, textbooks today fail when they're presented as a solution. Whether it's a solution to a lack of engagement throughout the year, a solution to misunderstanding or a solution to a bad teacher in class: textbooks are merely a tool that will help to support understanding - not replace it.

This is why it's vital that textbooks don't include masses and masses of information. Instead, they should be streamlined to supplement the updated curriculum or subject being studied, not stretched to include years and years of research for the student to trawl through.

StudyTime recognised this problem in the textbook market, and so designed their guides to directly correspond with exactly one subject standard for NCEA. This has a number of benefits:

1. No fluff (students can rest assured everything they read is worth learning).

2. No wasted time (the guides are small enough to be read in one sitting alone).

3. Lightweight (the guides are affordable, soft-backed and are small enough to take anywhere with no stress).

4. No assumption of prior knowledge (you can start from scratch and still be on the same page as your peers).

Textbooks might be in book form, but they're no different in their purpose from tutoring. As such, they should fulfil the same benefits as good tutoring does: support the student in learning the subject, not doing the work for them.

Teaching is only one tenant of meaningful learning. In order for information to stick, it must take into account process of learning.

StudyTime's walkthrough guides, (written exclusively by our tutors here at IE) were designed to serve the exact same benefits as tutoring - only at a fraction of the price. This means they are structured according to what we know about how students learn best, drawn and adapted from the latest research in education psychology.

A good tutor would not stand in front of a student and cite off all the information they have on the subject possible to their students, expecting them to suddenly understand and be able to regurgitate it on cue.

Instead, good tutors make strides to connect the study material to diverse contexts, and apply it to a variety of diverse scenarios. They make the student feel comfortable and relaxed by maintaining a friendly tone and keeping up a good sense of humour. They promote curiosity, dialogue and critical thinking by consistently asking questions, and encouraging their students to do the same. They experiment with a range of learning techniques, like mnemonics, diagrams, graphs, mind-maps, narratives and analogies - slowly working out what works for the individual student. But fundamentally, they make sure the students understand why their subject matters. StudyTime's walkthrough guides are no different.

When textbooks pay too much attention to information, content and facts, without thinking about how that information is consumed or engaged with - they do their audience a disservice.

Textbooks should serve as a supplementary "toolkit" of ideas, strategies, techniques, formulas, concepts and contexts to draw from in order to develop an intuitive understanding of a subject.

They should not only tell, they should also show, and perhaps, most importantly, they should ask back.

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Why textbooks don't work anymore - and what does

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In order for textbooks to work, it's vital that the knowledge being studied is frequently tested in a variety of contexts. This ensures a holistic understanding of the concepts being studied, and prevents "shallow" textbook learning - that which is memorised a few days before the test and forgotten a couple minutes after it.

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Utilizing thinking skills rather than memorization skills to solve problems. 

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Utilizing thinking skills rather than memorization skills to solve problems. 

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What is

Hands-on learning is where instructors engage with students in direct experience and focused reflection to enhance students' knowledge, skillset and values. Hands-on learning allows students to learn through experiencing something and can give them an opportunity to immerse themselves in a learning environment, while putting their acquired skills to use and building new skills.

Hands-on-learning means learning by doing. This type of learning is best suited for kinesthetic learners, who learn from examples. Hands-on learning is another term for experiential learning, where individuals immerse themselves in a subject to learn. Students learn from partaking in activities rather than passively reading a book or attending a lecture. Some examples include completing lab experiments in a chemistry class or writing a poem in an English class. This type of learning can lead to increased retention of the material and is a way for students to practice developing their problem-solving skills.

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Hands-on Learning Definition and Meaning | Top Hat

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What is Hands-on learning is where instructors engage with students in direct experience and focused reflection to enhance students' knowledge, skillset and values. Hands-on learning allows students to learn through experiencing something and can give them an opportunity to immerse themselves in a learning environment, while putting their acquired skills to use and building new skills.

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The teacher’s job is to nurture and support children’s innate curiosity and desire to learn, fostering internal motivation rather than reliance on external rewards.

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The teacher’s job is to nurture and support children’s innate curiosity and desire to learn, fostering internal motivation rather than reliance on external rewards.

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The Children's School | Progressive Education

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Progressive education honors children's voices, demonstrates the joy in learning, and advances each student in their abilities and skills.

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Curriculum centers on the needs, experiences, abilities and interests of students

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Curriculum centers on the needs, experiences, abilities and interests of students

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◀ Back to Criteria

Criterion 14

Minimal Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: Big Day for PreK™ does not describe the importance of or offer guidance on how to plan learning experiences that build on individual children's interests. Learning experiences are pre-planned, and there is no guidance on how to modify them based on individual children's interests.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The curriculum provides a variety of strategies to make learning experiences responsive to individual children's strengths and needs. For example, each "Big Learning Experience" provides modifications for 3-year-olds as well as enrichment modifications. Additionally, the learning activities offer "Responsive Instruction: One-to-One Follow-Ups," which provide suggested scaffolding strategies for children with particular needs.

Moderate Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: The curriculum provides minimal guidance on how to plan learning experiences that build on children's interests. The Teacher's Handbook explains that children may have specific interests and encourages teachers to "pick up on these interests and use them to engage children." In addition, some learning center and lesson instructions reference children's interests. For example, Unit 3 instructions for the Show What You Know Center suggest including materials needed to make the toys children are interested in. The Unit 4 (Exploring Museums) Learning Overview states that the unit is designed to address topics children find interesting. Teachers may add these topics to the unit or replace the unit's focus on paleontology or medieval times. Even so, lessons (e.g., Welcome and Read Aloud, Small Group) are pre-planned and there is no guidance on how to modify them based on children's individual interests.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The curriculum provides a variety of strategies to make learning experiences responsive to individual children's strengths and needs. Small Group lessons include checkpoints, and other lessons offer reminders for teachers to pay attention to individual children's progress toward learning goals (e.g., take note of children's abilities to identify emotions). The Units offer ways to individualize through "More Support" and "More Challenge" prompts for Small Group lessons. In addition, Welcome and Read Aloud lessons suggest ways to individualize for children who need more support (e.g., have them think about what helps them feel better when they are sad or upset, and then extend that idea to helping a friend).

Minimal Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: The Handbook discusses the importance of child-initiated activities and provides some information about following children's interests during informal conversations and learning center time. However, the curriculum does not provide guidance on how to plan learning experiences that build on individual children's interests.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The Handbook provides general guidance on how to make learning experiences responsive to individual children's strengths and needs. For each domain, the curriculum includes examples of scaffolding for children who need higher and lower levels of support. It states, "Although the examples below demonstrate only high support and low support, effective teachers adjust support along the continuum to meet the needs of individual children."

Full Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool provides guidance on how teachers can incorporate children's interests into the curriculum's interest areas and learning activities. For example, the "Choice Time" hour each day allows for children to make choices daily to engage with materials and activities that are of interest to them. While the Teaching Guides have pre-planned activities for the first three weeks of each study, teachers are invited to plan the fourth week of the investigation based on children's interests and needs.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: Volume 1: The Foundation provides an overview of how individualization is central to the curriculum's philosophy. Teachers are encouraged to "Observe-Reflect-Respond," which is one way of responding to children's individual strengths and needs. Furthermore, the Intentional Teaching Cards provide specific scaffolding strategies to support children at different levels of a developmental progression. This allows teachers to individualize learning experiences to meet children's strengths and needs.

Minimal Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: Curiosity Corner explains that Plan & Play scenarios are merely suggestions, and teachers may add their own or extend popular scenarios from previous weeks to best suit children's needs. However, the curriculum does not offer any guidance on how to plan learning experiences that build on the interests of individual children. Learning experiences are pre-planned and there is no guidance on how to modify them based on individual children's interests.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: Curiosity Corner provides minimal guidance on how to make learning experiences responsive to individual children's strengths and needs. Each Learning Lab includes a facilitation guide that contains questions that can be asked to engage children at any developmental level. However, the curriculum lacks guidance on how to modify most learning experiences (e.g., Clues & Questions, STaR, Math Moments) to be responsive to individual children's strengths and needs.

Minimal Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: Foundations for Learning states that the teacher's role is to set out a wide variety of materials in different learning centers throughout the day, setting the stage for children to discover, choose, and carry out activities that hold the greatest interest to them. However, Learn Every Day™ lacks guidance on how to plan learning experiences that build on the individual interests of children.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The curriculum describes the importance of offering learning experiences that are responsive to children's strengths and needs. For example, Foundations for Learning explains that children have different ability levels, interests, learning styles, and backgrounds that impact how they learn, and children need a lot of activity choices with varying degrees of difficulty. In addition, the curriculum suggests that small group activities are opportunities to individualize instruction. Even so, the curriculum lacks specific guidance on how to make learning experiences responsive to individual strengths and needs.

Moderate Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: Galileo® Pre-K describes the importance of planning learning experiences that build on children's individual interests. For example, the "Positive Approaches for Preschool Learning"section of the Curriculum Guidebook suggests "teachers can differentiate interest centers by encouraging students to participate in those centers that address their particular interests, talents, or questions." It recommends children have daily opportunities to engage in child-initiated activities. The curriculum promotes teachers' use of observation to document children's interests and to plan learning experiences. Even so, the curriculum provides no guidance on how to plan learning experiences based on individual children's interests.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: Foundational to Galileo® Pre-K is the use of children's assessment data to plan learning experiences. For example, teachers input ongoing child assessment data into the G3 Assessment Scales, and the online system selects learning experiences based on the children's strengths and needs. Additionally, the curriculum provides general guidance on how to make the curriculum's learning experiences responsive to individual children's learning styles. For example, the Curriculum Guidebook suggests that teachers use scaffolding, such as language, hints, and visual aids, for children who need greater support. The "Enrichment" sections of a few activity plans also include some individualization based on children's strengths and needs. For example, children who are able to duplicate an "AB" pattern are offered the opportunity to create their own patterns. However, further, specific guidance on how to make learning experiences responsive to individual strengths and needs is not embedded throughout the curriculum materials.

Full Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: The HighScopeapproach emphasizes the importance of teachers observing for and planning based on children's interests. Furthermore, the plan-do-review process, which is an integral part of the curriculum, allows for children to make choices daily to engage with materials and activities that are of interest to them.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The HighScope approach emphasizes the importance of teachers observing, planning, and scaffolding based on children's developmental levels. For each KDI, the curriculum provides specific scaffolding strategies for children at various levels of development.

Moderate Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: The DLM Research and Professional Development Guide discusses the importance of child-initiated activities, but the curriculumdoes not offer guidance on how to plan learning experiences that build on individual children's interests. Learning experiences are pre-planned, and there is no guidance on how to modify them based on individual children's interests.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The curriculum provides a variety of strategies to make learning experiences responsive to individual children's strengths and needs. For example, "Differentiated Instruction" offers suggestions for modifications to activities based on children's strengths and needs (e.g., "Enrichment" for children who have already mastered certain skills and concepts and "Extra Support," "Accommodations for 3's," and "Special Needs" for children who may need further scaffolding throughout the activity).

Full Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: World of Wonders offers guidance on how to plan learning experiences that build on individual children's interests. Within the learning experiences themselves, teachers are prompted to learn from children if they have prior experiences with the topic. In addition, the curriculum includes templates for teachers to create their own mini-units based on children's interests. Teachers are also invited to think about other thematic projects or about a center based on children's interest.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The curriculum provides specific, embedded guidance that is responsive to individual children's strengths and needs. The differentiated text boxes modify the learning experiences for younger children and include additional support (e.g., tracing letters, giving time for experimentation with pencil grasp and body position). In addition, some of the descriptions within the learning experiences and centers include prompts to challenge children who have mastered a basic skill set (e.g., prompting children to retell key story events to a partner and share personal responses).

Minimal Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: OWL does not offer guidance on how to plan learning experiences that build on individual children's interests. While children may select their center time activities, all learning experiences, including centers, are pre-planned, without guidance on how to modify them based on individual children's interests.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The curriculum provides a variety of strategies to make learning experiences responsive to individual children's strengths and needs. For example, Teacher Guides provide ways to individualize learning through "Make It Easier!" and "Make It Harder!" prompts for different lessons across the units.

Full Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: Pre K for ME consistently provides guidance on how teachers can be responsive to children's interests within learning activities. During learning center time, children can choose centers freely and move between activities (e.g., discovery/sensory table, art studio, writing, and drawing). In the units, specific prompts provide opportunities for children to explore based on their own interests. For example, the curriculum provides daily opportunities to create and act out stories based on child interests and topics within the curriculum.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The curriculum provides a variety of strategies to make learning experiences responsive to individual children's strengths and needs. For example, the Adaptations for Additional Challenge prompts provide modifications such as sorting and identifying geometric shapes by more than one attribute. In addition, some prompts include guidance for children who may need more support (e.g., providing sentence frames).

Moderate Evidence

Individualization Based on Interests: Tools of the Mind® provides children with daily opportunities to play in classroom centers of their choice (e.g., Free Choice, Mystery Game Block) and to choose their activities and materials. Children also engage daily in Make-Believe Play. As the year progresses, teachers are instructed to choose play themes that follow children's interests and reflect the community in which the children live. Children invent new actions and scenarios, play different roles, use their imagination to invent props, and expand play themes based on their interests. However, other activities in the curriculum are pre-planned (e.g., Story Lab activities, Math and Science activities), and there is no guidance in on how to plan learning experiences based on the interests of individual children.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The curriculum offers specific guidanceembedded throughout its materials on how to make learning experiences responsive to individual children's strengths and needs. All activities are designed so that children at different levels of development can participate and learn. Within each activity, "Zooming in on the ZPD" provides scaffolds to support children who need extra support. Each activity also includes "Up the Challenge," providing ideas for making the activity more challenging, either by making it more difficult cognitively or by increasing self-regulation demands on children.

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Individualization Based on Interests, Strengths, and Needs | ECLKC

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◀ Back to Criteria Criterion 14 Minimal Evidence Individualization Based on Interests: Big Day for PreK ™ does not describe the importance of or offer guidance on how to plan learning experiences that build on individual children's interests. Learning experiences are pre-planned, and there is no guidance on how to modify them based on individual children's interests.

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Developing human potential by educating the whole child and fostering internal motivation.

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Developing human potential by educating the whole child and fostering internal motivation.

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Bored or stressed, they are simply our kids.

Many traditional public schools do not offer much in terms of autonomy nor allow students to learn at their own speed.

The regimens often undermine students' inclination to pursue topics that interest them and deeply engage them.

The grading systems used in most schools further discourage them from self-directed learning that is borne out of enjoyment of the process and passion for the subject matter.

Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.

Anthony J. D'Angelo

A comprehensive understanding of motivation is desperately needed to:

Promote engagement in our classrooms

Foster the motivation to learn and develop talent

Support the desire to stay in school rather than drop out

Inform teachers how to provide a motivationally supportive classroom climate

This article addresses major topics in the science of motivation as it applies to educational settings and the process of learning in general, and includes examples of motivational assessments for teachers and classroom interventions for students.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free. These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques to create lasting behavior change.

Motivation in Education

We all come into the world with a natural curiosity and a motivation to learn, yet some lose those abilities as they grow older. Many factors shape our individual inclinations toward the process of learning, and education is a critical context that can influence our later attitudes toward the acquisition of knowledge and growth.

True learning is a lifelong process. But to continuously achieve, our children must find it enjoyable and rewarding to learn so they can develop a sustained level of motivation necessary for long-term achievement.

Curiosity and motivation to learn are the forces that enable students to seek out intellectual and experiential novelty and encourage students to approach unfamiliar and often challenging circumstances with anticipation of growth and expectation to succeed.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

In the context of education, students' levels of motivation are reflected in their engagement and contribution to the learning environment.

Highly motivated students are usually actively and spontaneously involved in activities and find the process of learning enjoyable without expecting any external rewards (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). On the other hand, students who exhibit low levels of motivation to learn will often depend on the rewards to encourage them to participate in activities they may not find enjoyable.

According to Malone and Lepper (1987), seven factors drive motivation:

Many of these are present in games, but more on that later. Current trends in educational psychology draw attention not only to cognitive development, but also the students' motivation and preference as the fundamental factors in fostering effective learning and achievement.

Lack of motivation, a significant barrier to academic success that exhibits itself through feelings of frustration and annoyance, hinders productivity and wellbeing in the long run. Several factors influence the motivational level in learning, such as the ability to believe in the effort, the unawareness of the worth, and characteristics of the academic tasks (Legault, Green-Demers, & Pelletier, 2006).

The following section discusses intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and other related theories in learning motivation.

Theories of Motivation in Education

Motivation itself has a vast scope, and several motivational theories are relevant to the learning domain. The following theories contribute to the essential outcomes of the learning process without being dependent on any other theories in the education domain:

1. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation theory

2. Self-determination theory (SDT)

3. The ARCS model

4. Social cognitive theory

5. Expectancy theory

Self-determination theory and the ARCS model are widely utilized in the motivation domain for learning discipline. The implementation level of theories such as social cognitive theory and expectancy theory is still in initial stages but can significantly contribute to understanding motivation in learning as well as other aspects of life where motivation is crucial.

1. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation theory

According to Ryan and Deci (2000), intrinsic motivation defines an activity done for its own sake without the anticipation of external rewards and out of a sense of the sheer satisfaction it provides.

The right level of challenge, adequate skills, sense of control, curiosity, and fantasy are some key factors that can trigger intrinsic motivation. When combined with willpower and a positive attitude, these elements can help sustain motivation over time.

Some studies show that intrinsic motivation and academic achievement share significant and positive correlates (Pérez-López & Contero, 2013). Intrinsic motivation can direct students to participate in academic activities to experience the fun, challenge, and novelty away from any external pressure or compulsion and without expectations of rewards (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.

Pele

In contrast, extrinsic motivation describes activities students engage in while anticipating rewards, be they in the form of good grades or recognition, or out of compulsion and fear of punishment (Tohidi & Jabbari, 2012).

Motivation can be cultivated extrinsically at the initial stage, particularly when it comes to activities that are not inherently interesting, as long as the ultimate goal is to transform it into intrinsic motivation as the learning process unfolds. The rationale for this has to do with a short shelf life and a potential dependence on rewards.

Although extrinsic motivation can initially spark a high level of willpower and engagement, it does not encourage perseverance and is challenging to sustain over time due to hedonic adaptation. Finally, external rewards or compliments undermine the possibility that students will engage in the educational activities for their own sake or to master skills or knowledge.

Nevertheless, both types of motivation have their place in the process of learning. While intrinsic motivation can lead to greater levels of self-motivation, extrinsic motivation often offers that initial boost that engages students in the activity and can help sustain motivation throughout the process of learning over time (Li & Lynch, 2016).

It is no easy undertaking to guide students to learn how to be highly motivated, face challenges, understand the process, and be able to apply their newfound knowledge in real-life circumstances.

2. Self-determination theory

Self-determination theory addresses intrinsic and extrinsic motivation further. It explains it in terms of self-regulation, where extrinsic motivation reflects external control of behavior, and inherent motivation relates to true self-regulation (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

SDT tells us that intrinsic motivation is closely related to the satisfaction of basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and illustrates how these natural human tendencies relate to several key features in the learning process.

Here, autonomy is related to volition and independence, and competence is associated with the feeling of effectiveness and self-confidence in pursuing and accomplishing academic tasks. Relatedness provides the feeling of safety and connectedness to the learning environment, where students' academic performance and motivation are enabled and enhanced (Ulstad, Halvari, Sorebo, Deci, 2016).

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought out for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

Abigail Adams

Self-determination theory evolved out of five other sub-theories that further support its claims.

First, the cognitive evaluation theory, which explains the effects of external consequences on internal motivation, draws our attention to the critical roles autonomy and competence play in fostering intrinsic motivation by showing how they are vital in education, arts, sports, and many other domains.

Second, organismic integration theory and causality orientations theory further explain motivation as occurring along a spectrum, from an amotivational stage toward motivational states where the focus is on competence.

Next, basic psychological needs theory, which classifies human needs into three primary psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness), shows how the satisfaction of those needs is crucial for engagement, motivation, healthy progress, and wellbeing among students (Gagné & Deci, 2014).

Finally, goal contents theory shows the relationship between fundamental needs satisfaction and wellbeing based on intrinsic and extrinsic goal motivation, where intrinsic goals lead to greater achievement and better academic performance, especially within the educational environment (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

3. ARCS model

ARCS is an acronym for attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction. The ARCS model is an approach to instructional design that focuses on the motivational aspects of the learning environment by addressing four components of motivation (Keller, 1987):

1. Arousing interest

2. Creating relevance

3. Developing an expectancy of success

4. Increasing satisfaction through intrinsic and extrinsic rewards

The ARCS model stresses capturing students' attention as critical to gaining and sustaining their engagement in learning and shows how this can be accomplished through the use of attractive and stimulating media or learning material that is relevant to their experiences and needs.

It recognizes how confidence is related to students' anticipation of success and how positive feelings about the learning process lead to greater satisfaction from the acquisition of knowledge (Keller, 2008).

4. Social cognitive theory

Social cognitive theory (SCT), implemented today in various domains from education and communication to psychology, refers to the acquisition of knowledge by direct observation, interaction, experiences, and outside media influence (Bryant & Zillmann, 2002).

It rests on the assumption that we construct meaning and acquire knowledge through social influence, from daily communication to the use of the internet, and explains the relationships between behavior, social and physical environment, and personal factors.

SCT illustrates how people gain and maintain several behavioral patterns and provides basic intervention strategies like interactive learning, which allows students to gain confidence through practice (Bandura, 1989).

5. Expectancy theory

Expectancy theory, originally developed to explain how the work environment can motivate employees, strives to show the relationship between the expectations of success and anticipation of rewards, and the amount of effort expended on a task and how it relates to overall performance (HemaMalini & Washington, 2014).

Simply put, expectancy theory explains motivation as a choice based on the expectation of the results of selected behavior.

The expectancy theory explains motivation in terms of reasons we engage in specific behaviors, where we expect that effort will lead to better performance, which in turn will lead to valued rewards.

In an educational context, this would translate into students' perception that their effort will lead to good or better performance (expectancy), their belief that their performance will lead to achieving the desired goal and rewards (instrumentality), and lastly, that the value of the rewards is satisfactory and supports the goals of the student (valence; Bauer, Orvis, Ely, & Surface, 2016).

Motivation and Learning

If our kids are motivated, they learn better and retain more of what they learned. Although this sounds obvious, the reality is more nuanced, and the research shows that not all motivations are created equal.

The literature on goal achievement recognizes two primarily and distinctly different types of goals: mastery and performance. Some of our children are driven to master materials, skills, and develop their competence; others strive to perform well in comparison to others (Dweck, 1986; Nicholls, 1984).

Mastery goals and performance goals represent the same overall quantity of motivation, but they are qualitatively distinct types of motivation.

Murayama and Elliot (2011) conducted a series of behavioral experiments to examine how these two different types of motivation influence learning.

In their study, participants were engaged in a problem-solving exercise and received a surprise memory test related to the task. Those in the mastery goal condition were told that the purpose of the task was to develop their cognitive ability, while those in the performance goal condition were told that their goal was to demonstrate their ability relative to other participants.

Members in the performance goal condition showed better performance on an immediate memory test, but when the memory was assessed one week later, those in the mastery goal condition outperformed those who were motivated by competition.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Mahatma Gandhi

Although the results of the study clearly indicated that performance goals help short-term learning and mastery orientation facilitates learning over time, Murayama felt this needed further testing.

A longitudinal survey data on more than 3,000 children in grade 7 in German schools were analyzed using latent growth curve modeling and showed that items that focus on the performance aspect of learning, where the students said they worked hard in math because they wanted to get good grades, predicted a higher immediate math achievement score.

Similarly, items focusing on the mastery aspect of learning, where students reported investing a lot of effort in math because they were interested in the subject, predicted the growth in math achievement scores over three years (Murayama, Pekrun, Lichtenfeld, & vom Hofe, 2013).

This convergent evidence that mastery-based motivation supports long-term learning, whereas performance-based motivation only helps short-term learning and the underlying mechanisms of this time-dependent effect of motivation is currently being examined with some additional neuroimaging and behavioral experiments (Ikeda, Castel, & Murayama, 2015; Murayama et al., 2013).

Motivation and Creativity

Our students' ability to generate novel and useful ideas and solutions to everyday problems is a crucial competence in today's world and requires high levels of motivation and a good dose of creativity.

Although creativity is to some extent tied to personality traits, it is also influenced by the supportive aspects of the student's environment, sense of mastery of the domain or medium the student is working in (which may or may not influence self-efficacy), and finally by levels of motivation and their intrinsic versus extrinsic characteristics.

Thanks to Theresa Amabile (1996), who studied the creativity of commissioned versus non-commissioned artistic works, we know a lot about the link between intrinsic motivation and creativity.

Csíkszentmihályi, who studied creative and accomplished people for over a decade, concluded that genuinely creative people work for work's own sake, and if they make a public discovery or become famous, that is a bonus. What drives them, more than rewards, is the desire to find or create order where there was none before.

When talking about students in school, protecting and supporting intrinsic motivation is one important thing we can do to promote creativity and learning. Although we may want to quickly conclude that the higher the student's intrinsic motivation, the more creative and original they will be, the real explanation of the relationship between motivation and creativity is more difficult than many overly optimistic accounts have claimed.

Real creativity can only emerge once we have mastered the medium or domain in which we work. An idea or product that deserves the label 'creative' arises from the synergy of many sources and not only from the mind of a single person, according to Csíkszentmihályi.

Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.

William Pollard

Creativity is an important source of meaning in our lives, as all the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity. The genuinely creative accomplishment is seldom the result of a sudden insight but comes after years of hard work.

Our educational system emphasizes the use of logic, where one correct statement proceeds to the next and finally to the right solution. While this approach is sufficient most of the time, when we have a particularly tricky situation, it may not give us the leap forward we need.

Thinking outside of the box, or what Edward de Bono (1967) calls lateral thinking, can be used when we have exhausted the possibilities of normal thought patterns.

It is not enough to have some awareness of lateral thinking, de Bono (1995) asserts; we have to practice it. Most of his books consist of techniques to try to get us into lateral thinking mode. Here are a few we can test in our classrooms:

Generating alternatives - To have better solutions, you must have more choices to begin with.

Challenging assumptions - Though we need to assume many things to function normally, never questioning our assumptions leaves us in thinking ruts.

Quotas - It helps to come up with a certain predetermined number of ideas on an issue. Often, it is the last or final idea that is the most useful.

Analogies - Trying to see how a situation is similar to an apparently different one is a time-tested route to better thinking.

Reversal thinking - Reverse how we see something - that is, see its opposite - and we may be surprised at the ideas it may liberate.

Finding the dominant idea - Not an easy skill to master but extremely valuable in seeing what matters in a book, presentation, conversation, and so on.

Brainstorming - Not lateral thinking itself, but provides a setting for that kind of thinking to emerge.

Suspended judgment - Deciding to entertain an idea just long enough to see if it might work, even if it is not attractive on the surface.

Creativity results from a complex interaction between a person and their environment or culture. Real learning and creativity require student engagement, which involves a combination of motivation, concentration, interest, and enjoyment derived from the process of learning itself - qualities that are essential to flow (Shernoff, Csikszentmihalyi, Shneider, & Shernoff, 2003).

Motivation at Its Best: The Flow Classroom

Can our kids achieve in schools without stress and burnout? Yes, by learning to cultivate flow.

Fostering student engagement that leads to the experience of complete absorption in the task at hand, also known as the state of flow, can bring about deeper learning. Although not an easy task, teachers can infuse more flow into their classrooms.

It requires that students connect to their goals, specifically intrinsic goals. Goals such as social connection, self-acceptance, and physical fitness are growth oriented.

In sharp contrast to goals that are driven by judgment or approval of others, intrinsically motivated pursuits are those that are inherently satisfying because they often are likely to satisfy innate psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

Shernoff et al. (2003) followed students through different classes to observe what kinds of activities and teacher instruction produced the most flow.

Interestingly, they found that achieving flow was not determined by any particular type of activity but rather by the mix of challenge and support teachers provide. The study showed that student engagement was high when they were appropriately challenged, which usually involved complex goals and high teacher expectations as well as support and positive interactions (Shernoff et al., 2003).

Shernoff et al. (2003) observed that when teachers pointed out the relevance of lesson goals to students' lives by centering lessons on real-world problems, made sure students had the skills and materials to reach these goals, monitored progress, provided feedback, and developed good rapport with students, their students experienced more flow and learned better.

In addition, teachers who modeled enthusiasm for the material and used humor were particularly engaging to students, even when lecturing. Shernoff believes that learning is about desire rather than capacity and argues that today's schools, with their focus on grades, fail to take advantage of kids' intrinsic desires to learn.

If we want kids to get excited about learning and commit to deeper study, they need to be motivated to learn and enjoy the process.

Shernoff (as quoted in Suttie, 2012)

The researchers found that students were most engaged in school while taking tests, doing individual work, and doing group work.

Students were less likely to experience flow when listening to lectures or watching videos. Particularly when the activities were under their control and relevant to their lives, students reported being most engaged and in a better mood.

Shernoff et al. (2003) concluded that teachers could encourage more flow in their classrooms through lessons that offer choice, are connected to students' goals, and provide both challenges and opportunities for success that are appropriate to students' level of skill.

Shernoff et al.'s (2003) findings seem to suggest that the chance students will experience flow will often be determined by the person standing at the head of the class. Students' engagement fluctuates a great deal depending on their teachers. The key, says Shernoff, is for teachers to make learning goals attainable based on the students' skill levels and to encourage student autonomy while providing positive feedback.

"Teachers would be better off thinking about how they can affect the learning environment and play more of a coaching role instead of thinking about what information they are going to impart," says Shernoff (Suttie, 2012) and suggests the following approach to the cultivation of flow in the classroom:

1. Challenge without overwhelming. An activity must be challenging at a level just above students' current abilities. If a challenge is too hard, students will become anxious and give up; if it's too easy, they'll become bored. It's crucial to find the sweet spot. Students may require a lesson to be scaffolded, breaking it down into manageable pieces, to find the right balance.

2. Create interest through making assignments relevant to students' lives. Encourage students to discover the relevance for themselves, as interest in the subject is a fundamental part of flow.

3. Support their autonomy and encourage choice. When students are given an opportunity to choose their activities and work with autonomy, they will engage more with the task.

4. Provide structure by setting clear goals and give feedback along the way. Students help define their goals and remain aware of how or whether their efforts are moving toward the goal.

5. Foster positive relationships by valuing their inputs.

6. Cultivate deep concentration and foster a feeling of complete absorption by limiting distractions and interruptions.

7. Create an experience through hands-on exercises through making things, solving problems, and creating artwork. Stay away from lectures or videos.

8. Model enthusiasm for the subject, make them laugh, and speak their language.

All of this resonates with Csíkszentmihályi's original research on flow, which found that there must be a good balance between the level of challenge required by the activity and the skills of the person engaged in it.

The flow theory explains how, when the challenge is too great, the student can become anxious, and if the task is too easy, the student will be bored. Csíkszentmihályi's findings also show that to cultivate flow even further, the goal of the activity should be clear and feedback ongoing, so that students can adjust their effort over time.

Shernoff et al.'s (2003) findings were further validated by Ellwood and Abrams (2018), who studied specifically how the promotion of flow experiences can foster enhanced student motivation and greater achievement outcomes.

Clearly defined goals, immediate feedback, and most importantly, the perfect balance between challenge and skills led to greater motivation and ultimately greater achievement. Incorporating the experience of flow was positively related to the success of inquiry-based science (Ellwood & Abrams, 2018).

Motivation and What Gets in the Way

The discussion of student motivation, especially for those who may be reluctant or resistant, would not be complete without understanding the mechanics of what gets in the way.

The learned helplessness theory relies on the components of contingency, cognition, and behavior to explain the motivational dynamics underlying helplessness. The theory of learned helplessness explains behaviors characteristic of lack of self-efficacy and expectancies of no or low control over future outcomes (Reeve, 2018).

It is the opposite of the sense of competence and autonomy and is often representative of low self-esteem and a pessimistic worldview.

Be curious, not judgmental.

Walt Whitman

Its three components explain the mechanism for how helplessness is learned and how it often leads to depression. The contingency component explains the link between action taken by a person and its subsequent outcome, ranging in degrees of objective control available to a person.

The cognition component of learned helplessness refers to our cognitive interpretations, our beliefs, and the associated feelings that amount to a personal sense of control. In the case of learned helplessness, these are characterized by loss of hope, resignation, loss of self-esteem, and fear of global implications of failures and negative events.

Here, the pessimistic attribution styles distinguish those who believe that adverse outcomes were caused by them, that they will endure, and that they cannot be changed or brought under control from those who have an optimistic attitude toward bad outcomes and see them as caused by the environment, temporary, and changeable.

These attributions, in turn, affect motivation and can exhibit themselves in case of learned helplessness through lack of effort in future undertakings, procrastination, and in some instances, through the avoidance of similar situations altogether (Reeve, 2018).

Motivational Resources for Teachers

As teachers, we want to be remembered as the ones who encouraged and pushed our students to reach new heights.

Unfortunately, lollipops and stickers will probably not do the trick. This requires us to periodically reflect on what is already working so we can tweak our existing motivational strategies and maybe even pick up a few new ones along the way.

It's possible to help all students, even the most reluctant and resistant, to choose to invest in their learning. The motivation checklist below, courtesy of Mindsteps (2011), is a great way to evaluate where you can improve motivation levels in your classroom, and together with the reflection exercise, these can serve as a roadmap for the future.

Motivation checklist

Build a classroom worth investing in

I have created a classroom that is most conducive to the way my students learn best.

I am clear about what currencies the lesson demands.

I have made sure that the lesson does not privilege my currencies as the only acceptable forms of currency.

I have worked out ways to make explicit the currencies required by the lesson.

I have examined my classroom to make sure that I am not unintentionally creating barriers to investing.

I have removed all classroom barriers to investing.

I am helping students who do not have the required currencies or a viable alternative to acquire the currencies they need.

I have built in-classroom structures that offer students autonomy of task, time, team, and technique.

I have built in-classroom structures that offer students mastery.

I have built in-classroom structures that offer students a sense of purpose.

I have built in-classroom structures that foster a sense of belonging.

Uncover and address the reasons students resist

I have identified students' reasons for resisting investing.

I have addressed students' fear of failure by including specific strategies to build students' resilience.

I have addressed a lack of relevance for students by personalizing content.

I have addressed students' lack of trust by deliberately building relationships with students.

I have looked for ways to demonstrate value on students' terms rather than my own terms.

Ask for the investment

I have clearly defined the long-term investment goal.

I have asked for an investment that is directly connected to the goal.

I have asked for a specific investment.

I have proposed the highest realistic investment students can make at the time.

I have proposed a meaningful investment.

I have helped students set specific goals.

I have asked these students to make an investment.

I have held these students accountable to their investment.

I look for ways to help my students continue to invest in the classroom using their new currencies.

Reflections on motivation

1. How do unmotivated students currently behave in your classroom? What do they do (or not do)?

2. How do you think these unmotivated behaviors affect students' individual ability to learn and the classroom environment as a whole?

3. Imagine that a miracle occurred and that you walked into class one day to find that all of your students' motivation problems had been solved. Describe what this would look like for a typical class. What would your students be doing differently?

4. Take a closer look at the "miraculously motivated" class you've described above. What specific investments of time, effort, and attention do you envision students making?

5. How do you think the specific investments you've identified would affect your classroom environment?

6. How might you respond to students differently if they were suddenly motivated? What specific behavioral changes would they notice in you?

7. Describe the last time you saw your "unmotivated" students invest in your class even for a little bit of time.

8. Look closer at this motivated episode and consider what about it might have been different. What was different about the activity, the classroom environment, and your behavior that might have motivated your "unmotivated" students to invest in your class? (Mindsteps, 2011).

3 State-of-the-Art Interventions

We know from the study of motivation that trying to change personal characteristics within the students themselves is not likely to produce results. Our college students are dropping out of school at a high rate because they feel that the school ignores them and their unique concerns.

This suggests that it would be more helpful to design interventions that provide students with highly responsive relationships, rather than trying to change the students themselves.

Instead of interventions that are geared toward increasing students' GPA, it would be more practical to design ways to support students' interest in school, encourage them to pursue intrinsic goals, offer students the opportunity to envision attractive possible future selves, and provide an experience to develop a growth mindset, to name a few.

An effective intervention includes a supportive social context and high-quality interpersonal relationships.

The following three interventions represent three success stories in the effort to translate motivation and emotion theory into convenient state-of-the-art intervention programs.

The first intervention illustrates a needs-based intervention, the second a cognition-based intervention, and the third an emotion-based intervention. See our articles on What Is Motivation?, Motivation Science, and Theories of Motivation for detailed explanations of these components of motivation.

Intervention 1: Satisfying psychological needs

Everyone experiences the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and these three needs energize and vitalize classroom engagement and learning.

Unfortunately, students in many classrooms receive instruction and are asked to write papers, complete projects, and learn new skills in ways that leave their psychological needs unmet.

One group of researchers developed a needs-based intervention program to help teachers develop a motivating style capable of supporting students' psychological needs.

Specifically, they developed, implemented, and tested the merits of an autonomy-supportive intervention program (Cheon, Reeve, & Moon, 2012; Cheon, Reeve, & Song, 2016).

Autonomy-supportive teachers do the following:

Take their students' perspective

Listen empathically to what students say

Utilize instructional strategies that nurture inner motivational resources

Teach in students' preferred way

Provide explanatory rationale

Use invitational language

Display patience

Acknowledge and accept students' expressions of negative affect

These are not commonly occurring classroom events, but these instructional strategies can be learned. The step-by-step intervention program was designed to help teachers learn the "how-to" of autonomy-supportive teaching.

The autonomy-supportive intervention program was delivered in three parts.

Part 1 was a three-hour morning workshop offered before the beginning of the semester. During the workshop, teachers learned about their motivating style, the benefits of autonomy support, and the costs of interpersonal control.

Part 2 was a three-hour afternoon workshop to learn the "how-to" of autonomy support. Teachers watched videotapes of other teachers (professional actors) modeling the six evidence-based autonomy-supportive instructional behaviors.

Part 3 was a two-hour group discussion in which teachers shared their actual experiences in trying to implement autonomy-supportive teaching in their classrooms.

To assess the validity and effectiveness of the intervention program, the students completed questionnaires to report their perceptions of their teacher's motivating style as well as their motivation and classroom functioning throughout the semester.

Also, a group of trained raters visited each teacher's classroom midway through the semester to rate objectively how frequently teachers used autonomy-supportive instructional behaviors during their instruction.

The results below show that the intervention produced its intended effect in helping teachers in the experimental group teach in a more autonomy-supportive way and generated positive benefits.

Overall, this intervention is a success story because it shows that teachers can learn how to support students' psychological needs satisfaction, and when they do, their students benefit in many important ways, including increased motivation.

The interventions below also translate motivation theory into practical application, although in a somewhat less direct fashion. Nevertheless, they have the potential to improve the social context necessary for motivation to thrive.

Intervention 2: Increasing a growth mindset

Another state-of-the-art intervention is a cognition-based intervention intended to help a growth mindset in kids in thinking about people's personalities and was developed by a group of researchers to address adolescent aggression. Specifically, the researchers developed, implemented, and tested the merits of a growth mindset workshop (Yeager, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2013).

Some adolescent aggression is unprovoked, but most occurs as retaliation to peer conflict, social exclusion, and victimization. In a conflict, adolescents generally make a personality-like evaluation of the other person's character and, as a victim, see the other as an aggressor who cannot change.

This belief often leads to aggressive retaliation; harming the aggressor seems deserved. But when a victim sees the aggressor as someone who can change, then this belief tends to reduce aggressive retaliation and open up the possibility for a prosocial response.

A study designed to test an intervention to increase a growth mindset showed that adolescents who embrace a fixed mindset, a belief that people cannot change their personalities, would be more likely to be aggressive than adolescents who adopt a growth mindset.

Over three weeks, 111 ninth- and tenth-grade students in several different high schools in the San Francisco area attended lectures and engaged in activities to teach them the science of a growth mindset.

They learned about how the brain changes with learning, that personalities can also change because they live in the brain, and that thoughts and feelings can change as well. The students also all engaged in activities to help them think about peer conflict and aggression.

Students also completed a questionnaire assessing the growth mindset two weeks before the start of the intervention and again two weeks after the intervention ended, and played a "cyber ball" activity in which they suffered an experience of peer exclusion.

After the peer exclusion experience, participants were allowed to behave aggressively and retaliate or in a prosocial way and write a friendly note.

Results from the three-week intervention report the evidence that the intervention produced its intended effect:

Adolescents in the experimental group endorsed the growth mindset significantly more than adolescents in the control group.

When provoked, adolescents in the experimental group showed more prosocial behavior than adolescents in the control group.

Teachers rated adolescents in the experimental group as significantly less aggressive than adolescents in the control group.

Overall, the study showed that a school-based intervention that taught adolescents the science of the growth mindset was able to take the anger- and aggression-based edge out of peer conflict so that aggressive retaliation became less likely while prosocial behavior response became more likely.

Intervention 3: Promoting emotion knowledge

The third intervention speaks to the role emotions play in motivational states. Students with unsophisticated emotion knowledge are at risk of developing maladaptive behavior problems such as interpersonal conflict, classroom disruptive behavior, aggressive behavior, and the absence of social competence.

Emotion knowledge involves a capacity to recognize emotional expressions in others, produce a correct label for those emotional expressions, and articulate the causes of basic emotions.

If children could develop their emotion knowledge and learn how to utilize their positive emotions (e.g., interest, joy) better, then they would be better positioned to regulate their negative emotions (e.g., fear, anger) and maladaptive behavior problems.

Izard, Trentacosta, King, and Mostow (2004) developed an emotion-based intervention in the form of a preschool program to deliver an "Emotions Course" and an "Emotion-Based Prevention Program" to promote children's emotion knowledge.

In the Emotions Course, children engaged in activities like puppet shows that provided opportunities to label basic emotions. Children also drew faces of emotional expressions to depict different emotions and their intensity levels.

The point of the Emotions Course was to increase children's skill in decoding and recognizing others' emotional expressions.

In the Emotion-Based Prevention Program, children engaged in activities that created mild emotions like reading books about characters who have emotional episodes as teachers helped them articulate their feelings, understand the causes of these emotions, and take appropriate action to regulate them.

To regulate anger, for instance, children were taught to hug a pillow to reduce anger-generated arousal, take three deep breaths, and then use words to negotiate.

The study to test the effectiveness of the intervention to promote emotion knowledge recruited 177 preschool students and 26 teachers who were involved in a low-income preschool Head Start program in the rural mid-Atlantic states. The Emotions Course and Emotion-Based Prevention Program were delivered in three parts:

A two-hour workshop before the semester began to help teachers learn how to teach the Emotions Course in their classroom

Biweekly observation of the teacher's classroom by a member from the research team to provide a post-class consultation to refine and improve the teacher's delivery of the Emotions Course and Emotion-Based Prevention Program

Monthly meetings between parents and researchers to discuss the Emotions Course content and its instructional strategies. In these meetings, parents discussed teachers' instructional techniques to help children understand, regulate, and utilize basic emotions.

The validity and effectiveness of the intervention program were assessed in three ways, and all the measures were scored the week before the intervention began and again at the end of the intervention.

The children took an emotion knowledge test where they viewed a photograph of a facial expression and identified the emotion.

Teachers rated the children on both emotion knowledge and frequency of expressing positive emotions like interest and joy during class.

Trained raters objectively scored the frequency with which each child displayed negative emotional episodes during class.

Results from the 20-week Emotions Course and Emotion-Based Prevention Program showed that the intervention produced its intended effect and produced positive benefits.

Teachers rated that the children in the experimental group expressed positive emotions significantly more frequently after 20 weeks.

Raters scored the children in the same group as displaying a considerably lower number of negative emotional episodes over the same period.

Teachers rated children in their class as displaying fewer post-intervention negative emotions and more post-intervention social competence.

Parents rated the children in the experimental group as displaying less post-intervention aggressive behavior and less post-intervention depressive behavior at home than parents of children in the control group.

Overall, this intervention was a success story because it showed that children could increase their emotion knowledge, and, when they do, they increase their capacity for effective emotion regulation.

A Take-Home Message

One reason why the study of motivation matters is because researchers have been able to design and implement successful interventions to improve lives, for students as well as their teachers and parents.

Many of the studies discussed in this article showed that students who sensed more teacher support for autonomy felt more competent and less anxious, reported more interest and enjoyment in their work, and produced higher quality work.

By providing lessons that offer choice, are connected to students' goals, and provide both challenges and opportunities for success that are appropriate to students' level of skill, teachers were able to foster a positive learning environment and positive teacher-student relationships.

I am still learning.

Michelangelo

Tell us about your favorite way to motivate students or share a story of what motivates you if you're still learning.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don't forget to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free.

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Motivation in Education: What it Takes to Motivate Our Kids

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We address major topics in the science of motivation as it applies to educational settings and the process of learning in general, including examples.

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Learning through discovery in natural environments.

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Learning through discovery in natural environments.

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When the adults who care for children are more comfortable being in the outdoors, they will provide more opportunities for children to be outdoors.

We provide professional development through both in-person classes and on-site coaching. Classes focused on nature-based learning are offered throughout the year at the Douglas-Sarpy Extension office. We can also come to you, providing a program developed to meet your specific needs. All classes offered by Nebraska Extension are NDE approved for DHHS in-service hours.

Natural Learning Environments

All children should have daily access to quality outdoor learning environments.

Our work is based on a decade of research by North Carolina State University's Natural Learning Initiative on the Preventing Obesity by Design model. This research showed that by improving the design of outdoor spaces through affordable interventions and training early childhood professionals, young children and early childhood programs enjoy substantial benefits:

Children are more physically active in the outdoors and engage in social interactions more often.

Children and providers enjoy naturalized outdoor spaces and spend more time outside, supporting healthy behaviors.

Hands-on gardening encourages the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables.

We are currently accepting programs into the pilot phase of the our Natural Learning Environments project. While involvement in the program does not guarantee funding, we provide the following services at no charge:

Design assistance to turn your vision into an attainable plan

Family and stakeholder outreach to share your vision and plan

Assistance with grant writing and project management

Professional devleopment and coaching for staff

Contact Katie Krause for more information: katie.krause@unl.edu or 402-444-3338

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Nature-based Learning and Natural Learning Environments

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When the adults who care for children are more comfortable being in the outdoors, they will provide more opportunities for children to be outdoors. We provide professional development through both in-person classes and on-site coaching. Classes focused on nature-based learning are offered throughout the year at the Douglas-Sarpy Extension office.

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Children learn best from what they consider most relevant to their lives.

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Children learn best from what they consider most relevant to their lives.

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Human beings are social creatures and are adapted to learn in social contexts. As Vygotsky emphasised most learning occurs through socialising so having good communication and social skills is important for self-regulated learning.

As time goes on being able to speak about their own thoughts becomes important to children in developing the ability to regulate how they learn for themselves. Speaking thoughts out loud as children talk themselves about how they are doing things gradually leads on to internal thought processes. Early on this is not conscious but gradually children can be encouraged to be explicit about their own learning.

So children's self-regulatory development is very much enhanced where there is:-

Emotional warmth & security & feelings of control

Appropriate levels of cognitive challenge

Lots of opportunity and encouragement to speak and reflect on their own learning

Given these basics, babies are highly motivated to learn. Babies live in the moment and don't worry about embarrassment. They don't think it's too hard or not worth the effort. Babies stretch themselves daily. They want to learn - it comes from within them selves. This high degree of motivation and a willingness not to give up but to persevere when things get difficult often seems to diminish, as children get older. What is it then that often puts a damper on the exuberant learning we see in babies?

What usually makes the difference is interactions with others as children are encouraged to push themselves and keep going. Children who don't have this support often loose the motivation to succeed. Children need to be encouraged to keep trying at things and try different strategies so that they eventually succeed. They need to be helped and scaffolded by their close adults. Perseverance and keeping on trying are components of becoming self-regulated and this motivation is essential if children are to learn how to learn. They need to have some control and be able to make their own choices. Adults can encourage them to do this.

What children feel about them selves is the basis of the whole thing and knowing you can succeed if you keep persevering is key. They need to be involved and able to concentrate on what they're choosing to do. The human brain takes a comparatively long time to develop, hence our long childhood. It needs time to develop the ability to think and learn effectively. The long childhood has an evolutionary purpose. Overall control of thinking - or meta-cognition - develops slowly in the frontal lobes of the brain. The connections here proliferate hugely during the second year and gradually over many years the connections become strengthened and others gradually fade away.

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How do children learn most effectively - what makes them tick?

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Human beings are social creatures and are adapted to learn in social contexts. As Vygotsky emphasised most learning occurs through socialising so having good communication and social skills is important for self-regulated learning. As time goes on being able to speak about their own thoughts becomes important to children in developing the ability to regulate how they learn for themselves.

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Students think critically to solve problems.

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Students think critically to solve problems.

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The classroom is a reflection of society. The classroom  supports democracy, preparation for life, and the development of human potential.

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The classroom is a reflection of society. The classroom  supports democracy, preparation for life, and the development of human potential.

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The teacher’s job is to nurture and fostering internal motivation fostering internal motivation rather than reliance on external rewards.  

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The teacher’s job is to nurture and fostering internal motivation fostering internal motivation rather than reliance on external rewards.  

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In this era of increasing mobile access, online education, and homeschooling, you would expect that teachers are now becoming redundant. Fortunately, the value of a good teacher is still as great as it has been for decades-if not more so.
Teachers are important in shaping the future of young children. The work they do in the classroom is often underrated. From elementary school through high school, their influence lingers throughout a child's education.
The role of a teacher is not an easy one. It involves endless hours of preparation and studying to handle various kinds of people. It also involves much resilience to face all kinds of students and numerous sacrifices to be a teacher.

In this blog post, you will understand the importance of teachers and their benefits to students.

Who is a Teacher?

A teacher is a professional educator who develops and presents instructional courses and materials in a variety of settings. Teachers are great people who impart their knowledge and skills to the younger generation.

They teach students about various subjects and guide them in a way that helps them become smart and productive citizens of their country.

A teacher is an essential part of any country. They also develop your skills and abilities throughout your school years. A teacher's role is to teach you specific academic or technical knowledge or certain skills or techniques. Their job is to guide the learning process.
SEE: Homeroom Teacher Meaning, Responsibilities, and Benefits
Why Are Teachers Important?

Teachers are important because they change lives, inspire dreams, and push the limits of human potential. Teaching is one of the noblest professions. A teacher's job is to nurture, teach, and raise children to become useful to society.

They are also responsible for encouraging growth in the youth. The teacher makes an effort to inspire, direct, and educate students with the knowledge they will use throughout their lives.
Below are some reasons why teachers are important in educational settings.
1. They Give Children Self-Worth

Good teachers not only stimulate children's intellect, but they also give them self-worth and understanding of their view of life.

Children who struggle in school can become bored or frustrated with their work. That sometimes leads to disruptive behavior.

Teachers, through positive feedback, can help build character and increase motivation. This is important in today's competitive world where students need every advantage to be successful.

2. They Inspire Curiosity

The importance of teachers comes from finding what motivates you and using that motivation - not just for test scores, but for engaging with the world.

A teacher can be a pivotal influence on a child's future educational and professional endeavors. They inspire curiosity, build confidence, and encourage children to set goals.

Teachers are important because they inspire curiosity. Curiosity is a strong motivator in boosting your motivation and engagement with education and the world around you.

Teachers take you from what you know and encourage you to learn things you don't know. This they often do without you realizing just how much of an impact it would have in your life.
SEE: Inquiry-Based Learning: What is It All About?
3. They Encourage Students to Be Creative

Teachers are important because they encourage you to be creative and teach you useful skills.

Teachers encourage you to be creative with your ideas without taking away the option of you making mistakes. This enables you to be better and innovative.

When you encourage creativity, you foster an environment where students can learn through fun rather than one filled with fear and boring paperwork.
SEE: Cognitive Learning: Your Guide to a New World of Learning
4. They Teach Students Teamwork

Teachers teach students teamwork and how to organize and lead activities. They also help students develop into independent, respectful, responsible, and smart people who can grow into successful adults.

Not only do they dedicate hours teaching, but they also help students understand the concepts of doing projects as a group.

5. Teachers Train the Next Generation of Leaders and Innovators

Teaching is a vital profession that enables children to become educated and innovative members of our society.

From inspiring young minds to provide creative solutions that become tomorrow's innovations, to helping with homework after class, teachers are the cornerstone of our society.

Educating the next generation in solving problems and being leaders is crucial for preparing them for a changing world. Every student, from kindergarten through high school, benefits from having a teacher.

Through their work, they inspire students to develop critical thinking skills and become active citizens. They also teach you to find solutions to problems that will have a lasting impact for generations to come.
SEE: Importance of Stem Education
6. Teachers Implement Discipline and Responsibility in Students

Teachers help deal with a lot of responsibility in a student's life. Students come in all different personalities and have their problems which make it the teacher's problems too. In addition to helping with discipline issues, teachers teach students how to learn from their mistakes.

To begin with, teachers must prepare for all circumstances that may occur in the classroom environment. They work effectively with students, parents, administrators, and other teachers around them.

7. Teachers Promote Self-Esteem and Confidence in Students

Teachers promote self-esteem and confidence in students and influence their appreciation and enjoyment of learning and living. A good teacher also gets students to take responsibility for their learning and behavior.

The teacher must be familiar with all the important activities that students are involved in. In addition, the teacher is friendly and inspires you to move forward with your life in a determined way.

8. They Reduce the Risk of Failure and Make a Difference in Students' Lives

Without the guidance and motivation of the best of these professionals, you would likely fail as a student. Teachers are not allowed to fail and must constantly prove their worth as educators.

Their dedication to the profession and sacrifices makes all the difference in a student's life. From inspiring students to be innovators to counseling them on academic difficulties, teachers give their best to ensure students succeed.

9. They Mentor Struggling Students Who Need Assistance

Teachers mentor struggling students who need assistance. Their problem-solving skills, patience, and understanding of organizational strategies help you reach a high level of success in a short amount of time.

They also work hard to deal with a wide variety of students:

Students who feel frustrated and give up.

Learners who want to take shortcuts and don't put much effort into it. Those who are overly confident and underperform.

Students who have trouble controlling their behavior

Those who do not attend school regularly

Students who need help improving their weaknesses in a particular subject.

What Are the Challenges Teachers Face?

Teachers face many challenges such as lack of classroom supplies, low pay, and undervaluation. Many teachers spend their own money for classroom supplies not provided by the school due to inadequate funding.

Other challenges include underpaid salaries that reduce their standard of living. Underpaid teachers have to either take on side jobs that reduce their concentration and motivation to teach or jump into a different profession.

How do teachers improve society?

Teachers improve society by teaching students the skills and knowledge necessary to do well in school, be good citizens, and have productive careers. They also improve society by being dedicated and caring professionals who treat students as individuals with distinct needs, interests, and personalities.
SEE: Why Education Is Important to Society?
Is teaching a good profession?

Yes, teaching is a great and rewarding career choice. Although not as financially rewarding as most professional careers. However, it is a good profession because it helps the younger generation learn new skills and develop into responsible citizens.
SEE: Compare a teacher and a professor
What are the qualities of a good teacher?

A good teacher should be patient, kind but firm, easy-going, fair, persistent, and caring. A good teacher has a variety of qualities, but they revolve around certain principles.

One is the ability to connect with students and relate to them on a personal level. In addition, the best teachers are genuine about themselves and truly care about the students they teach.
SEE: Top Qualities of a Good Teacher
Conclusion

Except for parenting, I don't think that any subject is as riddled with controversy as education. Several articles and studies discuss how to improve education but rarely about a teacher's importance.

Teachers are important because, without them, education would be nonexistent, and civilization as we know it would come to a screeching halt. While it sounds a bit dramatic, it really wouldn't be too far from the truth if most teachers disappeared from the face of the planet tomorrow.

Despite their numerous benefits and importance to a child's education, teachers often go unappreciated. These selfless educators barely make enough to sustain their cost of living. They are also among the lowest-earning professionals in society.

That is why there is a recurring call for the proper valuation of teachers and why they should earn more. Read more on why teachers should earn more. I am sure you will be convinced about the high importance of teachers to education.

I hope you found this post helpful. Thanks for reading.

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9 Reasons Why Teachers Are Important - LMS Hero

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In this era of increasing mobile access, online education, and homeschooling, you would expect that teachers are now becoming redundant. Fortunately, the value of a good teacher is still as great as it has been for decades-if not more so. Teachers are important in shaping the future of young children.

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 Progressive educational philosophy raises critical thinkers and inquirers who are active rather than passive learners.

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 Progressive educational philosophy raises critical thinkers and inquirers who are active rather than passive learners.

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Progressive education is a reaction to the traditional style of teaching. It's a pedagogical movement that values experience over learning facts at the expense of understanding what is being taught. When you examine the teaching styles and curriculum of the 19th century, you understand why certain educators decided that there had to be a better way.

The progressive education philosophy says that educators should teach children how to think rather than relying on rote memorization. Advocates argue that the process of learning by doing is at the heart of this style of teaching. The concept, known as experiential learning, uses hands-on projects that allow students to learn by actively engaging in activities that put their knowledge to use.

Progressive education is the best way for students to experience real-world situations, say advocates. For example, the workplace is a collaborative environment that requires teamwork, critical thinking, creativity, and the ability to work independently. Experiential learning, by helping students develop these skills, better prepares them for college and life as productive members of the workplace.

Though progressive education is often looked upon as a modern invention, it actually has deep roots. John Dewey (Oct. 20, 1859-June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher and educator who started the progressive education movement with his influential writings.

Dewey argued that education should not simply involve making students learn mindless facts that they would soon forget. He thought that education should be a journey of experiences, building upon each other to help students create and understand new experiences.

Dewey also felt that schools at the time tried to create a world separate from students' lives. School activities and the life experiences of the students should be connected, Dewey believed, or else real learning would be impossible. Cutting students off from their psychological ties-society and family-would make their learning journeys less meaningful and thereby make learning less memorable.

In traditional education, the teacher leads the class from the front, whereas a more progressive teaching model sees the teacher as a facilitator who interacts with students and encourages them to think and question the world around them.

Teachers in a progressive education system often sit among students at a round table embracing the Harkness Method, a way of learning developed by philanthropist Edward Harkness, who made a donation to Phillips Exeter Academy and had a vision on how his donation might be used:

"What I have in mind is teaching...where boys could sit around a table with a teacher who would talk with them and instruct them by a sort of tutorial or conference method."

Harkness's thinking led to the creation of the so-called Harkness table, literally a round table, designed to facilitate interaction between the teacher and students during class.

Many educational institutions have adopted progressive education, such as The Independent Curriculum Group, a community of schools that says education should include students' "needs, capacities, and voices" as the heart of any program and that learning can be both an end unto itself and a doorway to discovery and purpose.

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Progressive Education: How Children Learn

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Progressive education is a reaction to the traditional style of teaching. It's a pedagogical movement that values experience over learning facts at the expense of understanding what is being taught. When you examine the teaching styles and curriculum of the 19th century, you understand why certain educators decided that there had to be a better way.

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The learning environment should be open so children can release their instinctive impulses through multiple means of creativity.

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The learning environment should be open so children can release their instinctive impulses through multiple means of creativity.

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Children gain  respect for diversity, where each person is recognized for his or her unique characteristics.

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Children gain  respect for diversity, where each person is recognized for his or her unique characteristics.

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Encouraging friendships and social interactions among all the diverse young children in your classroom is more important than ever. Studies show that the roots of bullying take hold in early childhood, during the critical first years of attitude development. The message is clear: To reduce the high incidence of bullying in schools, we need to lay the groundwork for acceptance of and respect for diversity when kids are very young.

Here are three of the most effective strategies for helping students respect and accept each other's differences. These are from The Making Friends Program, a book of practical, teacher-tested strategies for supporting acceptance in K-2 classrooms. The Making Friends Program is published by Brooks Publishing.

Provide a simple explanation. Kids will have questions about people and cultures unfamiliar to them. Provide simple, age-appropriate explanations and answer questions in honest, matter-of-fact ways. You'll encourage children's natural curiosity and start valuable conversations about the world around them.

Highlight similarities. Ask children to identify ways in which we are all more alike than different. Start a class discussion about our similar experiences and feelings, and how we behave similarly in certain situations. Increasing your students' awareness of our common ground as humans will help them develop positive feelings about all of their classmates and engage in respectful behavior.

Offer positive feedback and solutions. When you see children having caring and respectful conversations with each other, point it out and give them praise. If your students bring up a specific challenge, use moments like these to provide positive solutions, so children have a model to follow for future social interactions.

Let's take a look at these three strategies in action,

Conversations and Actions about Children Who Speak Different Languages

Jisoo (age 5, Korean American) attends kindergarten 5 days a week. He lives with his parents, who speak both English and Korean, and his grandmother, who only speaks Korean. Before attending kindergarten, Jisoo was cared for at home by his grandmother. His kindergarten teacher, Ms. Reeds, asked Jisoo's parents to write down some words in Korean that could be helpful when communicating with him (e.g., give me [ joo-sae-yo], stop [ geu-man], bathroom [ hwa-jang-shill], water [ mool], hello [ an-young], good-bye [ jal-ga], thank you [ go-ma-wa]).

Although it sometimes takes a little time to understand what Jisoo wants or needs, Ms. Reeds thinks she is doing fairly well communicating with him. However, Ms. Reeds has noticed several incidents in class in which Jisoo was left alone or excluded by peers. She has also heard some of her students mimicking Jisoo's accent when speaking some words in English.

What to Do and Say
Provide a simple explanation:
" How many of you can speak more than one language or have family members who can speak more than one language? What languages are they? Who has traveled somewhere where people speak a language other than English? Where did you go, and what language was spoken? What was that like? Did you understand what people were saying? What did people do to help you get around and do the things you wanted to do, like order food, find your way around, or buy something? There are so many different languages that people use to talk with each other. Some people know one language, while others may learn to speak two, three, or even more languages!"
Highlight similarities:
" Do you have family members who speak a different language? If yes, what language?"

"Have you ever said something that someone didn't understand? Or have you ever had someone say something to you that you didn't understand? How did that make you feel? How does it feel when someone doesn't understand what you say or when you don't understand what someone else says?"

"What do you think when you hear someone speaking in a language that you don't know? What do you know about the country of Korea and the language Jisoo speaks?"
Offer positive feedback and solutions:
"Jisoo's mom, dad, and grandma taught me to say some words in Korean. You could ask Jisoo to teach you some words in Korean, too. What might you do if you don't understand something that Jisoo says or if you think that Jisoo does not understand you? You could say it again, say it a different way, or use gestures."

"Learning a new language is fun! Now you and Jisoo can talk with each other in Korean and English."

For more examples and information see: http://blog.brookespublishing.com/3-ways-to-help-young-children-respect-and-accept-diversity/

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3 Ways to Help Young Children Respect and Accept Diversity - Maryland Child

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Encouraging friendships and social interactions among all the diverse young children in your classroom is more important than ever. Studies show that the roots of bullying take hold in early childhood, during the critical first years of attitude development.

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 Socially engaged intelligence should be developed so that individuals can comprehend the issues concerning their community and participate in a collaborative effort for the betterment of society.

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 Socially engaged intelligence should be developed so that individuals can comprehend the issues concerning their community and participate in a collaborative effort for the betterment of society.

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Individuals with social intelligence can sense how other people feel, know intuitively what to say in social situations, and seem self-assured, even in a larger crowd. You might think of these folk as having "people skills," but what they truly possess is social intelligence.

The theory of social intelligence was first brought to the forefront by American psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1920.﻿﻿ He defined it as, "The ability to understand and manage men and women and boys and girls, to act wisely in human relations." No one is born socially intelligent. Instead, it involves a set of skills that an individual learns over time.

Signs of Social Intelligence

People who are socially intelligent display core traits that help them communicate and connect with others.

Effective Listening: A person who possesses social intelligence doesn't listen merely to respond but truly pays attention to what a person is saying. The other folks in the conversation walk away feeling like they were understood and that they made a connection.

Conversational Skills: Have you ever seen someone "work the room?" They have conversational skills that enable them to carry on a discussion with practically anybody. They're tactful, appropriate, humorous and sincere in these conversations, and they remember details about people that allow the dialogue to be more meaningful.﻿﻿

Reputation Management: Socially intelligent people consider the impression that they make on other people. Considered one of the most complex elements of social intelligence, managing a reputation requires careful balance-a person must thoughtfully create an impression on another person while still being authentic.

Lack of Arguing: Someone with social intelligence understands that arguing or proving a point by making another person feel bad isn't the way to go. They don't outright reject another person's ideas, but rather listen to them with an open mind-even when it's not an idea that they personally agree with.

How to Develop Social Intelligence

While some people may seem to develop social intelligence without really trying, others have to work to develop it. Luckily, certain strategies can help a person build social skills. These tactics can help you develop social intelligence:

Pay close attention to what (and who) is around you. Socially intelligent people are observant and pay attention to subtle social cues from those around them.﻿﻿ If you think that someone in your life has strong people skills, watch how they interact with others.

Work on increasing your emotional intelligence. Although similar to social intelligence, emotional intelligence is more about how you control your own emotions and how you empathize with others. It requires recognizing when you're experiencing an emotion-which will help you recognize that emotion in others-and regulating them appropriately. An emotionally intelligent person can recognize and control negative feelings, such as frustration or anger, when in a social setting.﻿﻿

Respect cultural differences. More than that, seek out cultural differences so you can understand them. Although most people learn people skills from their family, friends and the community surrounding them, a socially intelligent person understands that others might have different responses and customs based on their upbringing.

Practice active listening. Develop your social intelligence by working on your communication skills-which requires active listening.﻿﻿ Don't interrupt. Take time to think about what someone else is saying before you respond. Listen to the inflections in what others say, which can give you clues to what they really mean.

Appreciate the important people in your life. Socially intelligent people have deep relationships with people who are meaningful to them. Pay attention to the emotions of your spouse and children, friends, co-workers, and other peers. If you ignore the closest people in your life, you're missing the cues on how to connect with them.

A Word From Verywell

Social intelligence isn't easy to master-if it were, there wouldn't ever be another awkward conversation at a party. However, working toward a strong social intelligence can lead to a richer life-or, at least, an easier time making a few new friends.

Study social situations. Pay attention to what people are doing well and the mistakes you want to avoid. Afterward, think about what you want to do differently in the next social situation you enter.

Get proactive about improving your skills. And remember, that you're going to mess up sometimes. Learn from your failures as well as your successes.

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Strategies to Help You Develop Social Intelligence Skills

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Individuals with social intelligence can sense how other people feel, know intuitively what to say in social situations, and seem self-assured, even in a larger crowd. You might think of these folk as having "people skills," but what they truly possess is social intelligence.