Breaking Down Student Collaboration Part. 2
Motivation
In my part 1 article, I described how to get started with communication and collaboration in the classroom, particularly in alternative education classrooms. For the next articles on collaboration, I will provide nuance to collaboration and how practices outlined below support collaboration and student communication.
I have dreamed a lot about what an alted class could look like. By the time I transitioned out of the classroom, I was pretty much able to accomplish this vision. It was wonderful as a teacher. I had the capacity to be with and there for my students while managing ways to avoid burnout and compassion fatigue. I made students responsible for their learning while showing up daily with unconditional positive regard.
In the classroom, these are many things I had control of. As an out-of-the-classroom teacher, I hope to help others feel empowered to do the same. When you do this work, things will pop up. Your Syllabus will need to evolve; you may notice a gap in your school's tiered interventions and you may see a need to evolve your school’s mission and vision. All this work will be more powerful if you do it with other staff members. The effect size for collective teacher efficacy (educators working together to make positive change) is off the charts: 1.57
Image (c) Visible Learning Plus – www.visiblelearningplus.com
Now that I have set the stage, the nuance topic I will describe in this newsletter is motivation + Student collaboration. I recently stumbled on a social media post that described today's students as apathetic. I am now unable to find the post, but it had a very “kids these days 😠 vibe.” In the comments I read, about 50% of the readers shared how education is not relevant, and 50% blamed kids. I have a different take involving nervous system healing, lack of autonomy, and authenticity in school.
I am also aware of another social media post that autonomy. See below.
I will revisit this, as I believe autonomy and motivation can be a chicken or the egg type scenario. What do we work on first?
To be fully transparent, I have mapped out what I see as the foundation of effective alternative classroom best practices based on research of others and my own. These are my alted non-negotiables—the things teachers design to happen in classrooms.
This may be a little overwhelming to look at, but I will be breaking it down, sharing commonalities between practices, and showing how all these things depend on one another to create an equitable learning experience for alternative education learners.
So, back to motivation in collaboration and communication. Students will build motivation if we design all six practices in our work daily. But, for now, I will focus on three practices: Equitable Grading, Hope, and Project-based or Problem-based learning.
In his graduate-level research and best-selling book, Joe Feldman stated that grading should be accurate, bias-resistant, and motivational. When I present on Equitable grading, I always give the disclaimer that the motivation piece is the last to become apparent. However, how we design our grading structures is and will be motivational if we design them using this framework.
For example, if we are grading and we make a commitment to grade students on their knowledge, not on their compliance, that, in fact, can grow motivation. If we give students multiple chances to show their learning without penalty, we can motivate student learning. If we use rubrics on all graded assignments and have students reflect on their learning and grade themselves before we give a grade, we can create motivated learners who value the process of learning, fostering a growth mindset and really equitable serving those with learning gaps or challenges with compliance-based learning.
All of the practices described above can be used in the context of collaboration and communication. We can create expectations for these things. The CA state standards outline literacy across the curriculum with listening and speaking standards. We also see listening and speaking in ELA and ELD standards. So, when we are building rubrics, one of my favorite equitable grading practices, we can build in the listening and speaking pieces.
What else do listening and speaking rubrics do? It holds students accountable for their learning even when they are absent. You might find student absenteeism rates go up during a planned collaboration event or a speaking practice or assessment. If we as teachers follow the protocol to get students talking, giving lots of practice, and building self-efficacy, a rubric is the accountability piece that might be missing in many collaborative learning activities. How will students show what they know? When will they make up for the collaborative learning and speaking assessments? Rubrics also help educators and students know what to expect in collaborative learning and speaking and listening tasks. How do we want students to do this work? How are we going to teach it?
The next nuance practice I want to discuss today is Hope Theory (C.R Snyder) and motivation. In my graduate-level research, one thing I found in highly effective continuation schools was hope. Hope is defined as goals=agency and pathways. Agency is the motivation to pursue goals and the belief in one’s capacity to achieve desired goals (Snyder, 2002, Snyder et al., 2002). Pathway thinking is the development of multiple routes or pathways to achieve a goal. Pathway thinking is really autonomy, but not just choices, it is if one pathway or choice does not work anymore that thinking of trying something new or flexible thinking is also included in pathway thinking.
Agency is literally the get up and go attitude, the positive self-talk or positive affirmations you make to do hard things. It also means having the capacity, tools, community, and learning needed to do hard things. When people have agency, they have the ability to make their own choices. Autonomy is the freedom to choose. If one chooses and does not have agency or the scaffolded teaching to make that choice possible, it does not work. Agency, Autonomy, and Pathways have to work together.
It is also power, the power of choice. Most humans are more motivated to do things when they have a choice. Do you want to eat cherries or watermelon? Do you want to write with a pen or a pencil? You can choose how you want to show your learning from three prior picked projects. Autonomy is the choice should be developmentally appropriate, Agency is the scaffold.
Autonomy is the freedom to choose. When people have agency, they have the necessary resources and ability to act on their choices. However, people cannot exercise agency without autonomy, and they have fewer options for autonomy when they don’t have agency.
Ok, enough philosophy and positive psychology.
Hope work is important in schools. It is important in classrooms. I often reference the book School of Hope by Cathleen Bleachboard. It has tons of classroom practices. Many of them foster collaboration and communication. I am more interested in practices with a high effect size and build hope. Equitable grading is a practice that can build hope when done with intention. Students create goals for their learning, and the educator builds agency and provides multiple pathways to share that learning or gives autonomy. The more students can share their goals, interest, things that make them tick, the better. This is where community circles comes in. The more discussion of goals, building agency, and talking out pathways to solve a problem the better. Brainstorming a challenge or solving a problem together in a fish bowl, socratic seminar, or circle session. All of these activities build hope when designed to solve a problem, build communication skills, critical thinking, and hopefully community.
Last, Project-based or Problem-based learning builds hope, motivation, and practices collaboration and communication. At the core of Project or Problem-based learning is having a goal and working towards that goal by providing essential learning and facilitating student learning by providing or creating multiple pathways to share that learning. Students use critical thinking to solve problems together collaboratively and struggle, fail, learn, and succeed together in a small group. They practice skills that build a growth mindset. They practice social skills such as communicating and solving problems together. They create norms and hold others accountable. While project-based and problem-based learning has different approaches, both provide hope by utilizing goals, agency, and pathway thinking.
In general, high hope students are intrinsically motivated and perceive obstacles as challenges that they can overcome with flexible thinking (Chang, 1998; Snyder, 2002; Lopez, 2010; Gallagher et al., 2017). If you are interested in seeing the benefits of increasing hope in schools, Shane Lopez did the Hope research on high hope in schools which has pretty incredible outcomes.
I want to revisit this post as promised as a last note on autonomy. If students have agency, they can have autonomy. Autonomy is choice, not a blank slate. What I mean by that is if you are giving students the choice to “do anything in the world” to demonstrate their learning, that is overwhelming. As students are learning to build executive function you start with less choices. As you build agency and executive function, you can add to those choices. I think a good starting point is two choices, and in high school, you can build up to 9 choices (think choice board or menu). But of course, to build motivation, it is dependent on the scaffolding and agency you have constructed in your prior lessons.
Of the alted non-negotiables mentioned, all three of them heavily depend on collaboration and communication and build motivation. Motivation is such a heavy load in the classroom, and I look forward to writing about more ways to view motivation with some other practices.
I hope everyone is enjoying their summer and getting motivated for next year!
-jamie
Feel free to reach out if you or your school is interested in training or book studies! My expertise includes Vision and Mission planning, WASC or Model School applications, SPSAs and strategically utilizing categorical funds, Project-Based Learning, Student Collaboration, Equitable Grading, and Social and Emotional Support in schools.