Self-Determination Theory in Practice; or, How Do I Make Them Do Stuff?

Self-Determination Theory Chart

Last year, I was excited and wrote a blogpost about a new endeavor as it related to motivating students. Exactly a year ago, my colleague Paul Oswald and I conducted a survey of students at Joliet West to see what motivated them, what didn't, and what we could do to bridge that gap of intrinsic motivation.


We met with an education professor at St. Francis University, Lisa White-McNulty, and she directed us to read up on Self-Determination Theory, originally developed by Deci and Ryan. I asked teachers in the English Department to distribute a survey Paul and I developed, accounting for the three components of SDT: Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence. What choices did they have? Why is it important? How difficult or easy will it be for me to complete this task? The survey appears below.



We heard from more than 800 students, or roughly 25% or our school population. This was a pretty astounding number for a Google Survey we asked teachers to distribute, but many of them did, and it led to a number of professional development opportunities and opportunities for kids to be taught in ways that may ultimately lead to better experiences in the classroom.

The original post talked about a website, or interviews, or a movie...we were ambitious. It didn't lead to those (yet), but it did lead us to share our results with staff.

It turns out, students don't enjoy packets of worksheets, they want to be respected, they want to understand what they are doing, they want to be interested, they want pizza (the joy of open-ended questions), and they want choice. It wasn't the threat of a bad grade, or the danger of athletic eligibility that motivated them. The tenets of SDT were reflected in their responses.

We were encouraged by the results, and because Paul and I are instructional coaches (we teach 2 classes and work on curriculum, PD, and mentoring the rest of the day), we were asked to create a PD opportunity of our choosing. We developed a 15-hour course on SDT, working with a group of 10 teachers to understand SDT and try to apply what they learned to a unit during the second semester. We asked teachers to create pre- and post-assessment surveys to see how kids wanted to learn first, and then how they liked the way the unit went at the end. Teachers are blogging about their experiences, sharing survey results, and are, ideally, making the experience better for their students.

In addition to the 15-hour version, we did a 90-minute version for more than 30 teachers on an institute day, and we explained the concepts, showed how to make a Google survey, and even explained how this theory can be used by coaches. As a cross country coach myself, I thought about giving the runners a choice in the routes we run (autonomy); about how much harder I can push some of them (competence); about why we need to celebrate improvement more so the workouts are worth it (relatedness).

I have been a participant in this as well, as this year I started doing Genius Hour with my students (read more here or here if you are interested). This totally accounts for Autonomy, Relatedness and Competence, and my survey for the class reflects this. I was able to go weeks into this project without students asking about how it's graded. They loved the choice, and they came up with better ideas for projects than I ever could, but that's a post for another day.

As always, it's encouraging to learn something new and see how it can improve not only our experiences but our students' experiences as well.

Rewind to 1989

“When students write for teachers, they are writing ‘uphill’ in the authority dimension: instead of having the normal language-using experience of trying to communicate ‘across’ to others in order to tell them what’s on their mind, they are having the experience of trying to communicate ‘up’ to someone whose only reason for reading is to judge the acceptability of what they wrote and how they wrote it.”—Peter Elbow

I came across this quote during the summer while rereading Jonan Donaldson's "The Maker Movement and the Rebirth of Constructionism."

I was drawn to the quote because I was experiencing the obligatory summer nostalgia for the classroom.  I like to dream big about what school could be. I know it sounds cheesy, but I even visualize how an ideal class period will go the upcoming term.

Elbow covers many of my current beliefs in the quote. Here's how it breaks down in my head:

• be explicit to students about pedagogy--blur the "authority dimension" as best as possible
• continue to have students write to authentic audiences and not just me--"communicate 'across' to others"
• begin to have students use the classroom as their learning environment--fight against students having "the experience of trying to communicate 'up' to someone whose only reason for reading is to judge the acceptability of what they wrote and how they wrote it"
• continue to place an emphasis on students developing digital literacies--it's 2014 now, so "communicating 'across'" often involves technology, or at least it involves the choice to use technology
• continue to stress the importance of considering the rhetorical situation in order to be successful in any communicative act--effectively "communicate 'across' to others in order to tell them what's on their mind"

Blog as Storytelling

Prepared is best, but underprepared is always better than overprepared.
— Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer) February 19, 2014

Newman and I had our students create blogs this year as a way to practice formative writing that accounts for an authentic audience and prepares students for success in summatively assessed writing. For example, if we were ultimately going to write a compare/contrast paper, students would first practice the skills of comparing/contrasting on their blog.

In addition, a key part of the blog assignment is giving students a chance to think about their learning.  The blog functions as a place to practice writing, but it is also used to post summative assignments and reflections. In this way, the blog captures a student's work for the class in one place, provides an authentic audience, and requires other design decisions as students consider the genre of blogging.

Basically, the blog acts as a platform for formative practice and as a hub or portfolio for publishing a student's work from throughout the year.

Our students have done some pretty amazing work. They've designed blogs that show genre awareness, they've practiced the skills for a unit in various ways, and they've created some strong final assessments.

The truth is, though, that if you would have asked me last summer if I thought the blogs would look like they do and that we would have been able to do all of the things mentioned above, I wouldn't have had any idea what you were talking about.

Exploring Apathy and Motivation in Teachers and Students as Professional Development

"I'm up there talking and they don't even care."
"10 out of 26 kids turned in a rough draft. I told them that they'd lose points, and the next day only 2 more kids turned one in."
"I planned the hell outta this lesson and it totally bombed. I thought they'd be excited, but they were like, 'Whatever.'"

And then we play the blame game:

• it's their home life; they don't value education
• they're always multi-tasking and can't focus when I'm just trying to teach them
• their other teachers never collect homework so they're used to doing nothing
• last year's teacher didn't teach them anything so they're not ready for this class

Image courtesy of kirkh from Flickr

So whether I've heard these things or said these things, that doesn't matter. It doesn't change the fact that student apathy exists. It also doesn't change the fact that teacher apathy exists. In our case, though, as teachers, it's the apathy to evaluate our own practices and determine what our role is in student motivation.

Because I had numerous conversations during the first semester about student motivation--in the hall, in the lunchroom, in my office--I knew this topic was on teachers' minds. When veteran teachers--those teaching over a decade--start to compare the current level of apathy they're facing and claim that "it's never been this bad," it's worth examining. Is that true? Is there some new development we need to be concerned about regarding student apathy?