Developing a desire to learn

In an earlier article titled “Online classes and the four pillars of learning”, I had spelled out how teachers may use the four pillars of learning, put forth by neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene in his book How We Learn, to make learning more robust for students. Attention, active engagement, error feedback and consolidation are the four shafts recommended by Dehaene. This article will provide further strategies that teachers may deploy to motivate students remotely.

While acknowledging the challenges of teaching online, psychologist Adam Grant and writer Allison Sweet Grant outline how educators may make online learning more exciting and engaging for students in an article published in The New York Times using three strategies. The authors sagely recognise that a keen desire to learn is more elemental than what students learn. In the long run, we want kids to be intrinsically motivated to continue learning. Ultimately, shouldn’t that be one of the main goals of education?

Though teachers may be overwhelmed by the nitty-gritties of teaching the syllabus to kids, they should not lose sight of this overarching aim of education. As it is challenging to sustain students’ attention on screens, it might be worthwhile for teachers to consider how they can stoke children’s curiosities by asking the right questions. If learning is set up like an intriguing mystery or an interesting puzzle to be solved, students are more likely to be inspired to seek answers.

Student engagement

The next step involves getting students to engage with material actively. As teachers may find it difficult to get students to interact remotely, they may ask them to work on their own on mini-projects that excite them. Of course, this may not be feasible with very young children, but even elementary school children can do some projects fairly independently.

Thus, for a geography lesson, kids may first design a questionnaire that assesses people’s preferences for living in urban versus rural areas along with their justifications. Kids may then interview friends and relatives and collate and analyse the data before presenting it to the class. For a math lesson on proportions, students may help their parents prepare their favourite dish, while noting down the ingredients and recipe. If they made a dish for four people, they can be asked to provide ingredient quantities for eight or twelve people. An extension activity could be to calculate the ingredient quantities for the whole class. For a language lesson, kids can be asked to make short videos on various aspects of their “new normal” lives.

The third component that the Grants advocate for is meaning. The authors acknowledge that aspects of learning can be tedious and cumbersome. However, if students are able to understand why they are studying something, they are more likely to be approach tasks with zeal. Scoring high marks on board exams cannot be the sole purpose driving student motivation as board exams are only the means to an end; they can never be the end in and of themselves. Similarly, getting a job should not be seen as an end of education. We need to train students to think about what they would do on the job.

If we want children to be lifelong learners, they need deeper and more meaningful purpose. Do they wish to clean up the planet of pollutants? Or figure out how future pandemics can be prevented? Do they see themselves as preservers of indigenous knowledge and culture? Or, are they impelled to correct gender imbalances? Are they keen on conveying social messages through the medium of dance or drama or art?

When students appreciate the larger purpose behind their education, they are more likely to persist and persevere through the odds. Educators need to help students craft personally-relevant goals based on their strengths, interests and predilections.