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‘Good learning is like good teaching – attitudinal, behavioural and habitual’

Get on your tracksuit, crank Tina Turner’s ‘Simply the Best’ up to full blast and let’s get motivated, says Andrew Hammond – come on, you can do it…

Andrew Hammond
by Andrew Hammond
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Talking about what drives and inspires you with some kind of motivational guru sounds about as enticing as divulging what colour underpants you’re wearing. And besides, most of us are too snowed under with work to find time to reflect on what motivates us to do the work in the first place. We just get on with it.

We can’t be gazing deep into our navels each day to see if we’ve still got our teaching mojo. Equilibrium and wellbeing are all fine and dandy, but these books won’t mark themselves…

A case of ‘and’, not ‘or’

The thing about motivation, like many things that truly matter in school, is that it’s invisible to the naked eye (as well as to the red pen). Because of that, it doesn’t get talked about very much – especially when inspectors and standards officers are poring over tangible data, and we’re forced to march to the beat of SATs, national expectations and floor standards. Or is this just a tired and outdated caricature? Is pitting number-crunching, data-obsessed school inspectors against empathic, child-centred teachers a lazy, worn-out argument? After all, the new Ofsted framework describes outstanding leaders as those who ‘Create a climate in which teachers are motivated and trusted to take risks’.

It says that outstanding teachers ‘are determined that pupils achieve well’ and ‘encourage pupils to try hard, recognise their efforts and ensure that pupils take a pride in all aspects of their work’. Finally, outstanding learners are described as ‘confident and self-assured,’ and that their ‘excellent attitudes to learning have a strong, positive impact on their progress’. Now, do any these indicators suggest to you that we must only focus on attainment data, or that motivation doesn’t matter? To say that things like motivation, curiosity and creativity are eclipsed on inspection days by attainment and progress data is a misrepresentation. Ofsted knows better than this.

A school leader who focuses only on hammering data home, believing this alone will get him through an inspection, will be sorely disappointed. It’s not a case of either teaching to pass tests, or teaching for enrichment and character development – it’s a case of ‘and’. Happy, motivated learners learn well.

Inspired teaching

It’s not just Ofsted, either. The Teachers’ Standards [PDF] also recognise the importance of motivation, saying that educators should ‘set high expectations which inspire, motivate and challenge pupils’ and are required to ‘manage classes effectively, using approaches which are appropriate to pupils’ needs in order to involve and motivate them’. This last statement is particularly important as it reminds us that children have motivational needs as well as academic ones. All too often, educational ‘needs’ are interpreted merely as having difficulties with reading, writing or making calculations. But there are a myriad of others, and everyone, students and teachers, must feel motivated if we are to achieve our potential and become our best selves. ‘Performance’ is another word that is repeatedly misused in education, wrongly being conflated purely with results – ‘David performed well in science this term; he achieved an A grade’. That ‘A’ may be the result of his performance, but it tells us little about his learning performance in class.

If an F1 racing team believed the car’s performance was encapsulated in the position it achieved on a leader board, they’d pack up their spanners and go home – but they know that this is just the result of the performance. The actual performance is measured by looking at the engine, the tyres, the aerodynamic design, the braking system, the handling, the driver’s skills, attitude and concentration, the weather conditions, the other drivers and so on. Performance is a complex and dynamic thing that cannot be encapsulated in a ranked number. And so it is inside the classroom. Good learning, just like good teaching, is attitudinal, behavioural, habitual. If we want teach students how to learn and how to think (as opposed to feeding them a prescribed syllabus of knowledge and concepts) then we must recognise that there is a great deal going on behind the scenes, hidden behind the resulting ‘A’ grade or ‘67 per cent’ or ‘national expectations met’, and motivation is at the heart of it.

The will to work

The characteristics of effective learning comprise a multitude of attributes from resilience and grit to robust optimism, confidence and an insatiable curiosity, to name but a few. But any good teacher and any good learner, will have self-motivation at her core. Energised teachers inspire their students like no one else can. But the only way to have them bounding into work with a robust optimism that just won’t quit is by finding out what motivates them, deep down. Motivation lies in the gut, not in the head. We spend so much time, especially in the West, rationalising. Deductive logic is an obsession. Let’s think critically about this and analyse that.

But motivation is impervious to reason and logic. It’s visceral; it’s a fire in the belly. Some teachers feel motivated when given a creative task, like directing a school play, or coming up with innovative learning resources. Others are motivated by compiling timetables and establishing routines. Others still find that the chance to lead and manage is what gets them out of bed.

Some teachers – a great many, in my experience – are motivated by the tantalising prospect of making a difference. Some are even motivated by the thought of a neat pile of maths exam scripts to mark methodically. Others are excited by the idea of attending CPD courses and reading up on pedagogy. Few teachers are motivated by money, although a secure and predictable income is heartening, at least. There is always something that motivates a teacher, even the most hardened, cynical one – such as the colleague in your staff room who’s been teaching for 27 years (or taught the year’s work 27 times). Knowing what motivates us allows us to maintain our professional energy; knowing what demotivates us allows us to find coping strategies with the things that threaten to remove our mojo.

Knowing what motivates others around us makes for more effective communication with them. Give a colleague a directive, and you’ll get a muted response – but talk to a colleague in the language of her motivators, and you’ll truly connect with her.

What motivates us?

In my experience, these are some of the major driving forces for teachers and school leaders…

• Making a difference – having a moral purpose and something to believe in

• Knowledge and expertise – acquiring new knowledge and passing it on to others

• Creating new ideas and solving problems

• Friendship and camaraderie among colleagues

• Job security – a planned and predictable future

• Autonomy – having the freedom to make your own decisions and act on them

• Recognition and praise – receiving positive feedback and public acclaim

• Leading and managing others, delegating and overseeing

• Monetary gain – having the latest gadgets and possessions

Andrew Hammond is Headteacher of Glemsford Primary Academy, Suffolk and also offers CPD training and speaker services via the company, Hammond Consulting

Andrew’s book, Teaching for Motivation is the third in The Invisible Ink series published by John Catt Educational, which sheds light on the invisible elements of learning. For more information, visit www.andrewhammond.org or follow @AndrewJHammond

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