Sapna

‘They Just Don’t Care’ I’m seeing lots of posts bemoaning that the Year 11s just don’t seem to care about their upcoming GCSEs. They aren’t motivated or worried about their speaking exams starting in two weeks time and nothing seems to make a difference. This is exactly what would be predicted by the science of motivation. Motivation can come from the inside or the outside (or a mixture of the two). Standard schooling works on a principle of controlling children’s motivation. From the moment that children start school, adults are working to motivate them through rewards, sanctions, grades and approvals. They tell children that what they want to do is less important than what adults want them to do. They make them learn things which have no purpose to them, because they will be ‘important later on’. This changes the purpose of learning. Young children learn because they want to find out and they are driven to explore the world. They ask questions because they are curious and want to participate. It’s hard to stop young children learning, and their learning is very individualised and frequently messy. Adults try to make this linear, to make them follow a formal process. This isn’t how children naturally learn, and so they have to be controlled in order to do what is required. When we take away their choices and instead give them stickers and certificates to make them do what we want, then we turn learning into an exercise in compliance. Now they aren’t learning because they want to find out, they are learning because they are being told that they have to. They don’t read because they love stories, they read because they have to do 15 minutes every night to tick it off. They are helpful because they might get an Achievement Point, or a 'Caught Being Kind' sticker. The research shows that over time, this will damage their internal drive to learn and this is exactly what we see. They don’t ask why any more, they ask what will be on the test. They don’t choose a topic because they are interested, they choose whatever they think will be easiest. And over time, the stickers and stars lose their sparkle. It’s easy to control a five-year-old with a sticker, but 15-year-olds will laugh in your face. When we focus on the cognitive science of learning, it’s easy to miss that the science of motivation is as important. Experimental studies on how adults learn often don’t even address this issue, because adults have some level of choice in what they do and that is assumed. For children and teenagers, it’s different. They often have no choice at all. What they want to learn doesn’t matter. Understanding the science of learning is futile if the learner doesn’t want to know. Cognitive science doesn’t apply to forced learning. What the learner thinks, matters. It’s easy to blame teenagers, or their parents, or even the pandemic. It’s deeply frustrating when you are trying to help people who just don’t care. But what if this is actually the predictable result of our education system? We ignore the science of motivation and our young people pay the price.

What meaningful communication is there in this slide? Unfortunately, not much at all. There’s a problem with the assertion that these statements are ‘low evidence misconceptions’ and it’s this. It’s not defined here what ‘behaviour’ means. To a psychologist, behaviour means the way in which a person acts or conducts themselves. All of it. The way we walk, the way we smile, the way that we talk, how we play, what we do with our time – it’s all behaviour. Behaviour is the way in which we interact with the world. It is the result of an interplay between a person and their environment. I suspect however that on this slide, ‘behaviour’ is a stand in for what Tom sees as ‘unacceptable behaviour’. This is often how the term ‘behaviour’ is used when referring to children. However, even ‘unacceptable behaviour’ is poorly defined. One of the features of high control school environments is that something others might see as just ‘behaviour’ is defined as ‘unacceptable behaviour’. Not tucking your shirt in, for example, or forgetting your ruler. Or childish behaviours such as running instead of walking or talking out of turn. ‘Unacceptable behaviour’ is in the eye of the beholder and context dependent. What is unacceptable in a high control school (talking in the corridors, not tracking the teacher with your eyes) will be completely acceptable in another school. The behaviour is the same, it’s how the adults respond which has changed. When ‘behaviour’ is so poorly defined, it’s not possible to test hypotheses such as ‘All behaviour is meaningful communication’, or ‘All behaviour is caused by an unmet need’. These are clearly daft when ‘behaviour’ means not tucking your shirt in or being three minutes late for school. Another possible definition for behaviour which Tom may be using (but hasn’t told us) is ‘not doing what adults say’. This is very far from the way which psychologists would understand ‘behaviour’ and is closer to ‘compliance’. If this is what he means, then again several of his statements are clearly nonsensical. It makes no sense to say ‘all children naturally want to behave’ if by ‘behaviour’ you really mean ‘be compliant. Of course they don’t, and why should they? ‘All non-compliance is meaningful communication’ – that doesn’t make much sense either, since non-compliance can be due to a number of reasons, including forgetfulness or factors beyond a person’s control. The problem continues as we go down the list. ‘All children will behave if the lesson is relevant’ begs the question of what definition of ‘behaviour’ is being used – and we don’t know, because it hasn’t been defined. Does he mean ‘all children will be compliant’ – in which case, again it’s clearly nonsense. Humans aren’t naturally compliant with high control systems, but that is quite different to ‘behaving’. Or does he mean that they’ll all tuck their shirts in and remember their protactors? Again, the statement is meaningless. Last point about behaviour and therapy. Many psychologists dislike being referred a ‘badly behaved’ child and being asked to ‘fix them’ with therapy. Particularly when ‘badly behaved’ really means ‘non-compliant’. Sometimes the rules children are being asked to comply with are unreasonable and developmentally inappropriate. No ethical therapist will set out to stop children behaving like children. No therapy will stop children making mistakes or untucking their shirts. Children show their distress through behaviour, yes, but even then therapy might not be appropriate. It might be better to ask why they are distressed and see if that can be changed. Behaviour is an interaction between a person and their environment. With children, the first step for most psychologists is to look at the systems around them and to ask why the child is behaving the way that they are. This is best practice and evidence-based. That is because we do see a lot of behaviour – defined as the way in which a child acts - as communicating something, and it’s the adult’s job to figure out what. Is this an environment within which they are thriving? If not, how could that change? If you don’t define what you mean by ‘behaviour’ then a list of statements about behaviour means nothing at all. Of course there is no evidence. It’s not possible to generate any. The statements are untestable, because we don’t have a shared understanding of what they mean. If you are really interested in looking at the evidence, then you need to start out by defining what exactly you are talking about when you say ‘behaviour’. Otherwise we end up with a list of provocative soundbites with no substance at all. Good for sharing on Twitter, but ultimately meaningless.