1. Empowering Students: From Apathy to Autonomy
in the Global Age
Paul Doyon (Asahi University)
Brad Deacon (Nanzan University ）
CoLT 2002
Wed, Oct. 16, 2002
2. Outline
• Background
• Beliefs and Perceptions
• Audience’s own Apathy Experiences
• Anecdote: The Dog and the Carrot
• The Lewinian/Kolb Experiential Learning Model
• Experience One
• Some Key Concepts
– Engagement and Empowerment
– Control, Compliance, and Defiance
– Learned Helplessness
– Resistance
– Reciprocity
– Intrinsic Motivation
– Psychoacademic Needs
– The Need for Autonomy
• An Anecdote: Experience Two
• Conclusion
3. Beliefs Perceptions
A great deal of what
is perceived is, in
actuality, inferred
(Kearl).
4. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of
the linguistic tradition into which he has been born -- the
beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the
accumulated records of other people's experience, the
victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced
awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his
sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts
for data, his words for actual things.
Audous Huxley,
The Doors of Perception
6. Have you had students that
you felt were apathetic (or
have you yourself felt apathetic
as a learner)?
What did you do?
7. Teaching should be such that what is
offered is perceived as a valuable gift
and not a hard duty.
--Albert Einstein
8.
9. The Lewinian (Kolb) Experiential
Learning Model
Concrete Experience
Testing Implications Observation
of Concepts in New and Reflection
Situations
(Experimentation)
Experimentation
Formation of Abstract
Concepts and Generalizations
10. Experience One:
Background
• Intermediate-level college conversation
class/social community.
• Approximately 20 motivated students
ranging in age from 19 to 60.
12. The Reflection
• Noticed some not engaged.
• Recalled previous class feedback where a
learner commented:
– I discuss with other non-native speakers which is not
very exciting sometimes, because we are all non-
native speakers. So even if we discuss long, I feel it
doesn’t improve my English skill.
• Recognized a conflict with teacher’s beliefs
about pair work.
13. The Conceptualization:
Perceived Value (PV)
• Need to determine what others in class think
specifically about pair work.
14. The Experiment:
• Invited and gathered focused written feedback on
pair work and gave students an experience in
reframing their learning.
15. The Results
• Most wrote that they perceived
value in pair work in myriad
ways.
16. Future Work
• Continue to get more intermental with
students.
• Research additional ways of offering the
“helping hand” (Sheerin, 1997) to provide
more choices to develop autonomous student
learning attitudes.
• Continue to get more interemotional with
students.
17. The Concept of
Enhancing Perceived Value
Increased Engagement and Motivation
Enhanced Value Perception
Belief System Shift
Satisfaction of Psychoacademic Needs
(Competence, Autonomy, Self-esteem,
Autonomy
Belonging and Relatedness, Fun and Enjoyment)
Learned Helplessness
18. Some Key Concepts
–Engagement and Empowerment
–Control, Compliance, and Defiance
–Learned Helplessness
–Resistance
–Reciprocity
–Intrinsic Motivation
–Psychoacademic Needs (The Fuel)
–The Need for Autonomy (The Spark)
19. Engagement & Empowerment
– If we look at very young children engaged in the learning
process, one thing most salient is the fact that it is a very
empowering process for them. Every time they learn something
new, it empowers them to do something more.
– We see the act of learning itself as an empowering process as
long as the student is engaged in the learning process as an act
of his or her own volition.
– However, when a child starts school, more often than not,
something negative happens to this natural learning process --
what might be called a process of disempowerment.
20. Control : Defiance and
Compliance
• To the extent that a behavior is not autonomous it is
controlled, and there are two types of controlled
behavior. The first type is compliance, and it is
compliance
compliance that authoritarian solutions hope to
accomplish. Compliance means doing what you are
told to do because you are told to do it…. The other
response to control is defiance, which means you
defiance
do the opposite of what you are expected to do just
because you are expected to do it. Compliance and
defiance exist in an unstable partnership
representing the complementary responses to
control. (Deci, 1995)
control
21. Learned Helplessness
– Learned Helplessness is “an apathetic attitude stemming from
the conviction that one's actions do not have the power to affect
one's situation” (Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2001 p. 1).
Dr. Martin Seligman, of the University of Pennsylvania,
originally found that rats, upon repeated exposure to
unavoidable electric shocks, became “unable to act in
subsequent situations where avoidance or escape was possible”
(p. 1). In extending these findings to the human population,
Seligman found that one’s lack of control over his or her
environment also undermines one’s “motivation to initiate
[italics added] responses” (p. 1). Thus, students’ beliefs in their
own powerlessness, not only undermine their ability to act in a
learning situation, but also color how they perceive that
learning situation.
23. The Idea of Reciprocity
• “There is an emphasis on reciprocation,
reciprocation
that is, the importance of the learner
reciprocating the intentions of the
mediator or teacher. This means that
the learner is ready and willing to carry
out the task presented, and that there is
an agreement as to what should be
done” (Williams and Burden, 1997).
24. Intrinsic Motivation
• Raffini (1996), an educational psychologist at the
University of Wisconsin, defines intrinsic motivation
as:
– “…choosing to do an activity for no compelling reason,
beyond the satisfaction derived from the activity itself--it’s
what motivates us to do something when we don’t have to
do anything.”
25. Five Psychoacademic
Needs
• Raffini (1996) goes on to state that intrinsic
motivation is fueled by five psychoacademic needs:
– The Need for Autonomy (e.g. Choices)
– The Need for Competence (e.g. Vygotsky’s ZPD)
– The Need for Belonging and Relatedness (e.g. Cooperative Learning)
– The Need for Self-Esteem (e.g. Unconditional Positive Regard)
– The Need for Involvement and Enjoyment
Consider these needs and how the presence or absence
of them may affect students’ beliefs and perceptions about
learning and themselves as learners.
26. The Need for
The Need for
Autonomy
Autonomy
• Individuals seek a quality of human functioning that has at
its core the desire to determine their own behavior; they
have an innate need to feel autonomous and to have
control over their lives. This need for self-determination is
satisfied when individuals are free to behave of their own
volition -- to behave in activities because they want to, not
because they have to. At its core is the freedom to choose
and have choices, rather than being forced or coerced to
behave according to the desires of another. (Raffini, 1996,
pp. 3-4)
27. Experience : Background
• Low-level university English conversation class.
• Students were non-English majors.
• Most appeared not to have much of an interest in studying
English.
28. The Experience
• A teacher had a class where many of his
students were especially rebellious. Some
were -- not only -- not nice but outright
nasty. In fact, one day when this teacher
was teaching, one of his students
answered his keitai denwa and continued
to speak. When the teacher went over to
warn this student, the student responded:
“shinê” ( 死ね！ ).
• How would you react?!
29. The Reflection
• During the summer break, the teacher
reflected deeply on this experience in
particular and apathy in learning in general.
30. The Conceptualization:
Perceived Value (PV)
• Through reflecting on this experience and
drawing generalizations from other
experiences he concluded as follows : if the
students do not initially perceive value in
the lesson, there is no way that he can get
them to participate actively and
enthusiastically in his class -- no matter what
he did.
• Therefore, he...
31. The Experiment:
• …on the first day of the fall semester, he went into
the classroom and told the students the following:
– I, as a teacher, do not want to teach students who do not
want to learn and who will not participate in class. I know
that some students do want to learn and do want to
participate. However, the ones that don’t are interfering
with the ones that do. It is for this reason that I am giving
each and everyone of you the option of not having to
attend the class and just taking the final examination at
the end of the semester, which will be taken straight from
the textbook units 5-8. All you have to do is study this
textbook and I will base your grade strictly on the score
you receive on the final examination. I am not angry. I
just don’t want to teach students that don’t want to learn.
It’s plain and simple. Otherwise, it is just exhausting for
me.
32. The Results
• All the students decided to
continue to take the class, and
from that day on their attitudes
changed and the rest of the
course went well.
• In other words, they were able
to perhaps perceive value in
taking the class.
33. Back to the Raffini Quote
• This need for self-determination is satisfied
when individuals are free to behave of their
own volition -- to behave in activities because
they want to, not because they have to. At its
core is the freedom to choose and have
choices, rather than being forced or coerced
to behave according to the desires of another.
(Raffini, 1996, pp. 3-4)
34. Apply Your Own Experience to the
Experiential Learning Model
Concrete Experience
Testing Implications Observation
of Concepts in New and Reflection
Situations
(Experimentation)
Experimentation
Formation of Abstract
Concepts and Generalizations
35. Conclusion:
Empowering Students through the
Enhancement of Perceived Value
• Students may not be able to perceive value in a class or activity when they
feel that they are being forced or coerced into doing it.
• Through satisfying their psychoacademic needs -- and allowing Ss to have
some choice in the matter -- we can enhance their perception of value, and
get so-called “vapid” students to participate more actively in our classes.
• By becoming “Intermental” with the Ss and allowing Ss to become
intermental with each other, teachers can also help students shift possible
self-defeating and “class-defeating” belief patterns. This can then lead to the
enhancement of value perception with regards to certain activities that the
teacher will present.
• Through the enhancement of value perception, students expand their
learning choices, and thus develop their autonomy and empowerment.
• Autonomous Learners are Empowered Learners.
