Throughout my life I believe that, to a great extent, my educational and learning motivations have waxed and waned as a direct result of my goals. In my younger years, especially in high school, my goal was to get good grades (whatever the class) so that I could be accepted into a good college. And when I say “whatever the class” I mean I had to slog through a whole lot of classes that I really did not care for yet I had to do well in because my goal was to get the reward at the end: good grades followed by a good college. However, in high school I came to realize that I really liked my biology classes and as a result I felt more motivated to study and truly learn the material. Yet I really truly wanted to be in music classes above all else and I worked darn hard at music because I loved it.
Same story in college. So many classes I wouldn’t ordinarily think of taking but had to. Classes such as organic chemistry, physics, freshman english, etc. I had to take them either to graduate and/or qualify for grad school. Once again, I really wanted to take music classes because I loved music. For instance, although it was damn hard I really put my all into music theory as it pertained to one of my real loves which was (and still is) music. I so loved all of my music classes and music ensembles. However, I also really loved my January interim class that was spent in Jamaica studying marine biology. So I survived the stuff I disliked just to get good grades and provide evidence that I took the requisite classes. Yet I deeply enjoyed studying things I loved.
As an adult (OTHER THAN dental school) I have had much more control over the things I love and want to study. For instance, before entering into my Master’s Degree program (Dispute Resolution) I had a deep and vested interest in the subject matter. And because of that deep and vested interest I savored each class I took. Was it hard work? Yes. But I was so very motivated to learn.
So what does this all mean in relation to goals? Ambrose (2010) pages 71 through 72 helped me to see different types of goals I have employed (unknowingly) throughout my life. So back in those days when I was slogging through classes that I just didn’t want to take, yet needed to take and get good grades, I was adhering to the idea of performance goals especially performance-approach goals. As such I was focusing “on attaining competence by meeting normative standards” (Ambrose, 2010, pp. 71-72). And in those times when I really loved the subject matter and wanted to learn I was adhering to the idea of learning goals and as such I was working to “gain competence and truly learn what an activity or task” (Ambrose, 2010, p. 71) could teach me.
So much of dental school necessarily revolves around performance goals and performance-approach goals (because of so many disparate classes and some classes that just..suck). And so a big failure I once upon a time had in teaching dentistry was my derailing student’s tenuous motivation by trying to demand perfection: I demanded that students produce perfect work. And I would go so far as to have students re-do work until it was perfect. I was such an idiot but this was all I knew as this was how I was taught how to do dentistry back when I was a damn dirty diseased dental student at the University of Minnesota. And I really do think that this caused students to lose motivation. Worse, students began to fear me as a grader/instructor. They just couldn’t live up to the perfect standard. Students became frustrated and would just take whatever grade they received or just avoid me altogether. And I don’t think they learned well because rather than working with and through mistakes in order to make things better I would just have them start over (or kill their grade) and so they never had the opportunity to learn from (and fix) their mistakes. I wanted students to land at perfection every time with no mistakes and this was and is not realistic because in dentistry we are always having to modify things that don’t go so well (big shout out thank you to my dental school for turning me into a monster).
Nowadays I am a recovering monster and I really like to give timely, constructive, and targeted feedback (Ambrose, 2010, pp. 87-88) so as to NOT derail motivation. I try to start by giving praise for things that go well. And for the things that don’t go so well I inform the students, I empower the students with how to fix the problem if it’s fixable, and I allow the students to live with imperfections especially if it means that fixing a bad situation allows for a good learning experience. And I think this approach seems to resonate well with students (I could be wrong) as I sometimes tend to have a long line of students following me around seeking my advice.
Ambrose, Susan A. (Ed(s).). (2010). How learning works: seven research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
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