I’ll take a break from Classroom 10 to share this TED Talk with Daniel Pink on motivation, the topic of his next book. Pink wrote A Whole New Mind the book that suggests that the future will require much more right brain thinking for success. This was one of the books that influenced our thinking when we revisited our Outcomes and Indicators and influenced our Classroom 10 initiative.
As I listened to the talk it made me think not only about how we support learning and motivate young people, but also about the interest in merit pay for teachers. Pink shares the results of research over time that show that bonuses for tasks that involve “mechanical skills” work as expected. When the task, however, called for “even rudimentary cognitive skill”, a larger reward led to poorer performance. Wouldn’t the act of teaching require much more than rudimentary cognitive skill to make the critical decisions necessary to create and sustain a classroom where all students experience success? I wonder if those supporting merit pay would call it a bonus or would they see it as an incentive? Is there a difference?
Should the research Pink shares have any influence on the merit pay debate? We are asking teachers to guarantee that all students learn; a task that requires much preparation and decision making. Is it the key to increased performance or might these financial incentives have similar results to those experienced in the business sector? It is interesting that many of those promoting merit pay come from the business sector where the data suggest that incentives don’t work for complex tasks. It doesn’t seem to have any influence on their zeal to move forward with this initiative. Maybe I’m just missing something or my ladder might be leading me to make erroneous assumptions.
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4 comments:
Very interesting how individual responses to books can be. Each time I've read A Whole New Mind I connect to how people must be able to adapt to an ever increasing rate of change, where the shelf life of ideas is short, and technology can easily and cheaply reproduce other's novel ideas/applications redering them of little monetary worth, and a world where a Masters of Fine Arts would replace the M.B.A. as the desired degree moving forward.
Never in a million years would I have made the connection to merit pay.
Thanks for another thought provoking blog post, Mike. Really got me thinking again.
Jonathan
Great talk, and I highly recommend reading Alfie Kohn's book, Punished by Rewards, in which he, years ago, made a similar case against incentivizing the workplace and classroom, arguing that collaboration, meaningfulness, and autonomy are more effective motivators (qualities we capture in our classroom 10 components).
I wonder, though, whether the merit pay issue compares apples to apples. Consider that Pink assumes that you "start by paying adequately and fairly." I think that much of the merit pay movement is an attempt to mitigate inadequate pay in an age of scarce resources. And in some cases, that pay does in fact reinforce the motivators of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose, as in National Board candidacy. It's a complex issue, to be sure.
Jonathan,
My thoughts on merit pay are not connected to A Whole New Mind, they were sparked by the video on motivation; the subject of his new book. As Kristn says in her comment I may still not be comparing apples to apples.
Mike
Kristin,
I struggled with the comparison which is why I wonder if my ladder may be driving my thinking. I don't believe, however, that the motivation behind merit pay for many in the private sector is to mitigate inadequate pay. I believe it is to reward those they perceive as successful based on student achievement. Given this, I wonder if the research is important to consider. Will striving to reach merit status result in comprehensive review and significant innovation or will the quest be to simply copy those receiving the pay? With the federal government pumping big dollars into merit initiatives we may have some data to begin answering these questions.
Mike
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