Motivating students is a challenge as old as schools themselves. Recently, however, Daniel Pink in his book Drive provide some insight for us as teachers. Two of the key elements to motivation are autonomy and mastery. As a college preparatory boarding school, Fenster’s mission is to prepare its students for success in college and beyond. Redesigning our program around mastery learning allows us to the provide motivation our students need for that success.
Autonomy involves a sense of control. If a student feels that she/he has control over their learning, now she/he will gain greater motivation to persevere even when content or skills to be mastered are challenging. Similarly as a student progressively gains mastery over the content and necessary skills, their motivation is reinforced and therefore increases.
This fall, our math department introduced ALEKS (Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces), an artificial intelligence-based system for individualized learning, to Fenster. ALEKS allows us to customize the mathematics program for each student by identifying what students have already learned and what they are ready to learn. This process feeds into a growing sense of autonomy. ALEKS then provides the sequential lessons that guide students to achieve mastery. For example, one freshman should complete Algebra I in March after which we will move him into Geometry. Achieving this mastery creates and sustains his strong motivation.
The success of this math program has stimulated a continuing discussion of how we might integrate mastery learning into other disciplines. As this integration progresses, greater motivation will result.