EduSpeak: The Wu Wei of Classroom Motivation:

The secret to motivating students is to not try to motivate them. The harder you try to motivate students, the less invested they will be.

Csikszentmihalyi was curious. Why do people do things that are so difficult, like rock climbing, when they are neither required to them, nor paid for doing them? He studied this phenomena, and found that these experiences have internally embedded motivating features. They are challenging, require goal setting and are of personal importance to the people who do them. Most importantly, they choose the activity. They aren’t forced to do it.

Among the many things, I did not understand when I first started teaching was that people are not easily coerced. Even children can spot our attempts to manipulate them using basic carrots and sticks, and they then resist. After they have put up that wall, it’s almost impossible to take it down.

So, what do we do? How do teachers get students to do things they don’t want to? Things that are good for them? Things they need? Like learning to read and think?

This problem is one that we as teachers create. We assume that learning to read, do math and other academic skills are things children do not want to do. That’s not necessarily true. What is true is that they don’t want to learn these things the way we teach them.

That, we do know.

The answer to this problem seems simple. Stop making assumptions and stop pushing, right?

Yes! But, because our use of coersion and our expectation for compliance is so embedded in our tradition, we need a new operating system. And the good news is that we don’t have to construct one from the ground up. There is an effective system that is useful for us that has been practiced for centuries.

It can be found in the ancient Chinese teachings of the Master, Lao Tzu. He was the founder of Taoism and author of the Tao Te Ching, and he believed that when people are in harmony with the Tao (the intuitive knowing of experience that cannot be understood, only lived), they behave in a natural, unforced way. Lao Tzu mastered a spiritual practice of a purely natural way of being, like the way planets revolve around the sun, glaciers recede, plants bend toward sunlight and how fires burn oxygen. He called this Wu Wei.

It is the ancient Chinese art of doing nothing, by accomplishing through being — not through effort. With Wu Wei, we do not need incentives, punishments or even purpose for acting. We do things, because we feel fulfilled, alive and whole in that experience, not for an external outcome or to accomplish a goal someone else set for us. There is a feeling associated with Wu Wei, and that is what noted psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi called flow.

This is the feeling of absolute immersion in experience. A person in flow is so engrossed in an activity that her worries, time, self-consciousness and the need for ego gratification fade away. The person completes the task because she is drawn into it, is curious and is magnetically captivated by the experience, because it provides the right level of challenge for her. It places her in the present moment, where the future and past do not distract her. Csikszentmihalyi linked flow to a euphoric sensation, and he referred to experiences that became identified as flow experiences as peak or optimal experiences. Scientists, doctors, athletes, musicians and others are familiar with the concept.

Csikszentmihalyi’s research on motivation shows that flow leads to the deepest kinds of learning, enhances students’ interest in what school has to offer, and eliminates the need to punish or reward students for their behavior. Today’s classrooms are challenging places to create flow, because of schools’ overemphasis on outcomes. But, there are a few things that teachers can try to stimulate flow.

1. Find the right balance of challenge vs. ease. According to Csikszentmihalyi, an activity must be inherently challenging. But, like Vygotsky’s ZPD, it need not be more difficult than one level beyond the student’s ability. If there is too much difficulty, students will experience the challenge as threat and run away (mentally) from the activity. A task that is not challenging enough will bore the students. It is not possible to find the right level of challenge without first knowing what your students can and cannot do.

2. Learning activities must have some aspect that students think intersects with their lives. Research on motivation in schools shows that when students think of a lesson as relevant to their lives, they are likely to try it. This requires teachers to know their students. If they don’t think the lesson matters, they will not feel the flow.

3. When students are given the autonomy to choose their own learning activities, they will start work sooner and keep working beyond what they normally otherwise would. This is because they do not think of the activity they chose as work. They see it as play, instead. A person in flow loses track of time and has increased attention, concentration and focus.

4. If teachers include students in classroom goal setting, students will more likely accept the feedback that teachers provide. Teachers often provide feedback that is ignored, and then the teacher wonders why she wasted her time giving it, but students are less likely to ignore feedback when it relates to a performance task that they are interested in, that they chose and for which they set the ultimate goal. Csikszentmihalyi has explained that flow activities often have clear goals, providing structure and direction. In the classrooms, when students help to create their own goals, they are more likely to monitor their own progress toward achieving them. The research says that anyone receiving regular and consistent feedback during the process of completing a learning activity, is more likely to remain engaged in it.

5. Building relationships with students can’t be overlooked. Education research shows that positive student-teacher relationships has the potential to enhance flow. Although it takes time to build relationships with students, the payoff is huge. Getting to know your students is the first step. That requires you to let them know you as well. If you have a rapport with your students, they will trust you, ask you questions and express their interests.

6. Experiential learning is a must. If the classroom is not filled with hands-on learning activities, projects and experiences, children pop out of flow and become passive learners. Student-centered problem-solving, and design activities are more likely to maintain flow in the classroom once it has been achieved than any teacher-centered method. Unlike lecturing or teacher-led class discussions that are not student-centered, teaching with Wu Wei, where you remain apart from the learning experience, requires less control, less work and less performance on your part and more work for the students.

So, flow is the answer to the motivation problem, and it is easier to do that anyone ever thinks. It involves doing less, not trying and not controlling the classroom or the experience of the students. The teacher’s role becomes more like that of a consultant that an instructor. She is there when her students need some direction or feedback, but she stays off the stage, out of the light and tries to meet the students where they work and learn. Instead of staying aloof, the Wu Wei teacher remains curious and observant. She sets up the conditions for learning, and then allows her students to look for the answers, while she remains close by in case they need her.