Motivation as a key factor for success?

Formerly a vocational trainer (1980s-90s) my experience taught me that adult learning success (in this field) was dependent upon individual motivation to learn which was often a result of organizational support, ongoing coaching / leadership, and overt organizational adherence to learning goals / cultural or organizational change.

Having just watched Paolo Freire's last recorded interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFWjnkFypFA), I was left pondering the nature of people and how their self-perception and positions in society, or in their particular lifeworld or circumstance affect their approach or their ideas towards learning. 

The comment that I made in the first paragraph applies not only to adults, but also to children and I now understand, or suspect, that the motivation of which I wrote is directly dependent upon the individual learner's self-perception. This self-perception is necessarily affected by the individual's context "a person's history, future, and surrounding social institutions and structures" (Course reading: Merriam, 2004, p.204). This is echoed by Spear and Mocker's model (1988, in Merriam) "that takes into account opportunities for learning found in one's environment, past or new knowledge, and chance occurrences", defined as the "organizing circumstance". (Spear and Mocker 1984). 

Therefore, while I have been arguing (exhaustively!) for the argument that all that matters is motivation - it appears that motivation itself is a symptom of a greater issue. Freire, in the conversation referenced above, talks about tolerance as a duty of the person who desires to learn. It is, according to Freire, the practice of tolerance that allows one to learn different things from different people. In addition, he describes himself as once a curious boy and later a curious man. Curiosity is indeed a prerequisite to learning, in my humble opinion... Curiosity in fact would appear to be intrinsically linked to motivation as without it, why would one wish to learn? And without tolerance, how could one hope to learn?



The question remains however, how do we influence the tolerance and motivation of our students (adult or child) when there are so many factors outside the control of the teacher which influence, positively or negatively, their ability (desire, motivation, readiness, history, sociocultural situation, etc.) to learn? 

If I take a step back to consider not the individual learner, but the institution in which learning takes place; whether it be an elementary school, a university, or an adult vocational training centre; my thoughts return to the impact of the institution on the willingness, motivation, and ability of the learner to learn. Layered on top of the effects of individual context is the context of the institution itself, its leadership structure, and the extent to which its employees adhere to that culture. There are a myriad theories of leadership, all of which enjoy greater or lesser success depending upon the ability of those practising it to disseminate its message - and once again - to MOTIVATE its employees. The power exerted by leaders of such institutions can be EMpowering or crippling. According to Owen and Demb (Change Dynamics and Leadership in Technology Implementation, Journal of Higher Education, 75, 6, 2004) leadership needs to be shared and non-hierarchical. Perpetual learning needs to exist in a culture of champions and risk-takers who focus on changing the focus of education from one of product to process. In doing so, the ownership of power moves from the heads of the institution to the teachers and eventually to the students. Students who have the privilege of taking control of their own learning could be students who direct that learning in ways that are more meaningful, more motivating, and more applicable to their needs and their circumstances.

“Our postmodern society requires shared leadership informed by dynamic models through which to inform the process of educational renewal” 

(Davis 2006, p.254).

Too much, and probably without really paying attention to it, our educational institutions remain steeped in the ideals generated during the Industrial Revolution wherein education was a vehicle for developing economic power through the training and indoctrination of the proletariat, or the working class (Hodgkinson, 1991). It is this legacy that keeps classrooms teacher-centric and, as stated by Mezirow "the very definiton of education itself is almost universally understood in terms of an organized effort to facilitate behavioural change".  

He goes on to state later however that "education becomes indoctrination only when the educator tries to influence a specific action as an extension of his will, or perhaps when he blindly helps a learner blindly follow the dictates of an unexamined set of cultural assumptions about who he is and the nature of his relationships. To show someone a new set of rules, tactics, and criteria for judging which clarify the situation in which he or she must act is significantly different from trying to engineer learner consent to take the actions favoured by the educator within the new perspective. This does not suggest that the educator is value free. His selection of alternative meaning perspectives will reflect his own cultural values, including his professional ideology - for adult educators one which commits us to the concept of learner self-directedess as both the means and the end of education." I absolutely couldn't agree more with this statement and yet I see very little light at the end of this tunnel... I suspect that true educational reform will take several generations more before it is truly self-directed and generally free from power relationships that impact learner perspectives and their success.

"Substantial cultural change in an institution occurs at a glacial pace" (Change dynamics and leadership in technology implementation, Owen and Demb, 2004, p651)