A persistent desire for learning comes when people come to understand the value of the material and how it aligns with their own internal goals. Once this mindset is created then behavior will become self-regulating meaning the person will want to do the work. An example of this is a marathon runner; no person is just born with the desire to put their body through extreme pressure. Yet after long enough marathon runners come to internalize the value of running and for them its no longer a chore rather it’s a pleasure that they look forwards to in the day.
How this relates to helping a child enjoy learning; learning from a book in of itself is like going for a run, people wont just enjoy doing it by themselves. It’s our goal to help align a child’s learning experience with end goals/outcomes that will be self-regulating. For this there are two major components that are emphasized for their internal value to every person namely a desire to have meaningful relationships, and the desire to feel that a person is growing and developing their perceived abilities in the world.
learning at its core is about developing a way of thinking and if the child and parent are developing together, they are more likely to develop more meaningful relationships
The first is achieved by involving the parents in the learning experience; learning at its core is about developing a way of thinking and if the child and parent are developing together, they are more likely to develop more meaningful relationships as their views of the world become more aligned. This leads to the learning experience being associated subconsciously with growing with their loved ones therefore achieving the goal of creating meaningful relationships, with the subsequent motivation for learning being anchored to a desire that is internal to a person.
The second way that learning is encouraged is through the focus of developing a person’s way of thinking. Knowing more things about the world with no way of being able to use them is not a way to feel that a person is growing. An example of this is learning accounting without ever knowing how to apply it to a person like. In this case its just information that was difficult to obtain unless the person is changed by the knowledge it is just going to waste.
What critical thinking does it encourages people to take the knowledge that they have and play with it until it is understandable.
This means that a person will be able to want to learn because the learning process leads to more development in a person. Developing this critical thinking in children comes from the classroom where the focus is entirely on how to think about problems, solutions matter but what matters most is the logic behind it. This is supplemented by helping the parents think more openly about problems; its emphasized “there are no wrong answers just wrong ways of thinking about the problem” when parents are assisted in discussing topics using this mindset it again changes the learning experience of the child as all subsequent information will be far more meaningful. Thereby helping a person feel they are growing more by learning, which in turn will mean they are more motivated to learn.
This is the underlying model of motivation that is used in the learning experience at Core Teaching essentials. It’s grounded in research in self-determination theory which is influenced by both the positive and mechanical meta-analysis of psychology.
