THE WHOLLY SCHOOL – MOTIVATION IN SEVEN PICTURES

dr. Dimitrij Beuermann

The National Education Institute Slovenia

Summary

The success of each student is the desire of teachers or parents and a goal for the school system and
society in general, especially employers who enter the competitive struggle. The necessary
condition for success appears to be establishing The map of the Learning Process whose steps
represent a great motivation tool for pupils: in school and also later at work and their life.

Reflecting on the motivation is divided into seven pictures of the “Map of the the learning
process”. In order to promote inner motivation of pupils some tips for successful process and also
goal oriented work in the classroom are presented.

Key words: motivation, performance, The Map of the Learning Process

1st picture: TRAVEL

»The customs of a community, taken as a whole, always have a particular style and are reducible to
systems. I am of the opinion that the number of such systems is not unlimited and that (…) human
societies, like individuals, never create absolutely, but merely choose certain combinations from an
ideal repertoire that it should be possible to define.«(Strauss, 1992, p. 178)

The landscape of our lives is not flat and smooth as a blank sheet, so for successful achievement of
the objectives it is necessary to identify the personal situation of the learner. We are inborn in
structures and systems: our genes belong to our family, we live in a certain environment, we are in
the middle of our social culture and we have memories of our life experiences – all that things have
significant impact on our thinking and behaviour.

The image of the society is consistent with the image of the school, so the latter by their very nature
teach pupils to adapt to the established social patterns of behaviour and action. For example: the
conveyor belt represent a central form of cost-effective organization of work in capitalistic society
and it is reflected in the form of organization which can be identified in today's schools. Knowledge
and wisdom are divided into school subjects, whose messages are organized into sequences of
school classes, in accordance with the guidance of developmental psychology and teaching
methodology. The precise timing of teachers' work has been in use across the country and students
are generally divided into classes by age, in the groups by their abilities … and there are even
countries where, in the interest of greater effectiveness in schools, have separate classes for boys
and girls ...

The today's economic society (e.g. Europe competing with Asian countries) needs students (future
employees adults) who are actively involved in all areas of the learning process. A well-organized
working process is a need but the condition for success is a motivation to work. Model of "white
collars" planning and ultimately judging the performance who "blue collars" put into practice is
therefore largely out of date. This of course means that students should increasingly be involved in
developing (creating) the objectives and content of school work (and most will be successful in this
if they could choose the objects which are familiar to them), design work (with teachers as well as
with parents), perform all the necessary actions (this time no doubt with a much higher intrinsic
motivation) and finally to verify the achievement of goals and also to assess their own performance.
Key word is "enterprise" that promises to Europe and the Western world to successfully withstand
the pressure of the Asian Tigers. As Aristotle says: "You are what you do."

Because we are different, the same problem can represent to someone near and easily attainable
goal, but to another the path with many obstacles. For a successful trip we need a map that will
guide us in our various ways and support the correctness of our decisions.

2nd picture: VISION

Vision is defined as a mental picture of a future state, which guides our individual steps on the path
toward our goals. In this paper the image of vision which promises to increase students' motivation
and their performance, will be described:

"We encourage students' intrinsic motivation and offer them assistance in their path."

There is an inherent tendency of "school conveyor belt" to lead the students toward the same
results, preferably by the same route. To improve the education and the school effectiveness we
should recognise the internal impulses and motives of students and provide them with our resources
and forces of the adult world in order to help them remove barriers and to reach their goals. All
forms of external motivation, used to equalize the differences between students in order that
teachers would have easier work, require time and energy, are expensive and will, most importantly,
fail if internal motivation is missing.

Schools indeed can be both friendly and efficient. Friendly by recognizing the personal status of the
learner and identify his role in achieving their own goals, and successful by encouraging him and
appreciating the efforts made by the students in achieving the objectives.

3rd picture: CHALLENGE

Edvard Munch picture shall represents the difficulties and problems we encounter every day. The
ones we are trying to resolve will become the challenges.

This article is dedicated (i) to explore and put to use sources of pupils' intrinsic motivation in order
to define goals of every pupil and then (ii) to change the forms of external motivation simply into an
aid for students to achieve these goals. At the beginning the key elements will be arranged in order
to create the "Map of the learning process" and then the position of every pupil should be defined
on that map. Only after that we will be able to structure the right sequence of learning steps for each
pupil, to distribute tasks and work, and at the end the successfulness of performance can be judged.
By doing things that way the learning process will be organized in harmony with the inherent nature
of the world as the old proverb says that a good theory is the most practical thing in the world.

4th picture: COMMUNICATION

First we should describe the most important elements of the Map of the learning process. They will
help us to create a more precise image of the world that surrounds us and we will be able to
recognize the directions for a good and successful trip. First we shall read the following statement:
"At every beginning there is an idea that direct the change of matter into the desired shape.
However, to do that certain strength and work has to be done to make or implement such change.
Or to put in another way: the image of the house must first be developed in the mind of architect
(Where do we go?), then the builders employ their strength and skill (How do we get there?) to
transform the building material in the real house (What and Why we do all that?).

TRAVEL and VISION respond to the question "Where do we go?"

Here we note how the architect comes up with ideas for the house - or, for example, against which
objectives we travel to with our curricula and syllabus. Our decision, which problems we shall
transform into challenges, is the first step toward the future state represented by our mental image.

CHALLENGE, COMMUNICATION and POWER respond to the question »How do we get

there?«

Here we try to find out how the builders build the house – or with which methods teachers will
reach the planned goals. In day-to-day activities new elements should be inserted, which should
leads us toward our goals: in order to be successful teams should be formed to perform different
tasks.

EVALUATION and MISSION respond to the question »Why we do all that?«

Reflection Nr. 1: The structure of The map of the Learning Process

Learned readers have already recognised that the seven pictograms form The Map of Learning
Process represent different titles of this article. The order of steps is consistent with the above
presented three questions describing the journey from planning, performing to final evaluation.
THE MAP OF LEARNING PROCESS: SECOND REFLECTION

The Map of Learning Process could be analysed from another point of view. The structure of seven
steps forms three landscapes which are described on external circle: (i) education (CHALLENGE
and EVALUATION) connects itself with aims, goals and ideas, (ii) creativity
(COMMUNICATION and VISION) represents in school methods of teaching and learning, and
(iii) problem solving (MISSION, POWER and TRAVEL) deals with learning content and materials
in general.

The sequence of steps describing the titles in this article is on Picture 1 represented by numbers
touching different pictograms on the map – and thus forming process steps of school work. Goal
oriented approach is represented by three landscapes encircling the map: methods, contents and
school goals represent elements of goal oriented planning in school. The analysis of the very
exceeds the space limits of this article, but learned readers can find out elsewhere (Beuermann,
2008, 2010), so from now on we should just continue the analysis in the same direction and with the
same speed.

5th picture: POWER

We should divide the job tasks – they become easier if there is support from many people:
colleague, or even friend. The group can divide obligations, tasks and responsibilities, together we
are stronger and safer. The journey we take determines us and even fulfils.

We can even find out that the pictogram symbols excellently represent features of team roles in the
group. These seven archetypes: journey, vision, challenge, communication, power, evaluation and
mission can be directly connected with the seven team roles: expert, creator, worker, investigator,
organizer, evaluator and director.

It is wise to enable pupils to have a choice, which challenges to take. Their decisions can be put into
groups and they fulfil the tasks afterwards and reach the goals. The whole is emerging before our
eyes.

On the following picture the questions are represented which lead the member of different groups
toward their goals, the seven fields encompass a well rounded collection.
 Reflection Nr. 2: Questions for team roles: Enablers of thinking

Every pupil should choose a specific area where he or she would like to do most of the work (on
next tasks we should encourage him to choose different fields. He will be able to have a view to his
own strong fields from viewpoints of other pupils, to have a look on the whole of project and to
wholeness of life.

6th picture: EVALUATION

At the very end we should evaluate the results of the work. Pupils should prepare self-evaluations of
their work (there is a proposal for such evaluation presented on next picture) and reached goals –
they should present it to other pupils and teacher. They perform peer assessment to each other and
they confirm or supplement the proposals. Teacher, of course, is in charge and has the final say.

Important are the questions, which at different steps lead toward evaluation of success on that point.
Pupils should think about his wishes and goals, about using his knowledge, resources used and
about cooperation with other pupils.

His attitude to the project should be analysed and at the end comes the assessment is what is good
and what could already be improved - all of course in accordance with the sequence of individual
steps on the Map of the learning process.
Reflection Nr. 3: Students' self-assessment form
7th picture: MISSION

At the end we should evaluate the mission of our time – the starting point for our thinking and
challenge we shall use the quotation from dr. France Bučar:

In history changes has always been emerging. But for the present time is significant that these
changes are very fast and dynamic, that are increasingly deep and all encompassing, in addition,
more and more difficult-to-learn, because the world is becoming increasingly complex. Even more
so, because we can claim that we are on the end of the period which is often described as New Age
for which it is essential that the approach to the problems of the world and society is based on
quantitative, mathematical criteria. This is the approach underlying all current outstanding
technological developments and the current well-being, even more, the existence of mankind. And
yet we find ourselves at a historical turning point, where only this approach does not allow to solve
many types of problems – these include all areas of the world the quality and values, emotional
world, the questions of philosophy and transcendence, human dignity and social relations, in short,
human attitude towards life and nature. "

Obviously we are at the end of an era of human history, and after a dominant analytical view of the
world is obviously time to encourage each individual to use its best efforts to connect all kinds of
knowledge in the whole of wisdom. If we encourage students to this way of thinking and acting in
school age, we may hope and believe that their motivation for good work will remain high even
later. At the same time they will be equipped with techniques and considerations of the process
works, but it is hardly possible to forget - when we learn to ride a bike, this knowledge can no
longer remember, but you can of course practice and improve during whole life.

We shall finish with paraphrase of Karl Marx’s quotation, the founder of the scientific approach of
the capitalist organization of the world:

Philosophers have interpreted the world, teachers will change it.

References

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