There is a wonderful discussion going on over at Bud the Teacher’s blog regarding Accelerated Reader. The discussion piqued my interest because of the mention of motivation. Here is my comment, and I encourage you to participate.

If you are interested in the motivational theory I often espouse, please visit this link for a great resource. Stay away from the wikipedia article on it, it stinks.

Comment here if you like, but I’d rather hear your voice on Bud’s blog.

Hi Bud,

Thanks for pinging me on this. While I am not terribly certain what I think about AR, I do have some thoughts about motivation.

However, I will keep them brief since your post is more about AR than about motivation. For what it’s worth, my school recently quit the formal AR program and has implemented something very similar. I am not sufficiently familiar with it to comment on its success or failure, nor am I qualified in that arena.

I want to hone in on what you said here..

“I know that motivation that springs from external sources isn’t terribly motivating when the external motivator is gone.  In fact, I know that such external motivation can decrease one’s intrinsic motivation for the thing that being fiddled with.”

This can be true, but depends entirely on the context. You brought about Deci’s work, he and a second author named Ryan went rounds about this very topic in a series of journal articles.

Suffice it to say, I’d argue motivation is more complex than simply a series of external or internal motivators. I’d posit that motivation is more related to the anticipated value of an activity. When I was growing up I can recall asking teachers when I’d need a particular math skill later in life. Subconsciously I was trying to justift the effort I was going to have to exert to understand/learn/demonstrate the skill.

When one expects little value from a task, one will likely exert little effort. This is precisely why many students abandon school or do only the bare minimum. They see no value in school. But that’s another comment, I suppose.

What I am positing is based on the Expectency-Value theory of motivation, made popular by Eccles and Wigfield.  I’d avoid the wikipedia article, it needs help.

EV theory boils down to two questions..

1. Can I do the task?
2. Do I want to do the task?

When it comes to AR, it may be that students anticipate recieving value from the prizes, etc they recieve for reading. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

I doubt it is creating in them an expectency of value for reading itself.

Perhaps the incentives will help them realize they like reading? No clue.

Either way, EVT forms a nice framework for motivation and deserves a higher place in our discussion.

For more information on EVT, stay away from Wikipedia. Visit this link instead.

http://edurls.org/evt

Yours,

Chris Craft

Earlier today I saw this tweet from Mandie Engram (@mandiengram)

I responded by trying to find the answer myself. Having recently returned from the Google Teacher Academy in Washington, D.C. I sort of fancied myself a Google whiz.

I was wrong.

I simply could not find a ranking based on just our state. When I searched for various combinations (i.e. “economic impact” +industries +”south carolina”) I got all sorts of results, but no real way to rank them.

I tweeted back that Mandie should consider contacting a reference librarian.

Backstory

Here in Irmo, SC we have a little branch of the Richland County Public Library called The Link. It’s tiny, about the size of a small store. It has some comfy chairs, a bunch of books, and a few computers for use.

They do not, however, regularly staff a reference librarian. To overcome this, they have a video conference system set up and mounted on the wall. It’s a bit like a video phone, where you pick up the receiver and it connects you with the reference desk at the main branch down town. A few months ago while I was in the Link I joked with the ladies who worked there that I didn’t need a reference librarian, I had Google. They tried to convince me I should try it out but I just couldn’t come up with a question that Google couldn’t handle.

Until today.

So, I decided to try out the reference librarian. I hit up the Ask a Librarian page and fired off an email asking the question. I would have tried the IM, but whatever service they use was blocked at school. I wondered whether it would result in anything, and went about my day. A few short hours later, to my pleasant surprise, I received an email with not only the information, detailed instructions as to how s/he found it. It turns out the librarian used the Bureau of Economic Analysis at the US Dept of Commerce. With no further effort on my part, I had the answer to the question, with an entire table copied to me.

I was floored.

It’s not that I don’t have faith in librarians. In fact, this is the second time that the RCPL reference desk librarians have come to the rescue.

The truth is, I’m surrounded by wonderful librarians who are a credit to the profession. And this goes to show me that libraries are still as crucial as ever.

So thank you, RCPL reference desk, for showing me that there is still a need for information experts.