The motivated school: Embedding key elements into everyday practice at UWCSEA

Julian Whiteley, Former Head of College, UWCSEA

It is reassuring when a coherent set of practices, rooted in a particular educational philosophy that seems intuitively to make sense, is subsequently validated by research. Over the years, the UWC movement has developed a set of practices based on the educational philosophy of Kurt Hahn; these practices have been validated by the research conducted in schools in 2003 and 2009, by Alan McLean, an eminent psychologist. His books The Motivated School¹ and Motivating Every Learner² have become key reference points for education authorities in the UK who are promoting positive behaviours in schools. Looking at the research, it is clear that many of the elements that make up a motivated school and classroom are embedded in the educational philosophy and our everyday practice at UWCSEA.

Hahn had a tremendous belief in the good of the young, that education was a preparation for life not just for university, and that service should play a central role in that education. His view was that education should be about personal growth and development in all areas: intellectual, physical, spiritual and emotional, and students should be encouraged to take on genuine responsibility at an early age. Education therefore had a much broader remit than just focusing on academic achievement.

At UWCSEA, our aspiration is that when our students graduate they will have developed into independent human beings, able to make decisions by themselves within a strong set of values which will guide that process. We achieve this in a number of ways, both within and outside the classroom, and our work on curriculum articulation is ensuring that those values, embodied in the UWCSEA learner profile³ and underpinned by the learning principles⁴ are embedded in all five elements of our learning programme.

Developing self-motivated students, who engage in tasks for their intrinsic value and not for extrinsic reward, is an important, if complex, part of developing the habits of learning that will serve students well throughout life. McLean’s research showed that for students to become self-motivated they needed to feel affirmed (valued and respected as human beings) and empowered (taking responsibility for their actions and their learning). According to McLean, affirmation comes from engagement and appropriate feedback, empowerment from structure and stimulation.

Affirmation through engagement and feedback

Engagement is based on the quality of the relationships between the teacher and the student and between students and their peers. The Personal and Social Education (PSE) programme at UWCSEA is founded on building these positive relationships, based on the mantra of “trust, honesty and mutual respect.” There is an adage in teaching; “the students don’t care what you know until they know that you care.” Experience over time demonstrates that this is the case. It is our job at UWCSEA to ensure that students feel that we do care, so that they are more engaged with us and with their learning.

Equally, the PSE programme helps students to identify ways to positively engage with one another. One of these ways is outside of the classroom, through the Service and Activities programmes. It is interesting to note that research conducted in the US demonstrates that properly structured service-learning programmes in schools greatly enhance the quality of student interactions, as the focus of their attention is shifted from self to other.5

If student engagement is predicated on positive relationships, it also requires regular feedback. According to McLean, the feedback should involve genuine praise of effort while providing strategies for improvement. With a College-wide focus on assessment, this kind of feedback is being built into everyday practice in a more planned, consistent way, which will help students to be successful, not only against curricular standards and benchmarks, but also against their own personal definition of success.

Empowerment through structure and stimulation

While students are affirmed through positive relationships and regular feedback, teachers empower them by providing a clear structure, communicating explicitly how they can achieve desired goals and outcomes. In setting boundaries, the focus is on learning rather than control and discipline, with every situation viewed as an opportunity for growth. Students are also empowered through stimulation, which is strongly connected to the quality of teaching and learning that takes place across all five elements of the learning programme. Teachers need to ensure that no matter what the circumstances, tasks are relevant and interesting. They also need to provide an appropriate level of challenge so that the students feel stretched but not overwhelmed; stress induced from inappropriate pressure to perform hinders rather than enhances learning.

McLean drew together the ideas of affirmation (through positive relationships and regular feedback) and empowerment (through structure and stimulation) and summarised them by characterising four types of schools.

As the diagram shows, schools that are operating largely in the upper right hand quadrant are helping students to develop the intrinsic motivation that will become a habit for life. In reviewing the characteristics of the schools, I was greatly reassured by the congruence with our guiding statements, in particular our learning principles.

If our goal is to educate individuals to embrace challenge and take responsibility for shaping a better world, then we need to provide them with the appropriate environment that will develop their intrinsic motivation. This means accepting that mistakes are part of the learning process, that mastery of an area and a desire to keep improving are more important than performance, and that an educated person is someone who learns from every new experience. It means gradually passing over the locus of control to the students and asking them to take responsibility for themselves, their actions and their learning. It means accepting that the focus should be on the long term, not the short term as so often seems to be the case in life today: there are no short cuts.

If, through our learning programme and a motivated environment, we can develop skills and qualities in our students that are described in the UWCSEA profile, then we can certainly claim to be providing them with a good preparation, not just for university, but for life.

Research skills for the 21st Century

As educators at UWCSEA, we hope to make the search skills of information literacy explicit to our students and embedded in our curriculum. To support this thinking, part of a recent staff professional learning day looked at the topic of research as a cross-subject skill. By Andrew McCarthy, Digital Literacy Coach, Dover Campus.  

Looking for learning on East Campus

Across the East Campus we have been working to use a system of lesson observations called Looking for Learning which tries to measure exactly what is important - learning rather than teaching - in order to help teachers to improve.  By Nick Alchin, High School Principal, East Campus.

Professional development fosters cross-campus collaboration

The East Campus hosted the first UWCSEA cross-campus teacher professional development day on Friday, 8 February. Sue Bradshaw, Deputy Head and Curriculum Director at Dover Campus reflects on the success of the day.

¹ Sage, 2003.
² Sage, 2009.
³ Dunia, pg. 4–5, June 2012.
⁴ Dunia, pg. 6–7, June 2012.
⁵ Hart et al 2007, Schmidt et al 2007