Sorry to be slow responding; I've been away.
My personal experience studying how writing abilities develop suggests
that you are onto something when you suggest that motivation is related to
recursivity. I apologize for this long response, but your question
pointed directly to my research. Apologies to any for whom this is not
relevant.
Eugene Matusov wrote:
> Thinking about the relationship between recursivity and reflexivity promoted
> by Dot, I came to an example of recursivity without reflexivity. For awhile
> I was puzzled that some of my colleagues told me that they give tests and
> exams in order to "make students learn." Now I think that they design a
> type of recursivity:
>
> 1) Lecture
> 2) Reading
> 3) Students' preparation for a test
> 4) Test
> 5) Grading
> 6) Sorting based on the grades (e.g., tracking)
> -------
> 7) Job (finally) based on the sorting, i.e., further sorting
> This is a very recursive process but not very reflexive. It promotes
> students to learn to achieve or fail. They learn to hate many things (e.g.,
> math and English) and do what other want them to do (or to resist doing
> that). This type of recursivity socialize many of the students in the
> extrinsic motivation (i.e., achievers) and in "lack of motivation" those who
> are failed (i.e., failure). I think there is a strong relationship between
> recursivity and motivation.
Eugene, You have clearly defined the sequence of instructional conditions
(with accompanying patterns of mixed results) under which "negative
spirals of increasing frustration and failure" were observed in
(college-level) basic and ESL writers by five successive teams of (some
40) teacher action researchers that I facilitated over a five-year span.
Working in a small-group writing tutorial center which students who lacked
university-level writing abilities attended two days a week, these
teachers studied how their approaches affected basic writers (those who
"fail" in your outline above), adapting methods daily to make them more
responsive. Together, we also adapted the program as we went along until
at the end it was far more successful than it had been before at offering
scaffolding/instruction within what we believe were students' individual
(and collective) zpd's.
As best our five research teams could tell, the downward or upward
direction of students' writing progress depended on the (conscious or
unconscious) choice each teacher made of the lens through which to look
when assessing (and responding to) student work. The recursive spiral you
describe above fits our teams' collective understanding of what happened
when teachers looked at writers' work through a negative lens (as
expressed in such common beliefs as "writers are born, not made" or "some
people can learn to write well, but others probably can't").
When writing was viewed through the filter of such assumptions, we
observed downward spirals of increasing failure and frustration in
students and (as a result) similar downward spirals of increasing failure
and frustration (cynicism, burnout, increased elitism) on the part of
instructors who had chosen a negative lens. Student grades and scores
confirmed this negativity.
Just for the record, in case someone wants more support for these
patterns, I documented these negative spirals of decreasing motivation and
worsening attitudes, along with "upward spirals of increasing confidence
and success" in _At the Point of Need: Teaching Basic and ESL Writers_,
from Heinemann.
>> Another thought, when someone tries to reform the system and throw
>> away the > tests and grades, one should think about recursivity issue
>> to promote an > alternative recursive design. > > What do you think?
Absolutely, at least that has resulted from the "reforms" we made. I
would be interested in knowing if what follows fits what you have in mind:
When teacher-researchers withheld grades until the end of the term,
adopted methods based on the assumption that everyone can learn to write,
facilitated continuing small groups in which bonding and peer support for
writing problems could be mobilized, and focused group attention on
expanding strengths in each groupmate's work, students experienced upward
spirals of growing confidence and success with writing assignments from
across the university.
These positive spirals displayed successive aspects different from the
negative sequence you described above. When teachers based methods on the
assumption that all can learn and looked for evidence for that belief
while sharing what they knew about how good writers write, students
experienced breakthroughs in (1) AWARENESS about how writing is done
(experienced worry about copy-editing on later drafts, for example). This
in turn triggered breakthroughs in (2) ATTITUDE (less writing anxiety,
more willingness to take risks) that were followed by changes in writing
(3) BEHAVIOR (less resistance, procrastination and concern for correctness
on first drafts, writing more honestly and choosing topics they cared
strongly about). These were then followed by (4) increased and improved
WRITING, which brought more positive (5) RESPONSES from peers and faculty.
Positive responses ("That took guts to write!", "Where'd you get the idea
to start your story that way?" "The field of art history could use more
writers like you") functioned as "rewards," increasing basic writers' (1)
AWARENESS (that they could succeed) and kicking their growing confidence
and motivation into higher orbits, thus kick-starting the upward spiral
again.
RE your last question, I believe it was in large part because we withheld
grades, giving only one grade (pass/no credit) at the end of each term,
that our results stood in strong contrast to the failures students had
previously experienced--which I believe are like the failures that you
describe above. It was also a highly reflexive process--the systematic
study of our beliefs, methods and results--by which these more positive
upward spirals were made possible.
I would be very interested in your response, if you have time.
Marie
-------------------
Marie Wilson Nelson
National-Louis University
mnel who-is-at nlu.nl.edu