Do your best!!!
You’ve seen this before. Some soulless teacher hears “very difficult, cher!”. Some distracted trainer hears “this is very difficult”. And they respond the same way.
“Try your best lor.”
That is absolutely useless. Firstly, I don’t think it’s comforting at all – because I told you I had a problem and your answer is “just do it!”. I’m not Nike. If a learner tells you that he has a problem, then as an educator your job is to find out what the obstacle is and address it (even lack of motivation is an obstacle).
Secondly, telling someone to “”do their best” is pointless – because there’s no clear goal. One’s “best” can be anything because there is no concrete definition (Locke & Latham, 2002). That learner who just told you “this is very difficult!” may think this is them doing their best, and you’ve just asked them to repeat it.
I understand that some educators may say “do your best” as a way to comfort and support their learners, and I applaud the intention. However, there are other, more useful ways of helping.
For learners to achieve challenging outcomes, there are three secrets. The goal must be specific, the learner must believe he or she can do it, and there must be meaning to the goal.
Secret 1: Specific and challenging goals
As a learning designer, it’s your job to set specific and challenging goals in the curriculum. You owe it to your learners to do so. Why? Because specific and challenging goals lead to higher performance than vague and/or easy goals (Locke & Latham, 2002).
“Duh – the more difficult it is, the better the outcome what,” you might be saying. But the thing is that you can set challenging goals and then learners fail to achieve it, resulting in a poor outcome.
The key is to set challenging goals and have learners achieve it. To to do that, the goal has to be specific. Being clear about learning intentions will benefit both learners and educators (Hattie, 2008).
What sort of goals should they be? Do you know the name of this website? It’s Fun to be Smart. So of course, they should be SMART goals.
Specific: Observable behaviour and context (eg. “Write 2 PEEL paragraphs, each using different types of evidence” or “Provide 2 examples of using the 7Cs of communication in customer service)
Measurable: See above – use numbers and quantify the goal as much as possible.
Achievable: It can be difficult, but it must be achievable – no higher than 1 grade above the learner’s current level. It obviously should not be too easy either.
Relevant: Ensure that the learning goal matches the lesson outcomes and syllabus – don’t test something that’s not in the syllabus or aligned to the lesson outcomes.
Time-bound: Anchored to a deadline, be it for a lesson, unit, or term.
Secret 2: Self-efficacy
You can think of self-efficacy – the belief that one can achieve something – as a confidence engine. Specifically, self-efficacy refers to what you believe you can do with your skills and abilities in a given condition and amidst changing and challenging situations (Maddux & Kleiman, 2021).
It’s not about whether the educator believes that the learner can do it. It’s about whether the learner believes he or she can do it. There are five ways to build a learner’s self-efficacy:
Performance experiences: Also known as mastery experiences, these are about achieving goals (Maddux & Kleiman, 2021). This is why you include easy exercises in learning – to let learners have a sense of accomplishment and build their self-efficacy. The easiest way to do this is through simple MCQs or true/false questions (Maddux & Kleiman, 2021).
Vicarious experiences: This is when the learner observes other doing something (Maddux & Kleiman, 2021). This is where modelling comes in – when an educator models the behaviour he or she wants the learner to emulate. It can be about showing the correct technique for a ground movement class or the right method for a Mathematics assumption method problem.
Imagined experiences: This is through the imagination of hypothetical situations (Maddux & Kleiman, 2021) – visualisation. It’s also called imaginal practice (Bandura, 1977), which connotes the idea of visualising a specific and successful demonstration of competence. I find it’s more effective for adult learners to visualise, but young students can also use it to practice what it’s like going into exam situations.
Verbal persuasion: Educators should be encouraging and believe in their learners. It’s a nasty educator who thinks that his or her learners are idiots (we’ve all met those before). Educators must express that they believe in the potential of their learners. It’s not as simple as “you can do it!”. Rather, it should be specific like “You have performed this dance move before, now it’s with your hands in the air” or “you have applied this technique before, just reverse it.”
Physiological and emotional states: Your emotional and physical reactions to a situation can influence your self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977) – would you be more confident of finishing a marathon early in the morning after waking up, or late at night after a full day of work? Think of it as manipulating emotions to trigger success – like converting anxiety into excitement, or creating pleasant emotions to enhance your self-efficacy. Much of this is about reframing a situation, which is a resilience technique that all learners (and educators!) should know.
Secret 3: Meaning
The significance and importance of the learning goal heavily impacts whether the learner is successful in achieving it. And one way to do that is to give it a superordinate meaning or purpose – focusing on why the task is performed rather than how the task is performed (Maddux & Kleiman, 2021).
For example, let’s say there are a set of long and difficult statistics questions that you have to do for a psychology Master’s degree. You can focus on applying the Excel or SPSS formulas correctly – or increase your motivation by focusing on why you want to get that psychology Master’s degree in the first place.
Focusing on this high-level purpose – why you are taking this course/subject in the first place – leads to greater meaning, motivation, and alignment to one’s self (Maddux & Kleiman, 2021).
This is backed by two theories:
Expectancy-value theory: Learners persist when they have self-efficacy and they see the task as valuable (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). Value can be boosted by thinking about the why of a task, such as “this helps my future” (utility) or “this matters to who I am” (identity).
Self-determination theory: Motivation increases with competence, relatedness, and autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 2000). When there is deep meaning to goals, a learner will willingly and autonomously pursue it.
Leveraging the secrets to help learners achieve challenging academic goals
The thing is this – your learners can do better when you set specific and challenging goals, and they believe it has meaning and they can accomplish it.
You already have the challenging goals (lol I know you have, so I’m not helping you with that).
How do you get them to achieve it?
1. Start with why
Simon Sinek says this – start with why. So get your learners to see the bigger picture of why they are doing this. For a better job? For good grades? Sometimes it can be a monetary motivation, but knowing the higher-level why behind it helps.
2. Create the specific target
Combine behaviour and context to develop your criteria. A simple template is “By [date/time] I will [action] at [level of performance].” Okay so I’m a Master’s student right now and my goals are “By the end of each day, I will have read or made notes for 6 readings.” (true story)
3. What does Goldilocks say?
Remember how Goldilocks is so fussy that everything must be just right – cannot be too hot or too cold, cannot be too hard or too soft, cannot be too big or too small?
Your learning goal must be like that. It must be just right – which in this case, is the learner’s level +1.
4. Clear and actionable feedback
Remember to give the learners feedback about their progress. It can be a self-assessment, peer review, or even just an ungraded quiz. The point is to give learners feedback about whether they are doing well, and where they need to work on. Feedback is one of the strongest influences on accomplishment, after all (Hattie, 2008).
5. Alignment with self
Meaning is critical, as we have seen – and the more high-level the meaning, the better. Get to know your learners. When the time is right, reminder learners to adjust the why behind their goals – nudging it towards something that aligns with their values (which you will have known by then).
Challenging but achievable
Yes, learners can achieve difficult goals.
But there are caveats.
They need the goal to be specific. They need to believe they can do it. The goal has to have meaning to them.
That means you, as the educator, has to:
- make the goal specific
- cultivate the learners’ belief that they can achieve the goal
- get learners to find the meaning behind the goal
As a learning designer, I believe this can all be built into your curriculum (I’ve done it before).
But if it’s not – then you know how to help your learners flourish.
References
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705
Maddux, J. E., & Kleiman, E. M. (2021). Self-efficacy: The power of believing you can. In C. R. Snyder, S. J. Lopez, L. M. Edwards, & S. C. Marques (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of positive psychology (3rd ed., pp. 443-452). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195187243.013.0031
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. S. (2000). Expectancy–value theory of achievement motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 68–81. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1006/ceps.1999.1015
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