THIS EXCERPT HAS BEEN TAKEN FROM AN ESSAY MADE FOR NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY.
Integration of student culture
It is widely considered that demotivation is strongly associated with combative behaviour within the classroom, “no amount of inspired teaching will add to a learner's knowledge or skills unless it also motivates him or her to learn” (Wallace, 2017). An unmotivated student will do their best to avoid any learning material even if that material is the ultimate fountain of knowledge, they will instead actively disengaged with the lesson with behaviour that tends to disrupt themselves or their fellow peers.
Finding students who are demotivated within the FE landscape is rather the opposite to what aspiring FE lectures are expecting. There is a common sentiment within the PCET sectors that students want to be there meaning that because they are motivated to learn they won’t want to disrupt lessons and educators have to deal with discipline problems (Wallace, 2010). This was ever so contextual when it came to FE colleges as before 2013 participation within said colleges was completely voluntary (DfE, 2016). This sentiment still runs true to many FE educators including myself but as FE is now mandatory more and more students enter into these colleges looking for an escape from the traditional education they have just endured for the decade prior. For some of these students FE colleges are really the only “Viable option available to them” (Tummons,2019) weather it be down to a reluctance to continue with education within the school environment, not being able to find an apprenticeship or another valid reason these students are coming into the FE environment because they have to be there, not because they want to.
With some students having a lack of motivation FE lecturers have to change their expectations with teaching in the PCET sector, from informing a cohort of students of the knowledge needed to get a job to sharing their passion for the industry to enthuse a cohort with interesting and engaging content. In another way Lecturers within the PCET are constantly attempting to change attitudes of “reluctant learners into willing ones” (Wallace, 2017) while also guiding the willing learners to the next stage of their lives.
What is an interesting case is how do we successfully change the attitudes of passive, disruptive learners into active enthusiastic ones? Understanding what demotivates these learners is a key part in how we develop our good practice in managing behaviour within a classroom. Wallace developed four key demotivators; fear, boredom, previous negative experience and loss of hope. These overlap with the famous work of Maslow who depicted that states that people need freedom from fear and a sense of belonging before reaching self-fulfilment as students fearing a teacher will not allow them to gain a sense of belonging within the classroom which will only lead them to disengage with the learning and disrupt their and others learning.
All four of these can have a similar ring to them and can have some overlap, for example within a session I observed in within first term I witnessed a teacher try to break down the fear any students may have of them via a sense of humour, in a moment where a student was called out for using their phone, this teacher made fun of their situation using a style of comedy akin to comedians such as Ricky Gervais. While this may have made the students within the class laugh which in turn makes the students see the teachers less of a figurehead and more like a human as well as making the lesson dynamic eliminating the demotivator of boredom and fear. In turn he had just created a negative experience for this student by using insult comedy. This made an already disengaged student more demotivated by creating a negative experience within the “Establishment phase” (Rodgers,2015). With further observations the said student continued to disengage with the tutor's lessons as the tutor continued to not quell any of the demotivating factors.
When trying to establish an interesting lesson content that tries to break down demotivators such as being scared of the teacher, bored of the content being delivered and create a positive culture within the classroom, FE teachers usually turn to humour which can lead to a clear separation of generational cultures between a student and a teacher. The current cohort of FE students would classify themselves as as “Generation Z” instead of the “Millennial” nd “GenX” generation that currently is makes up the teaching cohort within the PCET academia. Between these three generations are very varied cultures when it comes to humour styles with newer generations comic sensibility becoming more absurd and dark as time progresses resulting in this abstract absurdist humour that is seen to be favoured by Gen Z
Image 1: A “meme” showcasing the differing humour of three major generations
As you can see from the example above that humour has evolved from insult humour to self deprecating humour to this abstract bleak humour that makes little sense to people outside the culture. GenZ is a fast moving culture that waits for no one and isolates people who does not understand, this making it that anyone who is trying to break down walls with members of GenZ are quickly rejected. These students are brought up in a culture where everything moves so fast that being in a classroom that seems to stand still will leave them dejected and demotivated, leading them to act out as a hope to keep moving forward.
I have attempted to incorporate gen z culture into my lessons via encouraging students to teach me about what is the current trend within their culture circle. One task I have done is at the start of a session encourage my students to creates an satirical image based on current Gen Z humour referred to as “Memes” as a way to engage within a session, creating a positive atmosphere within the classroom by accepting each students own culture and exciting students as this would be a task they would not expect anywhere else. As these memes can be used in a insulting manor I make sure to provide pictures of myself to make myself the joke of the task which eliminates the fear that students may have that they will be antagonised and as when we share them I make sure to refuse to react negatively to memes that may be crossing some sort of line as that will only create an actual demotivator within students. Over time students tasks such as this condition students similar to Burrhus Fredrick Skinners conditioning model students act via positive reactions of their memes that they now actively engage in their learning due to them feeling that their culture is accepted within my classroom. Students make memes which incorporate the previous lesson, they get positively acknowledged via a showcase to the class, they then actively engage with the class so they have more content to make memes with next lesson.
Image 2: An example of a ”meme” a student made after a lesson that included making multiple versions of the character within the Unreal Engine software,