Five years ago, I read Switch: How to change things when change is hard. It reshaped my understanding of how people behave, and how I, as a teacher, might influence their behaviour.
My understanding of behaviour had been naive…
My training had made it clear that behaviourism was a bad thing: this approach, which dominated psychology in the early twentieth century, suggested that we do more of what we’re rewarded to do, and less of what we’re punished for doing. In an early university assignment, I acknowledged that I might, occasionally, be forced to stoop to behaviourist techniques; despite my ideals however (I was going to inspire and motivate every one of my students to love history), my approach was primarily behaviourist. I sanctioned students who disrupted lessons: telling them off, keeping them in, giving detentions. I rewarded those who behaved well: praising them, calling their parents or telling their tutors. It wasn’t quite this simple: I tried to understand and encourage students who weren’t motivated in history lessons; I promoted the behaviour of students who were working hard. Fundamentally, however, I was a behaviourist: I rewarded desired behaviours and punished undesired ones.
Occasionally, I adopted more effective (and more pleasant) techniques. For example, rather than chastising those who weren’t doing as they’d been asked, I learned to focus attention on students who were. I trained myself to notice who was doing as requested, to overlook (momentarily) those who weren’t, and to narrate what I saw: “Good to see Jamie’s ready, Mohammed’s ready, Ella’s ready.” Redirecting my attention was challenging but rewarding: students looked around, saw what their peers were being recognised for, and did the same. This helped, but it was an isolated idea: I couldn’t relate it to underlying principles to apply in other situations, so my approach remained, primarily, reward and punish.
A more honest account of human behaviour
Switch opened my eyes to a more nuanced view of human behaviour. Chip and Dan Heath, the authors, argue that we often treat resistance to change as a ‘people problem’, blaming or cajoling individuals. Often, however, while our rational self wants to change (eat better, drink less, exercise more), we are discouraged by the situation or our emotions and feelings (the habit of going for a drink with colleagues every Friday gets in the way of going for a run). The Heaths develop a metaphor for change featuring a rider (our rational mind) atop a powerful elephant (our emotions). We can encourage change by:
- Motivating the elephant: making change feel achievable and worthwhile
- Directing the rider: offering clear guidance on the steps to take
- Shaping the path: tweaking the environment and building habits
What does this look like in practice? The Heaths asked: ‘Can you get people to file their expense reports on time?’ They described a scenario in which 38% of employees hand in their expense claims late, so the accountant struggles to administer them by the deadline: ‘What would you do?’ My initial answer was simple: tighten the deadline – those who miss it don’t get reimbursed. This exemplifies my naive, behaviourist approach: promote change by increasing rewards for compliance or sanctions for non-compliance. This would create an incentive to submit claims on time, but would not address the underlying problem (why are people not submitting claims on time?) and would foster resentment from busy people, who deserve to be reimbursed, but for whom filing expense claims is a low priority.
The Heath brothers’ response is more subtle, more realistic, and more helpful. They suggest:
- Emphasising that the majority are handing in their expenses on time (encourage people to do what’s normal)
- Identifying what those who are handing in expense claims on time are doing (do they have a short-cut?)
- Observing people who are not handing in on time complete their claims (what barriers do they face?)
- Remove barriers: be like Amazon’s 1-Click ordering (make it easy to complete)
- Emphasise that this is not an impersonal request: a colleague is working to a deadline (appeal to social bonds).
The problem with my naive view was that I expected students to do the right thing, irrespective of:
- How they felt
- What their peers encouraged
- What the environment encouraged
I was acting as though punishment, reward and rational argument could overcome the influence of peers, emotions and environment. Yet as Graham Nuthall reminds us: “When there is a clash between the peer culture and the teacher’s management procedures, the peer culture wins every time (2007, p.37).” The approach promoted by Switch reflects powerful, robust psychological theories explaining human behaviour, theories which are more complete and more accurate than my naive approach. Adopting this view of human behaviour means going with the grain and using small nudges to encourage the changes we hope for, rather than relying on carrots, sticks and rational argument alone.
Conclusion
Grappling with behavioural psychology as a teacher proved immensely powerful. It led me to reexamine how I plan, communicate and respond to students and to teachers. I believe an understanding of behavioural psychology can benefit teachers enormously as they struggle to motivate, inspire and manage their students. But I don’t believe teachers yet have the resources they need to do this well.
This is a draft excerpt from Habits of success: getting every student learning. It’s available from here.
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I wrote about my initial responses to Switch and how teachers could use the ideas it contained here.
I boiled behavioural science into five steps help students change here.
I’ve written several examples applying this to specific dilemmas: here’s a way to get all students doing their homework.
References
Heath, C., Heath, D. (2010) Switch: How to change things when change is hard. Random House.