Our students promise to:
- Do their homework promptly
- Be nicer in future
- Do better next time
They mean it, usually. But they struggle. We can help them turn vague aspirations into clear goals, by timing our requests perfectly and making action seem like a good idea at the time. But a strong goal intention – ‘I will’ – does not ensure success, because people struggle to “deal effectively with self-regulatory problems (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006, p.69)”, like procrastination and more tempting alternatives. People with a goal still:
-
- Struggle to get started
- Get derailed having started
- Pursue failing goals
- Struggle to pursue new goals (Rogers et al., 2015)
People are more likely to achieve a goal intention when they combine it with a simple technique which addresses these four barriers: an implementation intention.
Preloading responses with implementation intentions
A recent study offered free winter flu vaccinations at workplaces (Milkman et al., 2011). Employees received identical messages, differing only between the three conditions below:
People were slightly more likely to attend if they received the middle message – in which they chose a date – and four percentage points more likely to attend if they received the right-hand message, in which they chose a date and a time. They were more likely to achieve their goal intention – ‘I will get a flu vaccination’ – if they combined it with an implementation intention: ‘on Wednesday at 10am’.
Implementation intentions – specifying when, where and how to achieve a goal – are surprisingly effective. A meta-analysis (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006) found they help with all four implementation problems (not getting started, getting derailed, pursuing failing goals and struggling to pursue new goals); for all kinds of goals and all kinds of people (but particularly those with weaker self-control and poorer students (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006; Damgaard and Nielsen, 2018)). Implementation intentions work best when people intend to act but have not yet formed plans, and when they specify the situation in which they’ll act: “I’ll do my homework at 5pm on the kitchen table with my phone in the other room.” They seem to be particularly effective when there is only a limited opportunity in which to act (Rogers et al., 2015): when combined with practice, they help people ‘preload’ a response to a situation, making it easier to recognise the opportunity to act, and to do so swiftly and automatically (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006; Heath and Heath, 2017, p.185). Implementation intentions bridge the gap between goals and action.
How can we use implementation intentions?
1) Plan when
We can help students act by asking them to specify when. We can encourage them to choose a suitable moment: not just ‘on Friday’, but at a specific, convenient time; we can reinforce their planning by asking them to set a reminder, or to make a commitment to others (Rogers et al., 2015). If students have decided to “practise on Wednesday afternoon, as soon as I get home from school, before my brother gets home,” they have a realistic plan and a trigger for action. Ollie Lovell offers a beautiful example of this approach; in his first class of the year, instead of saying, “This is your homework, make sure you do it”, he told students:
“Please turn to a fresh page in your workbook. I want you to write down the following: ‘Homework: Chapter 1B, Q9, parts c, d, e. Bring back media release form. Paste handout in book’ (instructions continued…).
“Now, underneath this, I want you to write ‘When:’ and write down when you’re going to complete the homework.”
Walked around the class a bit, checking students were doing it…
“Now I’ve just had a look at what people are writing and I saw people write things like ‘tonight’, and ‘Saturday afternoon’. This is great, but I’d like you to be even more specific, please write an exact time, 6pm tonight, or 1.23pm on Sunday.
“Ok, now I’d like you to write ‘Where:’”
(at this point, groans began to emerge from the class)
“Think about where you’ll be, picture yourself there, it might be at your desk in your room, it might be at the kitchen table.”
Note: Everything up till here was setting implementation intentions. Now for the action trigger…
“And now finally, I want you to pull out your phone and set an alarm, and when that alarm goes off, you know it’ll be time for you to do your homework!”
Despite how pedantic I was being, I hammed it up a bit, and they did find it entertaining. I’ll also felt that I think the way that I progressively revealed the task made the students more likely to comply, as it was like a bit of a joke how I kept on getting more specific.
Choosing a moment to act may be helping: “So far 18 out of the 20 students in my Maths Methods class did their homework in the first week, with all of my Further Maths students completing theirs. These numbers are much better than last year (though it is the start of the year, and they are a different class, so too early to say anything conclusive yet).”
2) Plan how
We can also help students to plan how they will act, and how they will overcome barriers. If a student has decided to “practice on Wednesday afternoon, as soon as I get home from school, before my brother gets home” we may also ask them to specify where they will practise, what problems may arise, and possible responses:
I’ll practice on Wednesday afternoon in the living room, as soon as I get home from school, before my brother gets home. If my brother gets home early, I’ll go up to my bedroom instead.”
Visiting Phoenix Academy recently, I saw a great example of implementation intentions specifying ‘If… then…’ alternatives. On Jess Dumbreck’s door, her ‘Homework Problem?’ sheet lists nine barriers and implementation intentions for each. Here are three examples:
|
A. Lost my Show My Homework login details |
1. Speak to tutor
2. Speak to head of year |
| F. Lost the homework pack | 1. Check whether it has been uploaded to SMHW
2. Message Miss Dumbreck on SMHW 3. See whether you can use a friends and complete the work on a separate piece of paper |
| H. Don’t know if you have homework | 1. You probably do – check SMHW
2. Ask a classmate |
For teachers, implementation intentions have an obvious application to homework and revision, as Lovell’s and Dumbreck’s examples show, but we might also help students plan how they will respond in other situations. Before independent work during lessons, we may ask “What will we do if we get stuck?” and check students have done this before we help them. Implementation intentions seem particularly powerful when people are forgetful or under pressure (Rogers et al., 2015): if we can help students identify when they lose focus or control, and plan alternative responses, this may help them monitor and regulate their actions: “What irritates you?’ How else could you react?”
Conclusion
Implementation intentions help turn goal intentions into action. A student’s desire to do more/better/differently is crucial, but it is rarely sufficient: an implementation intention specifying when and how they will act significantly increases their chances of success.
Yet implementation intentions have limits. They work better for one-off tasks tasks (Rogers et al., 2015) like vaccinations and applications forms; their effects can be short-lived and are mixed for longer-term goals requiring ongoing effort, like studying (Damgaard and Nielsen, 2018). So, while implementation intentions can help students act, we need to help them turn isolated actions into habits. A future post addresses this.
I’m very grateful to Ollie Lovell and Jess Dumbreck for permission to share their work.
This is a draft excerpt from Habits of success: getting every student learning. It’s available from Amazon & Routledge.
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Choosing the perfect moment to ask students to decide.
Helping students choose wisely by making it seem like a good idea at the time
Ollie Lovell’s post on using implementation intentions