Know Yourself, Know Your Students: How to use personality frameworks to humanize your classroom (Part 2)

What Drives My Motivation?: Exploring Dr. Robyn Jackson’s Will-Drivers Framework

In Angela Watson’s Truth for Teachers Episode 191, Angela and Dr. Robyn Jackson discuss the framework for identifying a student’s will-driver, and how teachers may use that framework to take steps to overcome issues with seemingly unmotivated, disinterested students. 

Dr. Jackson’s framework defines four types of will drivers: Purpose, Belonging, Mastery, and Autonomy, and a belief that each of us has a dominant will driver, a manner that most motivates and engages us.

To better understand the roles within this framework, we can consider what motivates each dominant will-driver to invest energy in a task:

• Mastery-driven kids want to know how to be successful or achieve mastery

• Belonging-driven kids want to know who this connects them to, or how this defines them

• Purpose-driven kids want to know why this is meaningful

• Autonomy kids want to know what they are being asked to do and what decisions they can make for themselves

Look closely at your students and how their responses embody their dominant will-driver

Dr. Jackson describes simple variations in language and delivery that can connect more effectively with a student’s dominant will-driver.

A belonging-driven student, for example, will feel seen and honored by a teacher who helps define who they are. Telling this student she is a hard worker or a good friend to a classmate in response to an action will affirm in them what they are striving to be. 

In the same interaction, a purpose-driven student will be motivated by confirmation that her actions were meaningful. To let this student know, “Your work here has helped you become a better reader” or “That classmate has a big smile on her face now. You've made her feel good,” you affirm them based on what they find most meaningful. You are supporting their understanding of the why.

When we look at our students and allow for some time to analyze their negative and positive reactions to various circumstances, we can start to pinpoint their will-driver. 

In my recent experience struggling to motivate a kindergarten student whose behavior was becoming increasingly defiant and disengaged, I applied Dr. Jackson’s framework. 

I noticed this student would push back at just about any directive, even where to play at recess (classes were assigned different sections of the playground during COVID for contact-tracing purposes). She would refuse to leave the room to go outside when I was certain that she really did want to play outside with her friends. She’d told me as much earlier when it was time to complete classwork!

This, and several other clues, led me to believe this student was Autonomy-driven. She wanted choices. 

I started reframing the way I spoke to her. “Giving her choices” was still defining what she would do on my terms. So instead of saying, “Your choices for where to sit are...” I said, “Where will you decide to sit?”

Instead of reprimanding, cajoling, or pleading with her to follow directions and do what I asked -requests that she flatly refused- I reminded her that everything she did was her decision. I couldn’t, and wouldn’t try, to force her to do anything, and that I was there to help her learn. The decision to do so was hers and hers alone.

We are still working through crafting a classroom in which her will-driver is honored whenever possible. As Dr. Jackson points out, autonomy-driven kids have it really hard in school because opportunities for genuine choice are rare, but these kids don’t want anarchy, they just want to know they have options.  

Armed with that understanding, I was able to reframe a negative discourse that had started to form in my mind about this student. Looking through the lens of a student’s will-driver helped dispel deficit-based assumptions about that student’s motivation, academic ability, or personality. 

And wouldn’t we want the same from others?

Know Yourself, Know Your Students: How to use personality frameworks to humanize your classroom (Part 1)

Know Yourself, Know Your Students: How to use personality frameworks to humanize your classroom

During the many at-home, entertainment-seeking hours of COVID distancing and digital schooling, my daughter and I became quite versed in the world of Buzzfeed personality quizzes. And while you may say it is not of great value to know which Golden Girl I am or which Disney character I should have as a roommate (and you’d probably be right), these quizzes did lead me to an interesting revelation. 

In answering quiz questions, I was called on to think for a moment about what personal qualities I most value, what I most fear, or what quality people respect most about me.These seemingly mindless interviews asked me to do some light self-exploration. (Even if it did only result in telling me that my inner celebrity is Lil Nas X.)

I started wondering about intrapersonal understandings that might matter a bit more and could have a more meaningful impact on my professional and personal relationships. 

I asked myself what would happen if I developed a better understanding of my own motivation or response to expectations?

How can an increased intrapersonal intelligence help me to interact more positively with others? 

Throughout this month I will share my experience with developing my own intrapersonal intelligence using a few popular frameworks, their application in creating positive interactions with colleagues and administration, and their use in building relationships with students.

The Four Tendencies Framework: How do I respond to expectations?

In our various roles as teacher, coworker, parent, partner, etc., we constantly encounter and respond to expectations in the form of inner expectations. Examples such as setting personal goals to read more, eat healthily, maintain an exercise routine, and stay organized. We also face outer expectations, such as deadlines, student achievement reports, email requests, assigned professional development trainings, and more.

Our students, too, face a daily torrent of expectations. Parents, teachers, even friends, pile on the outer expectations and, even at a young age, kids have expectations for themselves. 

Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies Framework helps identify the manner in which you instinctively respond to these inner and outer expectations. In doing so, you can create circumstances that ensure success in achieving your goals.

The four tendencies, as defined by Gretchen Rubin, are Upholder, Obliger, Questioner, and Rebel.  

She summarizes each of the four tendencies in a nutshell: 

• Upholders want to know what should be done.

• Questioners want justifications.

• Obligers need accountability.

• Rebels want freedom to do something their own way.

“When we can see other people’s perspectives, we understand why, from their point of view, their actions make sense,” she explains on her website.

Reflect on the chemistry between your tendency and that of those around you

Defining your tendency can give you insight into your interactions with colleagues.

Upon reflection, I’ve realized how my Questioner tendency was misinterpreted by my former administration. As rules and regulations, scopes and sequences, and testing programs were becoming more and more prominent and strictly policed at my school, I was becoming increasingly critical of the practices. 

I wanted to understand why.

As a Questioner, I’d spent most of my career defining my professional philosophy in terms of what I saw as valuable. 

The lack of clarity and expectation for compliance was unacceptable to me. From an administrative perspective, I seemed simply disagreeable and obstinate. 

Had we communicated about the expectations with a reciprocal understanding of each other’s values, maybe we could have come to a respectful understanding. Instead we each fell into the destructive cycle of villainizing the other. Because we were dwelling only on the faults interpreted by the other’s actions, I saw a leader who was unyielding and close-minded, and she saw a teacher who was antagonistic and troublesome. 

We didn’t look upon each other’s behavior with compassion. 

Troubling interactions such as these occur in our classrooms, too.

                                         

Reflect on the role your tendency plays in your teaching style and classroom interactions

What do we see in children when they fail to meet our expectations? How do we sometimes sum up their behaviors in simplified, and likely inaccurate, terms like lazy, inconsiderate, or careless?

So often assumptions like this dehumanize the students in our classroom. 

Gretchen Rubin would say that, in reality, we are failing to grasp a different perspective on how someone sees the world.

For example, an Obliger may see daily reading logs or homework checks as accountability support and respond positively to a teacher’s praise or reward for completion, while in the eyes of a Rebel, this practice may be restricting and burdensome. 

A teacher with a Questioner tendency may take care to ensure expectations are meaningful, but has that meaning been clearly expressed to the student Questioners in the class? If not, you may find these students fail to meet your expectations, unless they can derive meaning themselves.

By reflecting on your own tendency, you can more clearly see how you craft expectations in your classroom based on your priorities, and how that may be at odds with some of your students.

By observing your students’ behaviors and understanding their tendencies, you may be able to reframe your thinking of their behavior and create circumstances that allow them to meet your and their own goals.