Motivation *As* Learning: Enlisting the Role of Affect and Habit in Academic Cognitive-knowledge-Building

Date/Time
Date(s) - 11/07/2024
10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Led by Ellyn Kerr

Academic Success, Student Life, University of Toronto

Cognitive neuroscience recognizes an implicit role of limbic activity in learning-readiness and capacity (Ng, 2018), and the neuroscience of motivation (task-initiation and task-persistence) is known to involve corticolimbic functioning (Wielanda et al., 2022). Motivation is often discussed as either a driver for, or impediment to, students’ learning — but what if building capacity to generate motivation were understood as an “affective learning” process in its own right?

Behavioural self-discipline is suggested to better predict academic outcomes than IQ alone (Duckworth and Seligman, 2005), which invites instructors to actively design motivation-building into curricula. This session proposes motivation both as an affective state (Immordino-Yang and Damasio, 2007) and a competency that can be developed and invoked. Somatic psychology as a field of praxis recognizes implicit involvement of physicality in emotion and proactively enlists physical gesture and expression to build motivation; the field’s success in ameliorating depression and procrastination (examples of diminished- or repressed-motivation states) points to possibilities for educational design.

This interactive workshop invites instructors, educational developers, and student affairs support staff to:

• Recognize motivation (or lack thereof) as an affective, embodied learning challenge/opportunity and learnable competency
• Consider a learning domains framework that recognizes behavioural, affective, and social learning as integral to cognitive learning
• Query implicit biases that privilege cognitive learning in design of course syllabi and potentially exclude affective and meta-cognitive behavioural learning
• Design potential adaptations of somatic psychology interventions to support students’ positive affect (in turn to support global motivation and academic performance)
• Collaboratively discover and innovate ways to incorporate cognitive *as well as* behavioural, affective, and social learning into course evaluations

Educational design along these holistic principles will be collaboratively explored in this workshop, towards refining a current learning-strategy “curriculum” framework.

Ellyn Kerr, MSc (she/her(s)) is a learning strategist serving graduate and professional school students at University of Toronto’s Department of Academic Success, whose work draws on social cognitive neuroscience, somatic psychology, and behavioural psychology. Ellyn has worked as a training facilitator in social-emotional intelligence; as a consultant in inclusive leadership; and as a transformational-learning coach and counsellor. She holds certifications in the neuroscience of leadership, applied somatic psychology, and social/relational intelligence coaching. Ellyn is keenly interested in learning and leadership-development innovations, including relational agility, socialized artificial intelligence, personal knowledge management, and Indigenous, somatic, and holistic learning frameworks. She is grateful to elders and teachers of Indigenous wisdoms who have breathed new understanding into her work in the psychology and science of learning.