In July, four Motivate Lab team members traveled to Philadelphia, PA to attend the Educator Summit co-hosted by Character Lab and Relay Graduate School of Education. The annual event is an opportunity for educators to gather to learn about some of the most promising research-backed strategies for teaching character skills and practice these together through interactive workshops.
Featured guests included Motivate Lab Director, Chris Hulleman, who gave a keynote on why it’s important for educators to promote value in their classrooms and how to do so effectively. He also led a workshop which gave attendees the chance for guided practice in using Build Connections, the tool he co-designed with Character Lab, and which now is being implemented and tested in classes across the country.
In the below clip from his talk and follow-up interview, Chris introduces the challenge of fostering student engagement and discusses the expectancy-value framework of motivation. He also offers ideas for how educators can foster intrinsic motivation in their classrooms rather than relying on rewards and punishment models which, though used widely in education, are shown to negatively impact student engagement. Finally, he sits down with Rebecca Good, Dean of Relay GSE in Connecticut, to answer questions about Build Connections, including how it can be used to complement culturally relevant pedagogy.