The Concept of Flow and Its Educational Applications

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The Concept of Flow and Its Educational
Applications

• Lorin W. Anderson
• The Anderson Research Group

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The Problem
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http//vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseactionvids.
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• BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Today's high school students
  say they are bored in class because they dislike
  the material and experience inadequate teacher
  interaction, according to a special report from
  Indiana University's High School Survey of
  Student Engagement (HSSSE). The findings,
  released today (Feb. 28, 2007), show that 2 out
  of 3 students are bored in class every day, while
  17 percent say they are bored in every class.

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• Some of the key findings were
• Fewer than 2 percent of students say they are
  never bored in high school.
• Seventy-five percent of students surveyed say
  they are bored in class because the "material
  wasn't interesting."
• Nearly 40 percent felt bored because the material
  "wasn't relevant to me."

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And the predictable results are
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Surrender (often with humor)
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Hopelessness
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"The implicit hope has been that if we discover
more and more rational ways of selecting,
organizing, and distributing knowledge, children
will learn more effectively. Yet it seems
increasingly clear that the chief impediments to
learning are not cognitive in nature. It is not
that students cannot learn, it is that they do
not wish to."
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Activity 1

• Divide into groups of 3.
• On a 3 x 5 file card, each member of the group
  briefly describes in writing an experience he or
  she had in which he or she simply lost track of
  time. It may be a recent experience or an
  experience some time ago.
• Each member shares his or her experience with the
  group.
• The group develops a list of things that your
  experiences had in common.
• Select a spokesperson to share your list with the
  whole group.

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Results of Activity 1

• X
• X
• X
• X
• X
• X
• X
• X

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What is Flow?
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The question is not Who is Flo? The question is
What is Flow?
Hi, Im Flo!
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• Flow is the state in which people are so involved
  in an activity that nothing else seems to matter
  the experience itself is so enjoyable that people
  will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake
  of doing it.
• The concept of flow was developed by Mihaly
  Csikszentmihalyi.

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Its pronounced "chick-sent-me-high-ee."
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• Csikszentmihalyi used the word flow because
  people tend to describe the experience using the
  metaphor of a current carrying them along.

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Flow
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Components of Flow

• Clear goal
• Complete involvement (concentration, focus)
• Sense of personal control and self-reward
• Direct and immediate feedback
• Distorted sense of time
• Balance between ability level and challenge

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Activity 2

• The Riddle The game is in the name of the game
  polar bears around an ice hole invented in
  the days of Genghis Khan. A clue for you to keep
  you true like petals around a rose, you can
  count each bears nose.
• Question How many polar bears do you see?

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A Story from Camp Caraway
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Lets Analyze the Polar Bear Activity in Terms of
Flow

• Clear goal
• Complete involvement
• Personal control and self-reward
• Direct and immediate feedback
• Distorted sense of time
• Balance between ability and challenge

• Yes or No
• Yes or No
• Yes or No
• Yes or No
• Yes or No
• Yes or No

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What Do We Have to Change to Increase Flow

• Changes in the Curriculum
• Changes in the Classroom
• Changes in Teaching
• Changes in Lessons

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Changing the Curriculum

• Inquiry-Based
• Rigorous
• Relevant
• Vertically Articulated

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Inquiry-Based

• http//homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/explore/crimes
  cene.htm
• http//www.keystonecurriculum.org/
• http//bestwebquests.com/bwq/wqdetail.asp?siteid1
  75
• http//bestwebquests.com/bwq/wqdetail.asp?siteid1
  77

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What Rigor Isnt

• Rigor DOES NOT mean more difficult.

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Which of this items is more difficult? Why?

• When was the first college-level gemology course
  taught in the United States?
• 1888
• 1909
• 1921
• 1933
• When did William Jefferson Clinton serve as
  President of the United States?
• During the 1960s
• During the 1970s
• During the 1980s
• During the 1990s

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What Rigor Is?

• Rigor means challenging.
• From a flow perspective, rigor must mean an
  achievable challenge.
• The proper amount of academic rigor for any given
  student depends on the gap between the academic
  demands placed on the student and the ability of
  the student to meet those demands.

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Visually ---

• STUDENTS
• Lowest Achievement
  Highest Achievement
• __________________________________________________
  
• !
  !
• Phil
  Jill
• gap
  gap
• Demands on Phil
  Demands on Jill
• ___________________!______________________!_______
  _
• Least Rigorous
  Most Rigorous
• CURRICULUM

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Relevant

• Simply defining relevance is problematic.
  First, who gets to define what is relevant? The
  notion of relevance puts too much power into
  the hands of too few. Second, definitions of
  relevance are irrevocably tied to the social
  and technological present in which we find
  ourselves. Surely the purpose of education is to
  help prepare individuals for their future, not
  our present.
• If there is a consensus it revolves around
  learning that has real-life applications. This
  begs the question Whose life?

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Relevant (continued)

• From a flow perspective, relevance, like beauty,
  is in the eye of the beholder. Students must see
  the relevancy.
• This is not to suggest that relevancy must be
  present-oriented. However, we must acknowledge
  that we as educators cannot prepare students for
  the future. We dont know what the future holds.
  But we can prepare them to meet the demands of
  the future.

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Vertically Articulated

• In designing the sequencing of the courses, the
  connectedness of the curriculum as a whole is
  to be taken into account. Courses that focus on
  tools, such as mathematics, computer, and
  statistics, should be taken before the other
  courses so that the later courses can rely on and
  use the earlier courses. Conversely, tools and
  skills that are developed in an earlier course
  should either be used in a following course or
  identified as a desired student outcome (Bilkent
  University, Turkey)

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The Job of the Classroom Teacher in a Nutshell

• Promote high levels of student engagement in
  learning
• Promote low levels of misbehavior and disruptive
  behavior

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Engagement and Misbehavior are Related

• The more students are engaged in learning, the
  less likely they will misbehave.
• Stated somewhat differently, if students arent
  engaged in learning, they will be engaged in
  something else usually something that, as
  teachers, we dont like.

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Changing Teaching

• The power to impose your will by threat or shame
  is, in the end, not useful for educating
  responsible citizens. We are obliged to find and
  act out new ways of teaching students that will
  lead to self-control and not simply obedience.
  Instead of using the influence of power, we need
  to use the power of influence.
• Maite Galan and Tom Maguire, 2002

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Changing Teaching (continued)

• With-it-ness (having eyes the back of your
  head letting students know that you know)
• Overlapping (doing more than one thing at once)
• Smoothness and Momentum (keeping things moving,
  with appropriate pace and smooth transitions)
• Group alerting (keeping all student attentive in
  a whole-group focus)
• These tools help teachers to maintain the flow of
  instruction

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Changing the Classroom
In many classrooms and schools, a regimented day
of short periods and a constant clamor of bells
and buzzers shuffles kids through the building
and across their day. But working in a studio is
different. Studio work involves lengthy periods
of time where the kids are concentrated on one
project or one issue. As the kids can be busy and
absorbed in something for several hours at a
time, this gives them time to involve themselves
deeply into the work they are doing.
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Changing the Classroom (continued)
We may start off together in a group discussing
hot issues from the previous day or with me
teaching a new skill or concept, but we move as
quickly as possible towards the kids being active
as creators, designers, and researchers, this
being our focus. Most of my time is spent helping
small groups of kids solve problems, asking
questions about what they are doing, directing
them to others who can help them solve a problem,
or others who may have work I want them to see.
As we slowly descend into involvement, I can hear
the hum of the classroom change and even out as
students find themselves immersed in what they
are doing.
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Changing the Structure of Lessons

• Structure A
• Teacher instructs students in a concept or skill.
• Teacher solves sample problems with whole class.
• Students practice on their own while teacher
  monitor and assists individual students.
• Structure B
• Teacher poses complex thought-provoking problem.
• Students struggle with the problem.
• Various students present ideas or solutions to
  the class.
• Class discusses the various ideas or solutions.
• Teacher summarizes
• Students practice similar problems.

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Activity 3 Stringing Me Along

• 1. Use a pen, pencil, or magic marker to prepare
  your string for use as a measuring device.
• 2. Walk around the building (inside and outside,
  if you want) and locate two circular objects of
  different sizes.
• 3. Perform two measurements on each object - the
  distance around the object and the distance from
  "side" to "side" through the center of the
  object.
• 4. Record your measurements in the chart on the
  next slide and perform the requested calculations.

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The Importance of Planning

• Create interesting and engaging lessons that
  capture students interest.
• Have all materials readily available to avoid
  delays.
• Accommodate individual learning rhythms by having
  additional activities available for students who
  finish assignments early.
• Carefully plan for transition times within
  lessons as well as between them. A significant
  stumbling block to the flow of instruction is in
  attention to transitions between activities,
  lessons, subjects, or class periods. It is here
  that teachers are likely to feel that they are
  less effective in maintaining the flow of
  instruction.

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The Importance of Variety
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Do examples of incorporating flow into students
educational experiences really exist?

• Yes. But they are most likely to be found in
  computer software and gaming.

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• From a software design perspective, flow is the
  principle of fitting software around the users
  total experience, integrating separate features
  into an application so that the application
  closely models real-word usage patterns. Flow
  takes into consideration the users relationship
  with their environment as a whole and not just
  the single application in isolation.
• Pathfinder Associates

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Our goal should be to produce great teachers.
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Great teachers give us a sense not only of who
they are, but more important, of who we are, and
who we might become. They unlock our energies,
our imaginations, and our minds. Effective
teachers pose compelling questions, explain
options, teach us to reason, suggest possible
directions, and urge us on. The best teachers,
like the best leaders, have an uncanny ability to
step outside themselves and become liberating
forces in our lives.
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Successful teachers are vital and full of
passion. They love to teach as a painter loves to
paint, as a writer loves to write, as a singer
loves to sing. They have a serious purpose and
yet enjoy enormously what they do. They teach
their subject -- politics, physics, psychology,
or whatever -- as if it really mattered. They can
get excited about their subject no matter how
many times they have held forth on it. They
vivify their subject and rise well above the
mechanical, dry, or routine. They push themselves
just as they push their students, and their
courses become memorable learning
experiences. Thomas E. Cronin