This submit initially appeared on the Christensen Institute’s weblog, and is reposted right here with permission.
What if the lacking ingredient in pupil achievement isn’t higher curriculum, tech, or lecturers, however higher motivation? What if the important thing to unlocking motivation isn’t one thing intrinsic to college students, however one thing discovered of their relationships with friends, lecturers, mentors, and communities? And what if the one factor AI can’t do is the one factor college students want most?
I just lately learn 10 to 25, a brand new guide by David Yeager, one of many main analysis psychologists in adolescent growth and motivation. The guide explores what younger folks want most between the ages of 10 and 25 to thrive. Within the guide, Yeager challenges the prevailing view that adolescents’ seemingly irrational selections—like taking dangers, ignoring penalties, or prioritizing peer approval over teachers—end result from underdeveloped brains. As an alternative, he presents a extra beneficiant—and albeit extra illuminating—framing: adolescents are evolutionarily wired to hunt standing and respect.
That framing resonates with what Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn wrote over a decade in the past. They noticed that the Jobs to Be Accomplished that appear to encourage college students heart on feeling profitable and having enjoyable with mates. Yeager’s insights sharpen the developmental psychology behind that earlier articulation.
And so they level to an important perception for schooling: the important thing to unlocking college students’ motivation, particularly in adolescence, helps them see that they’ve worth—that they’re valued by the folks they care about and that they’re significant contributors to the teams the place they search belonging. That realization has implications not only for how we perceive pupil engagement, however for a way we design colleges…and why AI alone can’t get us the place we have to go.
Amid fast AI advances, many in schooling are optimistic that AI will lastly crack the coed engagement puzzle. With its capacity to personalize studying, tutor throughout topics, and reply immediately to pupil enter, AI guarantees a extra adaptive and responsive studying expertise. Some even argue that these capabilities will naturally result in larger motivation and engagement—that if we simply give college students instruments that alter to their tempo and preferences, they’ll lean in. However that imaginative and prescient overlooks one thing deeper.
Human survival has lengthy relied on our capacity to function in teams and people contributing meaningfully to these teams. Adolescence, particularly, is the stage of life after we start studying methods to grow to be valued members of a gaggle. The problem of studying methods to earn social belonging and respect just isn’t a distraction from human growth—it is human growth. And motivation, for adolescents, flows from that deep organic crucial.
Motivation is social, not simply inside
For years, schooling reformers have tried to crack the motivation code. We’ve mentioned grit, progress mindset, intrinsic motivation, relevance, autonomy, and function. All of these are actual. However Yeager’s framing highlights one thing extra primal: for adolescents, motivation is extremely social. They’re wired to care about how they’re seen. They wish to matter to folks whose opinions they worth.
In that gentle, motivation isn’t nearly drive—it’s about social reward. If a studying exercise helps you grow to be somebody of worth in your social group—if it earns you the respect and belonging you crave—you’ll throw your self into it. If it doesn’t, even essentially the most thoughtfully scaffolded expertise can fall flat. This is the reason motivation is so uneven throughout contexts. The identical child who’s listless in geometry class may spend hours mastering intricate choreography, modding a online game, or grinding on a skateboard trick—as a result of these actions earn them one thing socially.
This is the reason studying turns into highly effective when it’s embedded in neighborhood. It’s not sufficient to present college students selections or tailor the tempo. They need to really feel that the work they’re doing helps them grow to be somebody of worth to the folks round them.
The parable that self-directed studying is just for a choose few
A number of years in the past, I keep in mind studying a critique of personalised studying that went one thing like this: “It really works for autodidacts like Invoice Gates and Mark Zuckerberg—however most youngsters aren’t like that.” The concept was that personalised studying assumes a stage of self-direction that almost all college students don’t have.
On the time, that critique gave me pause. However the extra I’ve noticed college students out and in of faculty, the extra satisfied I’ve grow to be that it’s primarily based on a defective assumption. Most youngsters are autodidacts—they simply don’t be taught college topics autodidactically.
Watch what occurs when a child will get into Minecraft. Or basketball. Or Taylor Swift. Or anime. Or make-up tutorials. Or skateboarding. Or modding computer systems. Youngsters educate themselves astonishingly advanced issues by trial, error, iteration, and YouTube. They’ll memorize elaborate lore, grasp mechanics, mimic abilities, and clarify them to others—all with out being assigned a single worksheet.
So, the issue isn’t that almost all children aren’t self-directed learners. The issue is that college content material typically lacks any social payoff. It doesn’t assist them really feel valued or earn respect within the social contexts they care about. And so, understandably, they disengage.
Derek Muller, creator of the science YouTube channel Veritasium, powerfully made this level throughout a latest speak. After exhibiting one among his traditional road interview segments—the place he asks on a regular basis folks fundamental science questions that many fumble to reply—he stunned the viewers by pushing again towards their laughter.
He stated, “Our brains are designed to assist us be efficient on this world, which suggests discovering meals and shelter, discovering a mate, integrating socially in order that we’re not ostracized, having the ability simply to hang around and have enjoyable. All of these issues are what we must be doing.” In different phrases, people are wired to deal with social survival. Muller acknowledged that whereas scientific literacy is crucial, it’s comprehensible that many individuals don’t prioritize it. They’re busy navigating social media, relationships, and real-world considerations.
“I believe it’s comprehensible,” he stated, “that lots of people don’t deal with that, don’t know that, don’t give it some thought. It’s not a part of the world that they exist in… as a result of that’s about connecting with different folks.”
His level aligns with Yeager’s: for most individuals, and particularly for adolescents, the drive to attach socially is way extra urgent than mastering educational content material. When college doesn’t align with these social realities, it typically will get deprioritized.
Why conventional colleges don’t encourage most learners
That perception sheds gentle on why the traditional grammar of education fails so many college students. Colleges usually supply only some slim paths to earn standing and respect: teachers, athletics, and typically management roles like Related Pupil Physique (ASB) or pupil council. In the event you occur to be good at a kind of, nice—you’re within the sport. However should you’re not? You’re primarily on the sidelines.
What’s worse, we’ve layered on a college-for-all narrative that subtly devalues different sources of standing and contribution. Getting a job, beginning a enterprise, apprenticing, or serving to your loved ones—these are sometimes handled as second-tier outcomes. Which means for college kids who wrestle with educational content material or don’t shine within the area or on the court docket, college presents no credible path to mattering.
And when college students can’t earn standing or respect by the formal constructions of faculty, they create different hierarchies. Cliques, social tribes, and student-defined standing video games grow to be methods to navigate id and belonging. Adults could not sanction these, however they serve the identical deep function: to assist college students determine the place they belong and methods to be valued.
To make issues worse, college constructions are sometimes explicitly ranked. In band, you’re ranked by chair. In sports activities, the beginning lineup. In teachers, by GPA and sophistication rank. These rankings don’t simply present suggestions—they confer id. They divide college students into winners and losers within the domains the varsity has determined to prize. That additional fuels the seek for alternative routes to really feel profitable.
So, college students flip to trendiness, humor, riot, or different artistic methods of being “seen” by friends. They might not be aiming for standing within the honor roll sense, however they’re completely making an attempt to be somebody of worth within the eyes of others.
Why AI can’t fill the hole
Enter AI. Over the previous yr, we’ve seen a surge of curiosity in how AI can personalize studying, adapt to pupil wants, and tutor throughout topics. It will probably additionally assist college students design their studying journeys, generate artistic concepts, or obtain iterative suggestions on their work. There’s actual promise right here.
But when we mistake AI for a whole resolution to the motivation downside, we’ll be sorely dissatisfied.
AI can’t confer standing or respect. And that issues greater than most individuals understand.
Right here’s why: human respect is scarce. Folks solely have a lot time, consideration, and emotional bandwidth. They should be selective about the place they make investments their time, who they embrace, and what sort of contributions they acknowledge, particularly in collaborative or aggressive group settings. That selectivity is what provides human respect its that means.
In contrast, AI is infinitely out there and unconditionally responsive. You’ll be able to speak to all of it day, and it’ll all the time be supportive. However that’s exactly what makes its suggestions meaningless relating to recognition and belonging. An AI doesn’t have restricted time, bandwidth, and sources that pressure it to make tradeoffs. AIs don’t select us to be on their groups or resolve that relationships with us are price their time.
Except AI know-how evolves to a degree the place it performs a significant position in actual social programs, the place time, consideration, and affirmation are scarce and should be earned, it can fall wanting fixing the motivational problem. We could also be approaching that form of world—a state of affairs my colleague Julia Freeland Fisher warns about, the place AI begins to substitute for the human relationships important to growth and belonging. But when it ever does attain that time, we’ll be dwelling in a really completely different sci-fi-esque world the place the foundations of human connection are being redefined, and the place questions on whether or not AI can encourage college students often is the least of our considerations.
This lens may assist clarify what researchers name edtech’s “5% downside.” Research have discovered that whereas many on-line studying applications can produce vital good points when used at really helpful dosages, solely about 5% of scholars really use them as really helpful. Why? Researchers have supplied a spread of explanations for this hole, from inconsistent implementation by colleges to the chance that higher-achieving college students are merely extra prone to stick to the applications. After all, structural obstacles—like scheduling, accountability insurance policies, and tech entry—additionally play a task in why utilization stays low. Nonetheless, I hypothesize that motivation is the lacking piece that may supply essentially the most vital impression. These instruments could also be partaking and gratifying at first, however their novelty wears off shortly. In comparison with apps and video games designed purely for leisure, edtech not often wins the eye battle by itself.
What retains college students coming again, I consider, isn’t simply higher software program. It’s the social context across the studying. If college students noticed working laborious in these applications as one thing that earned them standing and respect—one thing that made them matter within the eyes of their friends, lecturers, and oldsters—I believe we’d see way more college students utilizing the software program at ranges that speed up their achievement. But I believe many lecturers are disinclined to make software program utilization a significant mechanism for conferring standing and respect of their lecture rooms as a result of encouraging extra display screen time doesn’t really feel like actual instructing.
This motivational lens might additionally assist clarify why high-dosage tutoring tends to outperform self-paced software program, even when each supply personalised studying. Software program is perhaps higher at diagnosing and concentrating on educational gaps. A tutor is perhaps higher at connecting studying to a pupil’s pursuits. However the largest distinction often is the energy of relationships. Most college students care, a minimum of slightly, about whether or not their tutor respects them. That creates a delicate however highly effective lever: a human relationship the place affirmation should be earned, not mechanically given. That dynamic—the inherent shortage of consideration and regard—provides human interplay its motivational pressure. And it’s what software program alone can’t replicate.
The actual design problem: Construct full-stack motivational contexts
For many years now, bettering pupil achievement has been one of the crucial persistent imperatives in schooling. Billions of {dollars} and numerous reforms have gone towards efforts to lift take a look at scores and shut achievement gaps. And but, throughout the board, progress has been modest and inconsistent.
Over a decade of Gallup polling, in addition to analysis cited in Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop’s new guide The Disengaged Teen, spotlight a elementary downside: most college students, particularly in center and highschool, are disengaged from college. And in the event that they’re disengaged, they’re not motivated to be taught. We’ve tried bettering curricula. We’ve targeted on instructor preparation {and professional} growth. We’ve reformed accountability programs. However perhaps what we’ve been lacking all alongside is the gasoline that makes any of these efforts matter: college students’ motivation.
Motivation isn’t simply one other variable within the equation—it might be the multiplier. I consider unlocking pupil motivation might show extra highly effective for enhancing achievement than any levers we’ve historically tried, like dumping jet gasoline on a campfire. None of that is to say content material doesn’t matter—good curriculum is crucial. However with out the motivational gasoline to have interaction with it, even the best-designed content material can fall flat.
We have already got examples to point out that when college students are motivated, the outcomes may be explosive. At Alpha College in Austin, Texas, college students full core educational topics in simply two hours per day—and but their educational progress charges are greater than double nationwide averages. At Khan World College, a partnership between ASU Prep and Khan Academy, college students have proven studying progress as excessive as 2 to five occasions nationwide norms in math, studying, and language arts. These should not marginal enhancements. They’re step-function leaps.
Expertise performs a key position in these fashions, permitting college students to maneuver at their very own tempo, get real-time suggestions, and discover personalised studying paths. However I don’t consider it’s the know-how alone that drives these outcomes. It’s the way in which the know-how allows these colleges to redesign the social studying expertise—to create environments the place college students see studying as one thing that makes them extra worthwhile contributors within the social worlds they inhabit.
That’s the deeper design problem. It’s not nearly deploying the precise instruments—it’s about establishing a social context the place studying issues. That raises an vital query: Is social motivation primarily from the varsity in colleges like Alpha and Khan World College? Or is it relying closely on the assist constructions, relationships, and cultural norms college students carry from outdoors, particularly from their households?
If it’s the latter, then scaling these outcomes could show troublesome. But when it’s the previous—if the varsity is producing the motivational context—then the true alternative lies in determining how. How will we replicate or adapt these dynamics so extra college students, from extra backgrounds, expertise college as a spot the place studying results in social worth?
Answering that query might be the important thing to reimagining college not simply as a spot the place studying occurs, however as a spot the place motivation thrives—and achievement follows.
A brand new lens on motivation
We’ve spent years making an attempt to personalize studying. However perhaps we’ve targeted an excessive amount of on tailoring content material and never sufficient on remodeling context.
The actual key to motivation isn’t simply autonomy or relevance. It’s the chance to earn standing and respect, to be valued by individuals who matter, and to contribute meaningfully to a gaggle. That’s what most college programs fail to offer. And that’s what AI, for all its brilliance, can’t replicate by itself.
Most youngsters are already autodidacts. Our job isn’t to show them methods to be taught. It’s to create environments the place studying helps them grow to be somebody in a world that sees and values them for it.
The following huge instructional innovation gained’t come from extra clever AI. It should come from communities that design AI-powered schooling the place studying earns you respect in the true world.
For extra information on AI within the classroom, go to eSN’s Digital Studying hub.
