by Skyla Chrisison

Created on: September 24, 2009   Last Updated: September 26, 2009

A common concern among home schooling families is how to keep their kids motivated and focused academically from within the home. Self motivation seems to come naturally to some while others appear to languish in the muck of daydreams and even rebellion. So where does a parent turn for answers? It may surprise you to know that a lot of the research being done on motivation is coming out of the business sector and can be applied directly to what you are doing at home.

In a recent talk given by Daniel Pink for the TED project, Mr. Pink outlines a study that looks more closely at what really motivates individuals to accomplish a task. Is it rewards or self-satisfaction? Well, the answer seems to be both. Mr. Pink says that when the task is clearly defined and just a matter of carrying out the steps, a reward does act as a motivator. But when a task requires a person to think out of the box, to come up with something new and innovative, offering a reward almost always increases the amount of time it takes for a task to be completed in a satisfactory way.

When businesses offered a cash reward for simple, routine tasks to one group and no rewards to another, the outcomes were slightly improved for the group to which a reward was offered. When the same businesses offered rewards for more complex tasks that required a novel, think outside the box thought process, the group not offered a reward faired better across the board. This is exactly the opposite of what our society has been doing for decades now.

How does this translate to the home classroom? Well, it tells us that incentives like sticker charts or Fabulous Friday will only improve results for activities that are trained monkey work like spelling memorization or math facts. For more complex and imaginative subjects such as creative writing and innovative science work, freedom to work at your pace and with a method of your choosing takes the cake.

Mr. Pink talks about a company that once in a while gives its employees a day to work on anything they choose to work on as long as they have something new to present to the company after that given time. From this practice have come some of the most revolutionizing ideas that the company has ever seen. So it wasn't working for a reward, but the freedom to work on just whatever that really bought out the best in that company's staff.

Why is this? Well, insights into that question vary and the theories are many. But you don't have to understand how something works in order

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