The Myth of the Rational Teacher

After 19 years in education, not one year passed where Bloom’s taxonomy wasn’t referenced in a training, or a faculty meeting, or a PLC. However, after all these years I never once heard that Bloom also addressed the affective and psychomotor domains (Harapnuik 2015). That fact alone is confirmation that logic towers over all else in our educational system and society at large. I almost can’t even imagine the discussion about the need for higher order learning being coupled with the need to reach kid’s hearts. Of course, in education we would discuss the need to develop relationships and make learning interesting. We even had a program called Capturing Kid’s Hearts for a few years where the tagline is: “If you have a child’s heart, you have their mind.” Yet these discussions were compartmentalized. Capturing kids hearts was about behavior and classroom management. We didn’t talk about how to reach hearts in the midst of an academic lesson nor while writing a lesson plan.

With this in mind, it makes sense that the best way to initiate change in an organization is to have a clear and compelling “why” (Sinek, 2009). People are much more likely to respond and buy into your “why” than they are to be compelled by all of the best facts and reasons. Especially if the “why” resonates with them and appeals to their own sense of identity (Asacker, 2014). Yet, in an organization it’s also important to muster up a sense of urgency when initiating change (Kotter, 2013). If people don’t sense the urgency they’re likely to not take the initiative seriously and just demote it to the bottom of their priority list. Either way, the communication of urgency and a clear compelling “why” both appeal to people’s hearts, not just their minds. Indeed it appears that this transaction has to take place to initiate any real change.

This is precisely where people and organizations tend to fall short in their attempts for change. Even thinking of a classroom environment, the best teachers are able to compel their students towards successful outcomes because they know how to appeal to the kids’ hearts. They have a relationship and they know what makes their kids tick, which also means they know how to motivate them. However, many teachers don’t value this at all. They think that the kids should just learn to do as they’re told. The class videos and readings along with Pink’s Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. have really made me wonder why this kind of stuff isn’t more explicitly taught to teachers (Pink, 2009)? We have all kinds of training on behavior management, but in many ways the behavior in classrooms probably won’t change if the teacher’s belief system about what motivates and compels people doesn’t change. But when you finally see it. When you finally realize that you’re not as rational as you had imagined. That as adults we, too, are moved and compelled mostly by issues of the heart; that’s when we might change our approach towards kids and teaching.