Fuelling Global Education with Intrinsic Motivation - A Conversation with Girish Menon & John McIntosh

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

For me, that's the next big step for innovation. So it's about how we continue to fine-tune that learning partnership, make it a process of co-creation, and then exit in a manner that leaves behind a sustainable and a scalable solution.

Hello everybody, welcome back. Thanks for joining us on the Future Learning Design Podcast. Today I'm speaking with Girish Menon and John McIntosh from STIR Education. STIR is an amazing organization set up by Sharath Jeevan supporting education systems to reignite intrinsic motivation in every teacher and official and role model the foundations of lifelong learning for every child. Girish Menon joined STIR in January 2021 as CEO after 5 years as the Chief Executive at ActionAid UK. He brings more than 30 years of experience as a leader in the international development sector, having previously held roles as International Programme Director and Deputy CEO at WaterAid UK. Here he was responsible for programmes in 22 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Girish was born and brought up in India and started his career with the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, and he has also worked at ActionAid, Plan International and DIFID in India. Since moving to London in 2005, he has served on the boards of various non-profit organizations and is currently on the board of Hope and Homes for Children. John McIntosh is the Director of Design and Program Readiness at STIR, and he oversees the design of STIR's programs for teachers and government officials. He has worked as a teacher trainer and an advisor for professional development programs in India, Sri Lanka, and China. You can follow STIR on LinkedIn or on Twitter @STIREducation.

Hi, Lewis.

Hi, Tim. Good to meet you.

Hello, Joe.

How are you doing?

Hey, Tim. Good.

Yeah.

Thanks very much for having us.

Good. So, well, it's a real huge pleasure to have you both with me talking about STAIR education. And I just wanted to begin by asking as a kind of overview of what STAIR does. And I really liked this phrase that educational systems are not set up to enable children, teachers, or officials to become intrinsically motivated lifelong learners. I think that speaks to some of the core purpose of STAIR. So perhaps you could, Girish, start with you just to talk a little bit about what the theory of change is for STAIR and then why intrinsic motivation is such a significant feature of that.

Sure. Thank you, Tim, and thank you for this opportunity. So what you said is absolutely right. We are about intrinsically motivated teachers, officials, and children. And I suppose we were quite inspired by the work of the World Bank, which talks about the learning crisis, and that's what put, uh, spotlight on what education is for. Education is for learning, but many educational systems, particularly that are publicly funded in the low and middle-income countries, tend to focus just on the literacy and numeracy skills. But as the World Bank has clearly identified, there is clearly a learning crisis. And that means when children finish the 15 years of schooling and come out of it, they are not yet learners in that sense, and therefore they find it very hard to navigate their way around the world. Whether it's about life skills, whether it's about employability, whether it's about playing their role as a citizen. So the World Bank talks about 53% children in the low and middle income countries who suffer from this learning crisis or learning poverty, as they call it. It's now much worse with the COVID crisis. That 53% figure has gone up to 63%. And so questions are being asked in terms of what aids the education sector. And what STIR has looked at is not to look at all the stuff that is there within the system that are already in place or extrinsic in a sense. So it's not about classrooms, it's not about teachers' salaries. What is it that stops children from becoming lifelong learners? And we have therefore zeroed in on this whole issue of motivation. It's about children being motivated, it's about teachers being motivated, and it's about educational officials being motivated. And that motivation being intrinsic, In the countries that we work, we primarily work in India and Uganda, we find that the teachers in the public education system, they're not quite valued for who they are and what they do. It's not seen as a career of choice. It's seen as something that people go to because they do not get employment or they're not good enough for some of the other sectors.

Yeah.

So there's a whole question of how teachers can really feel that sense of value, sense of recognition for their work, and therefore be motivated to deliver the best. But then teachers are not alone. They need the support of the officials behind them. And that also therefore meant that we started looking at the relationship between teachers and officials, and therefore teachers and children as well, which is why our theory of change focuses a lot on relationships and role modeling. Relationships between educational officials and teachers to be strong, to be trusting, so that that can really tap into the motivation of teachers and make them feel valued. Relationship between teachers and children so that children are motivated to be lifelong learners. So that's the strong focus of our work of role modeling and of relationships with intrinsic motivation as the one that we actually focus on. It's about the autonomy, it's about the mastery, and it's about the purpose. Autonomy where teachers and officials feel that sense of agency for them to direct the course of action. Mastery where there's this agenda of continual improvement and purpose where there is a a larger relevance and meaning to what they do. So ultimately, in a nutshell, we refer to this as our Systems Learning Partnerships, where our partnership is with governments from the national and state level right down to the district and to the level of the school so that we work within the system. We focus on intrinsic motivation, and therefore we have children, teachers, and officials who are intrinsically motivated.

Yeah, very good. That's an interesting kind of network approach with all the interconnections. Yeah, really interesting. I guess it kind of leads on nicely to my next question in relation to the how, and maybe John, I could come over to you in terms of, again, we've talked about the how being an important differentiator in a way of STAIR's approach with other interventions doing great work on direct training programs and curriculum reform. But unless we address the how, yeah, their impact will remain limited. So that's about the spirit of delivery. So perhaps you could kind of build on some of what Girish has said and just talk a bit about your approach.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think in terms of this point about technical interventions, there's loads of really brilliant ones out there that I think are game-changing in terms of improving outcomes in the domains in which they work and target. So programs like Teach at the Right Level and RTI's Twosome A program, those have done amazing work in sort of raising foundational skills. And I think because of the work of organizations like that, I think we knew a lot now about effective literacy and numeracy instruction, certainly on the technical side of it anyway. But I think what we also knew is very, very important, what you've said, Tim Logan and Girish as well, about sort of the social conditions in which teachers and education officials work, but I think we understand less about the technical side of how you sort of get that happen. And that's why we think that it's hugely underaddressed in education systems, despite the fact that it's really, really important. So, I mean, for example, I think there's tons of quite intriguing research that highlights the importance of both peers, but line managers as well, in shaping someone's experience. And that isn't just shaping their experience in terms of, oh, how does it feel to them? Are they having a nice time at work? It shapes their experience in terms of their performance. Performance and outcomes. And I think that's particularly true, the evidence suggests, for domains where the tasks are complex and ambiguous. And we know that teaching and sort of running education systems definitely falls into that category. So you think there's massive opportunities to address this?

It's a really interesting kind of different take point. As you said, it's like there's a lot of programs out there and there always have been on the technical side. And in a way, the same is true within education, you often focus on the technical aspects because somehow they've got harder edges, they're easier to deal with, right? And you're actually engaging with something which is quite fuzzy, right? This idea of intrinsic motivation and the relationships. Is there a kind of maybe a more practical example of what it means in practice to kind of paint a bit of a picture of how you are working in the area of Uganda?

Definitely. I think certainly the perception of something like intrinsic motivation is that it's sort of quite fuzzy and nebulous. But there is actually quite a lot of research out there from across different domains that sort of rectar practical things that you can do that seem to be universally true and relevant in terms of actually fostering intrinsic motivation. And as Garish said, we sort of understand those to be the pillars of autonomy. This idea that people have got a sense of agency, that they could change things. Mastery, they feel like they're getting better at something, and purpose, they feel connected to something, a part of something bigger than themselves. So practically speaking, we try to leverage those things, make sure that the programs that we design for teachers and officials are built on them. So in practice, what that means, we rely kind of on three mechanisms at each level. So one is, I think you've identified already, peer networks, networks for teachers, other teachers. Officials with other officials. Action and feedback, so putting things that they learn from those networks into practice, having someone observe them do it, and then getting feedback on that. And then finally, reflection and revision, so reflecting on that process and changing it for the better. So to give a tangible example of how this looks at the teacher level, teacher networks meet once a month. So 20 to 25 teachers in a network generally speaking, and they will get together to discuss pedagogical strategy. So let's say the topic is interrogative questions, so how and why questions. What we would do is teachers would sort of discuss a concrete example of someone, you know, using that, and then they would be given some comp questions to sort of pick that example apart. So look at like what's useful from that for their context, what's not useful, what they do differently, why, and then we would ask them to actually plan out like, okay, in your next lesson next week, how are you going to use this? Actually do it. And then we ask them to commit publicly to doing that. And then they go into this action revision thing that I've mentioned. And then the process works sort of very similarly for officials. The timings are slightly different, but they'll look at a leadership strategy in exactly the same way. So example and sort of critical reflection and then commitment to action, feedback and reflection.

If I can chip in with a couple of quick examples that we have seen, Tim, I was quite struck by one of the teachers in Uganda where she talked about how the relationship between the officials and the teachers had changed because she said that earlier when the officials would come to the school, the teachers would be quite worried because it's a supervisory visit, it's an inspection, and it's about criticizing the teachers for what they have not done. But now she says, we all look forward to the educational officials coming because they now come as a coach, as a mentor. You know, they're here to support us and they're like a critical friend. They observe us and give us constructive feedback. Now, that has happened because that official is now intrinsically motivated to deliver what he or she is meant to do and therefore relooking at the role. And that's precisely what we mean by the change in the relationship. In Tamil Nadu, in India, for instance, a teacher based on some of the learning improvement cycles that John was referring to, decided that she can take some things in her own hands and started a YouTube channel for children for the lockdown period on her own because she was so inspired by what our teams were doing in terms of producing videos. Now, these are small but significant examples of how something as fuzzy as intrinsic motivation can actually translate into changing those day-to-day practices and therefore bring children on the journey and convert them as well as learners.

Yeah, that's brilliant. That's really, really interesting. I spoke to Amdi Harpreet, last week and he wrote his book Professional Capital and there weren't a lot of what he was saying there. It was kind of really reminding me of that in the sense of the social capital you're building within the networks and the peer networks, and then the kind of decisional capital that they're getting in terms of support for better decisions about how they drive forward really good learning environments. And then I see Björn slightly balk at this fuzzy word that I've brought into the conversation. Because these, I know it's coming from an educational research kind of perspective, and that's where I'd love to go next in terms of clearly, you know, as you've talked about, there is a solid research base around motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic, but also then much more broadly around educational research, pedagogy, curriculum environment, et cetera. And I know Sharath Jeevan, the founder of STAIR, is now looking more into that question of intrinsic motivation, but Perhaps Jonnie, maybe you could say a bit more about the way in which you're trying to leverage that educational research base, because I mean, that's something we've talked about a lot in the past. There's sometimes a bit of an overreliance on it as a fruit, if you like, of what works when actually we know that there's a lot of context-sensitive things, you know, that we have to be very aware of.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's funny, I guess I probably did bark a bit at the fuzzy, but I think there is I think there's some truth to that as well, because evidence in education, while I think it's got a lot more rigorous over the last sort of two decades or so, there's still like tons that we just don't know or understand about like the details and nuances of cause and effect. And I think that that probably informs our organizational philosophy for how we think about evidence and how we use it. So, I like going back to this point about mastery being so important and helping people feel like they're getting better, that's a huge consideration. We think it's our duty to do whatever we can to maximize the chance of that happening. So we do try to be evidence-informed in the practices that we select, but I think we sort of do recognize that these things are never simple. And we really try to encourage our teachers and officials to critically grapple with what we put in front of them. So I think in terms of the disciplines that we tend to draw on, we use a lot of sort of stuff from cognitive science and behavior science. So we know about how people learn and what motivates them to put that into practice, but also some sort of stuff with design thinking about how you get people to think about what something like means for them, should change according to what they find out. But the evidence around that is still grounded in very, very particular contexts. Particular people at particular time, which is why we think it's really important to critically reflect on like what's useful for the analyser and what isn't.

Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Encouraging people to actually interact with the way that the evidence is being applied in context, right? Because I think, I think sometimes there's a, there's an overreliance on the gospel of the research, right? And sometimes that keeps you in the realm of technical interventions because the technical interventions are more easily evidenciable in terms of cause and effect. As you said, this, we do this, X plus Y equals Z, you know, and this is therefore what we are going to just keep replicating. But actually some of these much more complex concepts like motivation are contextual and they're interactional. And you know, so it's interesting. Yeah. You're then encouraging people to reflect on that because that's that's clearly part of the effectiveness of the intervention as well as how that person has acknowledged it, understood it, applied it for themselves, and then reflected on it.

Massively. And I think it's, it's important for how people feel about actually putting the stuff into practice, but also about how effectively they're likely to do it. I mean, I think we know from the world of development that just uncritically plunking something that's worked in one context into another just does not work. So you have to think about this in a different way. And I think this point about agency and autonomy and how you can leverage that is one of the most powerful ways of doing that.

Yeah.

And what is it Dylan Williams says? Everything works somewhere and nothing works everywhere. Is that the right way around?

Yeah, definitely. What I find really interesting about this though, is that if you take this sort of approach, a slightly cautious approach to evidence that I guess we're talking about here, it can be seen that you are sort of willing to say, oh, well, something works everywhere and therefore somewhere. So it doesn't really matter. But I think what we're actually really saying is more. The evidence is messy and nuanced, and it's our duty to kind of grapple with that. Like, I think growth mindset and other sort of psychological interventions, which is what we're talking about here, yeah, as you say, are just a lot less structured and understood compared to the technical things. I do think it's our duty to do a much better job of delving into them or to try and get it more rigorous so that people can feel more confident in these things.

No, very, yeah, it's interesting. And Girish, obviously you've come from a background of other organizations within the voluntary sector, right? Not necessarily educational organizations. Do you, do you see a similarity or a difference in terms of the way that evidence and research is applied in, in the different types of intervention or organization?

I think there are more similarities than differences, Tim Logan. So in my previous life, I worked in organizations working on women's rights, human rights, water and sanitation, public health. And, and everywhere it's, it's pretty much a similar approach where we look at what works, but also being very conscious that everything doesn't work everywhere. We are extremely conscious of the fact that the socio-cultural, economic, and political setups are very different. So even within STIR, even within one country in India, we work across 3 states and we find very drastically different drivers and barriers to how things happen in India. So even though India is governed by the new education policy, for instance, which came into effect in 2019-2020, And even though there is a lot of emphasis in that policy on teachers' development, professional development, motivation, lifelong learning, the way it is absorbed is very different. More importantly, we find that when one government changes and when you have a complete change in officials, the dynamics change as well. So I think there's a very important role for research, and the research is kind of the lighthouse of practice, if I could put it that way. The lighthouse is there to give guidance, but it's not going to give you a steer. So that guidance then is up to us as practitioners to take it and see in the different context that we work, given the different drivers and the barriers, how do you apply that evidence and the research in a way that makes sense in the different geographies? I think what we try to do is we try to create platforms where those research becomes much more accessible to teachers. This is again, this part of autonomy where they have that sense of agency, but also mastery where they seek continual improvement. So even in the short period that I have been with STIR, we have created a few platforms where the purpose of those platforms have to be to create those forums for interaction where research can be shared with them in a manner that's accessible to actually bridge the divide between the teachers and the actual research community. There is a huge depth of curiosity amongst the teachers, and you find that the more you give them, the more they want, because these are some of the practical challenges that they face on a day-to-day basis, which in the traditional sense of training does not yet empower them or give them the necessary equipments or ammunition to solve these barriers out. So for example, just last week we had a webinar involving teachers from Delhi with officials from two other states in India, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. And this was a study by UNESCO and IIEP sharing some of the insights that they had gained from the teacher development program that STIR had been involved in with the Delhi government. And it was really interesting, the kind of questions that came up from the teachers, because they saw in that study and in the insights some things that they were not able to connect in their daily life, but when they see it in the form of the evidence being presented back to them of the work that they're doing, A, it does add to their motivation, but B, it triggers a lot of thinking on what are some of the practical strategies that they can employ to become better teachers.

Nice. Thank you. And then just lastly, a lot of my work is focused around innovation and looking at where the latest and most kind of important developments in education are coming from and how do we support more of that innovation. And while Asterisk is not necessarily an education provider in the sense of a school or an education agency in some senses, but it still has or can have a very strong role in pushing what's possible in terms of the way to work with teachers, the way that learning is enhanced, you know, all of the important things that the big questions that are being asked of education even more so in light of the pandemic. So I just, yeah, I'd love to then ask you, Girish, where do you see innovation coming from in terms of what STIR is doing and this idea of radical partnerships I thought was really interesting in the way that you work.

Sure.

What differentiates the STIR approach from the other organizations that I worked in or seen is that STIR doesn't have its own program. STIR's program essentially is the Systems Learning Partnership, whereas in most of the organizations that I worked in and I've seen, They are bespoke programs that sit outside the system. So I think the journey for STIR is to explore the depths of that partnership and what would it look like working from within the system. This has traditionally been the domain of multilateral or bilateral agencies or working with systems, whereas STIR has come in as a very small and nimble and lean organization trying to build these really important radical, bold partnerships, I would say, with the government systems working throughout. So in Delhi, for instance, which is one of our more evolved programs, we have moved one step forward where the Delhi government has now set up its own lifelong learning unit. And we have signed an agreement with the Delhi government in February, which was about handing over the STIR approach to the government's own lifelong learning unit, which is completely populated by government employees. Appointed staff. This is a time-bound partnership for a period till 2023. And for us, that's the next big move on the sustainability side of things, because ultimately, the true test of any innovation is how sustainability it can be scaled up. So we are very excited about this new development in Delhi, where now the Delhi government has set up the Lifelong Learning Unit in partnership with STIR. In 2023, we will move out. We are having similar discussions in Uganda where they're now referring to it as a demand-driven programming where the demand will be coming from the government and the government will increasingly be taking up large chunks of the program work that STIR does so that in 2 or 3 years' time, we'll be able to move out of the geographies that we are working in Uganda. For me, that's the next big step for innovation. So it's about how we continue to fine-tune that learning partnership, make it a process of co-creation, and then exit in a manner that leaves behind a sustainable and a scalable solution.

Yeah, very interesting. And I mean, that's great witness that sustainability is coming and, and the, the governments are seeing obviously the huge value in your approach. If I could ask also, I mean, I've, I've worked myself in different African countries, not in India, but in Uganda and other African countries, within education, there is often quite a transmissive approach, which comes from the way that teachers are trained and it's all part of the system as it is, I suppose. Do you see any innovation in those kinds of directions in terms of developing that mastery, autonomy, purpose within the students themselves in a more— hesitate to reuse the word again, John Rawls balked at this— but progressive kind of approach to being a bit less teacher-centered and a bit more student-driven.

That's the next step for us, Tim, because we are quite conscious of the fact that when we talk about a 5 or a 6-year partnership with the government system, it's largely front-loaded with the teachers and the official side of it because we start in the national level. There are national-level alignment meetings, state-level alignment meetings, going down to the district and eventually into the classroom. We have been doing longitudinal studies for the geographies where we've been around for 2 or 3 years, we are quite conscious of the fact that we need to know a little bit more in terms of how this program is landing with the students. We've just started some initial discussions on capturing voices of children to find out how they perceive the changes in the program, how they perceive the role modeling effect of teachers, or the relationships that they see between teachers and students. So that would be another interesting area for us to explore alongside questions of gender and equity and how we factor in these things into how programs are delivered and land in the different countries we work in.

Yeah, definitely.

And it strikes me that lifelong learning and intrinsic motivation is extremely important for the teachers and the officials, as you've said, but it's also hugely important for the children themselves, right? And that idea of are they developing intrinsic motivation and lifelong learning skills in a very teacher-centered and transmissive pedagogical context? That's a big question, right?

That's absolutely true, which is why when we talk about lifelong learning, we talk about the foundations of lifelong learning, and that cuts across children, teachers, and officials. So for example, one of the foundations of lifelong learning is self-esteem. So how do children see them? And how do children develop their self-esteem or their sense of safety or their sense of engagement or critical thinking so that they can also progress on their journey? It's just that the metrics of how we measure self-esteem or safety or engagement for children is slightly different from that for teachers or for officials. But those foundations are the ones that we consistently would like to see evidence of as we go along this journey.

Just to add to that, if you don't mind me jumping in, Tim.

Yeah, please.

I think that going back to this sort of, if we can use the word defuzzifying, have nothing that I didn't want.

Yep.

That's what we're trying to do as well. Because I think we do know that these softer things matter massively in terms of outcomes for children. You know, there's good evidence now that things like curiosity, children's sense of self-esteem, and various other things that really, really do make a difference to their longer-term life outcomes. But again, I think they're just not well defined. So I think where this perception of fuzziness comes from is that people are usually talking about quite different things. So I think what we're really trying to do is put a stake in the ground and say, actually, we think that if these things are happening, you know, if we're building children's self-esteem, we will be able to see these particular behaviors. So that might be, for example, they are in classes more, they show greater willingness to like put up their hand and ask a question amongst other sort of concrete observable things. I don't think that's perfect in terms of trying to like understand these phenomena, but I think it's for us an important start conversation to really understand these things and develop a genuinely shared language around them.

Yeah, I'd agree. And I think there is not a consensus or shared language about what those metrics are, if you can, you know, use that term or evidencing the impact of those types of interventions on specific concepts like intrinsic motivation or self-esteem and curiosity, et cetera. And I think that feels like it's the current real big discussion around the world in terms of education. Are we doing the right things to foster them? How do we know? And all those kinds of questions. So I think it struck me that the work you guys are doing is a really interesting contribution to that conversation. And are you maintaining a connection with Sharath, with the intrinsic labs in terms of a kind of a symbiotic relationship of research and practice and application.

So Sharad will remain linked with STIR for a very long time because he's been given the title of Founder Emeritus. So he is a friend and ambassador of STIR, and many of us interact with him on a regular basis. So I'm sure that there'll be lots of areas, though what I'm also conscious of that Sharad is branching into other areas, not just on education. Is looking at businesses and public sector, et cetera. But the concept is very much the same. His labs is again going to tap deeper into intrinsic motivation and what it can do for a company, for a business, or for public sector service. For us, we'll be very squarely focused on the education sector, working entirely with the government education system. So we'll remain within that space. I suppose what'll connect us will be this discussion on intrinsic motivation.

Ah, good.

No, very nice.

Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate your time. It's a real pleasure to hear more about it and learn myself more about STIR, but also just help you to get the message out a bit more about the amazing work. Because I really think it is a really interesting model for the way that we can work, not just in education, but in that voluntary sector kind of intervention. So yeah, brilliant. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Joachim. Thank you, Girish.

Thank you very much, Tim. It's a pleasure talking to you as well.

Yeah, thanks for having us, Tim. Always a pleasure.

Brilliant.

Thanks, Jez.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

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