Teaching Vs Learning Karate 4 - Feedback and Motivation

This is the fourth post in a series comparing traditional teaching to the learning that occurs in the best karate dojos.

In a traditional classroom, you start a course with an "A" and then complete a series of assignments. Each of the assignments is graded, and the "A" is yours to lose if you don't approach perfection on each of them (90% or above). The feedback you get on each assignment is often just the score, and sometimes a "good job" comment. The problems with this approach are many.

The first problem is that the structure of grading inhibits risk-taking in learning. If you have to perform each exercise nearly perfectly, you attempt only what is safe for your grade. You won't push the boundaries of the exercise to see what works, and more importantly, to learn what doesn't work. Contrast the situation with karate, where failure is actually an important part of learning a new technique. To learn well in karate, you have to accept failure as part of the learning process.

The second problem is the shift in motivation caused by this grading system. Are you trying to perform well because you want to learn something new, or to avoid failure? When grades become the point of learning, you disconnect from your authentic motivation. When you do that, you become prone to losing your motivation altogether, especially if you should slip (the "A" is yours to lose, and once you slip, you can almost never recover).

Authentic motivation is key to learning and its close companion is enjoyment. The type of feedback you receive as a learner can maintain or destroy your motivation and enjoyment. In a traditional course, the purpose of feedback is to assign a grade and often to rank you against your peers. In authentic learning, the purpose of feedback is to improve the learning itself. But authentic feedback is not a rating of performance, instead the instructor uses feedback to

• enhance (or at least preserve) the enthusiasm of the learner;
• recognize what is done right and should keep happening;
• suggest areas for improvement.

In the worst dojos, feedback may be as bad as that in the worst classrooms. If a student has high motivation for karate and is then given an "F", the feedback may destroy all motivation to achieve. However, in the best dojos, feedback is given along the lines of the three bullets.

• give the student a complement on a genuine accomplishment to get their attention;
• point out what else it is that they're doing right;
• ask a question so the student becomes aware of an issue and can self-correct any problems, such as "what's your target in this technique?" or "how could you hurt yourself doing this?", and if necessary be more direct;
  
• if the student is doing everything right, then say so, and give them the next challenge in scaffold of learning.

Teachers and senseis may balk at the level of "grading" this seems to suggest, but don't forget that you have any number of students mixed together, and if you share your feedback method with them, they can learn to be helpful critics as well as practitioners.

Wrapping up, let me leave you with the thought that above all else, motivation must be preserved. You can't teach students who don't want to learn, or in the case of the dojo, aren't even there.