| Remotivation in Schools and Alternative Learning Settings
Remotivation is a method of small group learning that can be applied in various ways in educational settings. It has been used with excellent results when facilitating learning in students of all ages and various types of learning, physical and cognitive disability.
It is not traditional pedagogy, typical "show and tell" education. It is most closely described as androgogy that was designed for adults that engages and involves the learner and supports autonomy and self directed learning.
Pedagogy focuses on teaching the “correct answer” while remotivation focuses on “learning” or discovering the answer as is characteristic of the socratic method of education that used open-ended questioning.
While traditional teaching “tells” the right answer and then corrects the student when they do not repeat the correct answer, remotivation passively introduces the correct answer as one of many possible answers. It encourages the students to explore and find the answer(s). Remotivation does not “correct” the student or judge student responses. All answers are received by the remotivation group facilitator as “opinion” and answers are ACCEPTED as such. Students experience the “supposed” correct answer(s) or as remotivation describes it as REALITY. The student may or may not accept the reality based answers as the correct or true answer immediately. The student is allowed to "consider" the options and in time or with more experience accept reality as WE define it. Remotivation calls this process the Climate of Acceptance and the Climate of Appreciation.
Remotivation does not use clinical or psychological jargon when describing itself or when teaching people to use remotivation. This is intentional. It is taught in lay language so that people who are not highly educated or licensed professional therapist and teachers do not experience barriers in learning remotivation to serve others.
Remotivation is also different from traditional pedagogy by using only “open-ended questions or questioning”. This supports the Climate of Acceptance and the Climate of Appreciation by allowing students to answer one or more opinions to the questions posed. In this way, remotivation is not unlike brainstorming techniques.
Remotivation has another distinguishing feature. While the sessions are topical (have a topic of discussion or a theme), the manner of discussion is described as “objective” rather than “subjective”. This focuses the students attention on “thought” as opposed to “feelings”. So remotivation group facilitators learn to ask questions that ask for ideas and thoughts, not what the student feels about the topic of discussion. It is important to note that while the remotivator does not ask for feelings or emotion, he/she does not discourage the sharing of feelings or emotions. This is consistent with the Climate of Acceptance and Appreciation. Students are thanked, accepted and appreciated, for both thoughts and feelings.
Topic selection is also a special skill learned in Remotivation training. Topics are selected based on how emotionally “loaded” or “charged' the topic may be for the student. For example the topic of “mother” may be selected for a student with a strong, established relationship with the remotivator and the remotivator knows the student's history. The remotivator must be relatively confident that the student(s) does not have personal conflicts with his/her mother or has not been abused or abandoned by their mother. But, mother would not be selected as the topic of remotivation if the student(s) is new and unknown to the remotivator or the student(s) is likely to have had negative experiences with their mothers.
Topics that have a chance of evoking negative emotion or trauma are avoided until the remotivator knows the student and the student is comfortable with the remotivator.
Topic selection is a remotivation skill learned in training, but it is learned mostly through practice. In principle, the more emotionally charged the topic, the more objective (academic) the questions should be and the stronger the absolute Climate of Acceptance and Appreciation should be maintained by the group facilitator. Remotivation is started with new students using topics that are relatively simple and non-threatening and have a very low potential for being emotionally “loaded”. This makes remotivation non-threatening, positive and fun. It can remain positive and enjoyable even when more "difficult" topics are discussed by maintaining all the elements (all 5 steps) of remotivation during the learning experience.
Related to the selection of the “topic” of the remotivation session is the level of concreteness to abstractness of the topic. Remotivation topics should be as concrete (able to been sensed by seeing, hearing, touching smelling or doing) as possible. Even when a topic is abstract, remotivation uses poetry, metaphor, antithesis and simile and other forms of art to explore and learn the abstract topic.
When remotivation is designed and used effectively, a strong level of trust and rapport is developed between the leader and the student and then between students in a group session. All of these elements of remotivation, working together, have been shown in research to improve learning outcomes. Remotivation is especially effective with students with learning disabilities, emotional problems, mental illness, cognitive disabilities and chronic physical disease.
Example #1
Remotivation was taught to the DARE drug education and prevention program in public schools in North Carolina. Staff in schools used remotivation methods to introduce students to the dangers of substance use and motivate them to stop using drugs.
Example #2
A Sunday school teacher in North Carolina became a certified remotivator as part of her work at a mental health center. At her church, she shared teaching responsibilities of a class of young children with another women by alternating every other Sunday. Both teachers started teaching the class using traditional lecture and discussion. The children paid little attention and were disruptive to both teachers. The remotivator decided to try remotivation as her method instead of the tradional method and see how the children responded. She used the same content, bible story or verse, as was planned in the teaching materials. The only difference was that she led the class using remotivation. The children responded very well. They paid more attention and actively participated by the answering questions. This continued over several weeks when suddenly the children asked the other teacher to conduct the sesssions like the remotivation teacher. The children did not know what to call it. The children personalized the difference in teaching method and decided that they did not like the non-remotivator. They asked their parents if only the remotivator could be the only teacher of the class.
Consumers/patients/clients/students consistently prefer remotivation group process to lecture and discussion. This has also been show to be the case in substance abuse education classes in detoxification centers and in drivers education classes for person's who lost their license after being convicted for driving while intoxicated.
Example #3
Remotivation is an excellent method for leading group medical visits or shared medical visits in primary care physicians offices. It increases participation, increases learning over traditional lecture/discussion, and "activates" the patient to engage in healthy behaviors. The office staff, nurses or medical assistants can be certified to lead the group visits using remotivation group process. Here is a link to information about Group Visits (Shared Medical Appointments) from the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) web site. http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/practicemgt/quality/qitools/pracredesign/january05.htmlAlso this is a good article from 2009 describing the shared medical movement in medicine.
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