Jill Hadfield: Narrating the future

Jill’s workshop opened with a quick exchange of our personal definitions of, as she phrased it, ‘possibly the most common reason for success or failure in any learning’ - motivation. She defined the concept of motivation through the prism of the L2 Motivational Self Theory (Dörnyei, 2005) as the desire to reduce the discrepancy between our ideal and actual (teaching) self.

We were then asked to reflect on the relationship between motivation and imagination. The participants’ feedback suggested that they were interrelated: one sparks off/stimulates/conditions the other. Imagination and imagery are, in fact, central to the Possiible Selves Theory, too. Jill reminded us, however, that this theory balances imagination with practicality, in a similar way as it fuses into balance the cognitive and the affective aspects of all learning, teacher learning included. It is this ‘double’ balance that enables professionals to assume control of their practice and allows their reflections on their current teaching to inform their future instructional decisions.

Jill then rounded off the first part of her presentation by summarising the main conditions for motivation: a desired future self-image which is vivid and plausible, accompanied by action plans and steps to sustain the vision while avoiding the feared self.

In the second part of her presentation Jill offered a framework for a motivational programme. The following stages were identified: imaging an identity, creating a vision, substantiating it (i.e. making sure it is feasible), operationalising it (i.e. taking actual steps to achieve the desired goals), counterbalancing it (i.e. taking into consideration any potential consequences, obstacles, etc.) and enhancing the vision.

The workshop invited us to create our own professional narrative by doing the Identity Tree activity. We were asked to reflect on our major professional influences, strengths, teaching abilities/talents as well as directions in which we would like to develop. This reflection activity helped us make explicit our current and ideal selves. It was a valuable and inspiring discovery (reminder?) for teachers who rarely have the time for such structured self-reflection before establishing goals and specific plans for attaining those goals.