Instant Feedback in Class: Go With the 'Flow'

What does total student engagement look like? Whether we call it being “in the zone” or being “dialed in,” the bottom line is that teachers can use specific strategies to help kids achieve it, said educational expert Bob Sun.

Sun, chairman, president and CEO of Suntex International, Inc. and inventor of the company’s “24” game and First in Math online program, prefers to call the phenomenon of total engagement “flow,” and he believes there is a clear path to fostering it in the classroom.

Flow is a mental state in which a person is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus and complete involvement, and in which he or she achieves success in the activity at hand. First trumpeted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, renowned researcher on creativity and happiness, the concept of flow has been widely referenced across a variety of fields. Csikszentmihalyi teaches that flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion in a given activity and is perhaps the ultimate state of harnessing human emotions in the service of performing and learning.

“Flow occurs when there is a match between the challenge and the skill level,” Sun said. “If we find ourselves in an immersive activity, that is rich, and it occupies and takes 100 percent of our attention, what happens is people begin to report that they lose track of time, they forget about their day-to-day worries. There are people who, in the state of flow, describe it as a state of ecstasy. Essentially, it’s a pleasant experience. So you want to return to that activity, because the experience itself is the reward.”

He believes that by leading students down a path to flow, teachers can turn the activity of learning a subject like math into a reward. Sun proposes that practice is one of the keys to success.

“The reason kids are having trouble in mathematics is because they don’t practice,” Sun said. “So I asked, ‘Why aren’t kids practicing?’ The reason, I found, is that they aren’t getting the immediate feedback that our physical senses give us in the realms of sports and music.”

Immediate feedback, according to Sun, gets us closer to flow and is therefore critical to improving in a subject.

“If you’re trying to hit a baseball, for example: If you swing the bat and miss the ball, your eyes and ears immediately tell you, and you can make adjustments,” Sun said. “When you go into the mental realm, like doing math, our physical senses are useless. A student may be off track as s/he is working the problem, but won’t know it.

Now imagine that a child is shooting basketball foul shots. When he’s ready to go, you take away his feedback loop and you put a blindfold on him and you put ear plugs on him. He shoots the ball and doesn’t know where it goes. You wouldn’t expect that child to stand there and do that activity for any length of time because the minute you take away the immediate feedback, the opportunity for learning becomes a useless activity.”

Techniques that Sun suggests include doing group activities that allow the teacher to provide instant feedback. For example, teachers might present problems to the class, and then guide the practice process. Such an approach calls to mind the “flipped classroom” strategy as well as what Dr. Fred Jones calls “say, see, do” teaching. Other related strategies include gamification and the use of Student Response Systems (clickers).

“There are two things that teachers need to be aware of here,” Sun said. “Number one is that the challenges have to stretch your existing skills, but always have to be doable. So that match between your skills and the challenge has to be there. Number two is you need clear goals with immediate feedback so that you have a sense of where your progress is. In mathematics, we’ve never had that feedback system. Kids have never really been able to enter into that state of flow.”

Sun recommends his First in Math site to teachers who want to learn more about flow and techniques to help achieve it in the classroom.

“If you don’t have that experience in mathematics, kids aren’t going to want to spend the time,” Sun said. “If they don’t spend the time, they won’t practice. If they don’t practice, they won’t get better. If these techniques are used, kids will want to practice and will have that intrinsic motivation.”

Article by Jason Tomaszewski, EducationWorld Associate Editor
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