Education Matters

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in our brains. It is one of the chemicals responsible for transmitting signals to our nerve endings and it is often called the ‘feel good chemical’. Its principal function is to motivate us to seek out the things we need that ensure we will survive.

In a nut shell, if something makes us feel good then you can be pretty sure that dopamine is responsible.

This is all very scientific, but when we begin to understand the psychological concept of reward leading to motivation, we can begin to harness the power of dopamine.

When we eat, drink or do something that we find pleasurable, dopamine releases feel good chemicals in our brain to tell us that we are happy. Because the feeling is so good we are more likely to be motivated toward getting the same natural happy high again and so the behaviour will most likely be repeated.

If we relate this to learning, it is obvious that the happy high of dopamine can be harnessed to encourage students to act in ways that make them happy or, make others happy with them. 

Since children of all ages generally crave attention and approval from adults, in theory making adults happy will release dopamine in children and motivate them to repeat the behaviour. 

Psychologists and educationalists have for years studied the effects of positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement on student academic and personal development and, as you would imagine, when a child feels like they are succeeding or making their parent or teacher happy, their actions are validated and they go on to maintain that behaviour. Why? It’s because it makes them feel good. This is called positive behaviour management.

When I train new teachers on the benefits of positive behaviour management, I use the analogy of the carrot and the stick. 

A carrot motivates an animal to move forward because the reward for doing so is obvious. This will lead to a happier animal more likely to repeat the action in the future because it associates it with pleasure, whether there is a carrot at the end or not. 

The stick motivates the animal to move forward because the reward for doing so is no more physical pain. This will lead to an unhealthy, unmotivated animal that will only complete the action again if it receives pain to remind it to. 

The negative undertones of the stick will not a happy animal make.

In the same way, we can encourage children to do the right thing by telling them when they do.

If one or two children are talking in a classroom but the rest of the children are not, we can focus on the behaviour we don’t want by pointing out what they are doing wrong, (stick tactic), or we can focus on the children who are doing the right thing and how happy that is making you.

Challenging the talkers to do the right thing will focus them on a target and rewarding them when they achieve it by telling them how happy you are will validate the child’s improved behaviour, dopamine will be released in their brain making them happy and ultimately they will be more likely to act in the same way again, (carrot tactic).