K-12

Thursday August 8, 2024
6:00-7:30 Mountain Daylight Time

It just seems obvious: schools and teachers should draw on students’ interests to foster intrinsic motivation. Sadly, this obvious solution faces real-world challenges. Intrinsic motivation can be hard to spark, and harder to align with curricular goals. To understand these problems, this talk explores a powerful and surprising theoretical framework: “biologically primary and secondary learning.” Drawing on evolutionary psychology, this theory looks at formal schooling within our evolutionary history. When teachers and tutors rethink our role within this framework, we understand realistic motivational possibilities in school – knowing when and how to rely on intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. We can also understand other important motivational theories: including mindset, stereotype threat, and self-determination theory.  

Join us for the 4th Annual Rocky Mountain Mind, Brain & Education Conference hosted by Denver Museum of Nature & Science in partnership with researchED. This conference brings together K–12 educators and university researchers with a common interest in applying research-based methods from psychology and neuroscience to their practice.

Date: Saturday, November 9th, 2024

Time: 8:00am to 4:30pm