Engaging the imagination of students: An introduction to flow

It can be challenging to know whether students meaningfully retain what is being taught. Some students automatically connect with certain concepts, while others may forget the material before the next lesson. This is a symptom of a bigger problem — engagement. Back in 1990, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi[1] published a book on flow, a helpful concept for increasing engagement and student learning. While not a new theory, flow remains underutilized in many classrooms.

What is flow?

According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is a psychological state people experience when an activity is engaging and appropriately challenging according to one’s skill level. When students are in flow, they are deeply absorbed in an intrinsically motivating and interesting activity. Understanding the concept of flow is important as it provides insight into student engagement and can be a prerequisite to deeper learning. There are four basic combinations of skills and challenges students face in various learning experiences as shown below.

Flow is not just an abstract concept. In fact, it is one of more than 80 measures found in the OurSCHOOL student survey. Schools can get an accurate picture of whether students are engaged and challenged at school and can benchmark their results against national norms, as you can see in the image below.

How can we get students in flow?

Low skills and low challenge: Provide supports and increase the level of challenge appropriately as opposed to simply reducing the complexity of a task or reducing the skill level.
Low skills and high challenge: Provide support and align the challenge to students needs and strengths. Provide planned and intentional scaffolding built around concepts that are essential to master the material being taught.
High skills and low challenge: Introduce more challenges. There are a number of ways to engage learners who are excelling, for example, by increasing the difficulty of tasks and problems or asking broader, more open-ended questions that allow for multiple interpretations. Encourage students to reflect on and take ownership of their learning.

Knowing your students

Teachers need to be “students of their students”, as educators Hillary Dack and Carol Ann Tomlinson put it[2]. The knowledge we have of our students should directly influence our lessons in order to engage students imaginations and bring them into a state of flow and deeper learning. In the words of education researcher and The Learning Bar founder, Dr. J. D. Willms, teachers should aim to design “flexible, adaptive learning environments that can be manipulated according to the emerging needs of learners and the learning situation[3].” That environment is reliant on knowing the students in our classrooms.

Educators can help students find flow and enhance a positive learning environment by:

Building positive student-teacher relationships
Setting high expectations for success
Communicating clear expectations for behaviour
Setting appropriate instructional challenges and goals
Ensuring that material is relevant to everyday life
Ensuring that students value schooling outcomes.

By helping students get into a state of flow by creating an engaging environment, schools can have a larger and more positive impact on students’ lives.

Footnotes

[1] Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row.

[2] Dack, H., Tomlinson, C. (2015) Inviting all students to learn. Educational Leadership. Volume 72, Issue 6. P. 10-15

[3] Willms, J. D., & Friesen, S. (2012). Report Number Two: The Relationship Between Instructional Challenge and Student Engagement. What Did You Do In School Today? Research Series. EdCan Network.

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