Description

This book outlines a study that examined effective
teaching through
the lens of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of
"flow". More
specifically it attempted to determine whether the
effectiveness of a
teacher was correlated to being recognized in a state
of flow.
The study tested the hypothesis that as a result of
the heightened
awareness that flow creates teachers in flow are more
aware and
responsive to their students' needs and emotions to
help facilitate
learning. Consequently, the students of teachers in
flow are more
engaged in the classroom activities and learn because
they want to
learn not to prepare for a test or some extrinsic reward.
With Csikszentmihalyi's flow model as a framework for
comparison
the presence of flow in the classroom was examined
through
videotape and interviews of twenty teachers' divided
into two groups
of ten. One group, designated effective was composed of
teachers' awarded for their teaching effectiveness.
The other group
consisted of randomly selected teachers from the same
schools.
Each teacher was videotaped in their classroom and
later interviewed
to determine the presence of flow in the teaching
experience.