Autonomy and the State of Flow : Enhanced Learning in Technical Education

Educational researchers have neglected the field of technical education due to the fact that it lacked support and solidarity until the mid-1990’s. This literature review demonstrates the importance of investigating the psychological constructs of flow and autonomy in the context of career technical education (CTE) by highlighting recent psychological findings on the topics in similar areas. The majority of the research that is discussed took place within the last five years. The review focuses on research that has been conducted on flow and autonomy in education and in the workplace in order to highlight the relevance of studying these concepts in the context of CTE. After providing evidence for the importance of researching these subjects in a CTE setting, the implications of the research are discussed. AUTONOMY AND THE STATE OF FLOW 3 Autonomy and the State of Flow: Enhanced Learning in Technical Education A recent article presented on the Florida Department of Education website noted that “while the total number of jobs in America had grown by 63 million [since 1973], the number of jobs held by people with no post-secondary education had actually fallen by some 2 million” (Pathways to Prosperity Project, 2011, p. 2). These statistics indicate that while it has become more difficult to find a job that requires little to no skill, there is still a large demand for employees who have skills and knowledge that relate to their particular line of work. Career technical education (CTE) provides students with the training that they need to attain the jobs that are available. These centers encourage students to get the certifications that they’ll need to go into their desired field of employment, which could range from automotive mechanics to culinary art to multimedia design. Instructors in these facilities focus heavily on teaching students about the daily functions of their future jobs and on helping students develop the skills that local employers will be looking for. So why isn’t there a heavier focus on technical education in the United States? Universities and community colleges are better established in the United States, and as a result they tend to be the institutions that students are drawn to for education after high school. While the concept of technical education (formerly known as the industrial education) has been present in the United States since the early 1900s, it lost a large amount of its supporters during the Great Depression when the focus of education turned back to the concept of “classical learning”. The United States Department of Education maintained classic education as its focus for several decades, and while vocational education garnered some support in the mid-1970s, the purpose of the field itself was poorly defined. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the field of vocational and career technical education managed to regain a respected place in American academia (Foster, AUTONOMY AND THE STATE OF FLOW 4 1997). As a result, technical education in the United States has not accumulated the same amount of psychological research as its educational counterparts in secondary and postsecondary education. This review centers on the importance of studying two specific psychological constructs autonomy and flow – that lack empirical research in the context of technical education. These constructs have been demonstrated to enhance psychological health and well-being in similar domains, yet they have not been studied specifically in the context of technical education. There are two research problems that I would like to propose. First, we need demonstrate the significance of autonomy and flow in settings that are similar to technical education. Second, we need to provide evidence that the study of these psychological constructs could have a positive impact on the field of technical education. By conducting a literature review on the studies that are available on these subjects, I hope to demonstrate that further research in the areas of autonomy and the state of flow in adult education would be beneficial. Furthermore, since these constructs have been sparsely investigated in the field of technical education in the United States, I believe that an in-depth literature review that covers past research on these variables in similar contexts (i.e. the workplace and education) would provide a solid foundation for future psychological studies. The Relevance of Flow Flow theory has generated a large amount of research over the past few decades. It was first proposed by Csikszentmihalyi in the 1970s, and it is especially popular in the realm of organizational psychology. The model states that “when challenges are balanced by skills, attention is channeled from stimuli unrelated to the task at hand (e.g. self-focus; monitoring time; etc.) to the task itself” (Abuhamdeh & Csikszentmihalyi, 2011, p. 258). Individuals who are AUTONOMY AND THE STATE OF FLOW 5 engaged in a state of flow are able to channel a large amount of their mental energy into the particular area that they are focusing on, and many positive psychological effects have been associated with this state. For example, research has found a positive correlation between the state of flow and heightened levels of creativity and achievement (Hamilton, 2013; Baumann & Scheffer, 2011). The findings on the flow model have positive implications in many contexts – particularly in higher education and in the workplace, where achievement is highly valued. Research on flow that is particularly relevant to CTE was conducted with a sample of higher education students. Fullagar and Mills (2008) examined the relationship between flow and motivation with a large sample of architecture students from his university. He found a significant correlation between self-determined intrinsic motivation and flow, but no correlation to extrinsic motivation. Students who were self-motivated in that they studied architecture because they found pleasure and enjoyment in the subject rather than studying it in order to enter a high-paying career were more likely to enter a flow state while studying. Similar results have also been found in the context of business classrooms, where flow has been linked to concentration and self-control (Guo, 2008). It’s important to note that much of the time that students spend in a state of flow is due to situational rather than dispositional factors, suggesting that an instructor could have a partial influence over the amount of time that their students spend in a flow state (Fullagar & Kelloway, 2009). If research on flow in technical education yielded similar results, we could provide instructors with classroom management strategies that encourage the flow state. The state of flow has a positive effect on students in higher education – an effect that could potentially carry over into technical education. However, since technical education places a heavy emphasis on AUTONOMY AND THE STATE OF FLOW 6 learning skills that can be directly applied to students’ future work environment, research on flow in the context of the workplace also warrants examination. Research has demonstrated that the flow state influences several important factors in the workplace, including worker well-being and performance (Smith, Bryan, & Vodanovich, 2012). As mentioned before, it also has a positive correlation with achievement – a subject that has heavy implications for employers and managers in large corporations (Baumann & Scheffer, 2011). Employees with a high need for achievement tend to seek out challenge, making them more likely to enter a state of flow in the workplace. Flow has been related to employee satisfaction, task interest, and performance among employees with a high need for achievement (Eisenberger, Jones, Stinglhamber, Shanock, & Randall, 2005). A connection between flow and well-being has also been found in research on higher education, indicating that this effect could exist in multiple contexts (Fullagar & Kelloway, 2009). The Relevance of Autonomy Autonomy has been the subject of much research and, as a result, the definition of the term has become somewhat contextual, varying from article to article based on the nature of the research that it is applied to. For the purpose of this article, we will be referring to autonomy as it is defined in Ryan and Deci’s self-determination model: the amount of independence that is perceived by an individual. According to this model, there are three psychological needs – autonomy, relatedness, and competence – which can yield high levels of motivation and satisfaction (Ryan & Deci, 2000). The self-determination model is supported by a large body of empirical psychological research in several contexts, including education and the workplace (Van Nuland, Taris, Boekaerts, & Martens, 2012; Reeve, Deci, & Ryan, 2004). While the selfdetermination model studies these three psychological needs together, it also examines the AUTONOMY AND THE STATE OF FLOW 7 influence of each individual need on motivation and satisfaction. The research discussed in the following section has been drawn both from articles that focus solely on autonomy and from articles that study autonomy along with other elements from the self-determination theory. Recently, a study that was particularly relevant to CTE found that pre-vocational secondary students experience less intrinsic motivation during tasks with a high perceived autonomy (Van Nuland, Taris, Boekaerts, & Martens, 2012). Furthermore, this experiment indicated that test scores are not influenced by intrinsic motivation. These findings contradict Ryan and Deci’s self-determination model, which suggests that higher amounts of autonomy can strengthen intrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). The authors speculate that these contradictions may stem from students having lower levels of interest in tasks that are familiar (tasks where they have more experience and, therefore, greater lev