Flow and Effective Teaching

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.