When the teacher goes up to the stage: contributions of narratology and humean theory of motivation to education

Abstract

Teaching is to motivate. This brief sentence condenses the central idea of ​​this essay, namely, that the teacher's job focuses heavily on producing actions in students. A successful class depends on it. Somehow, we need to be able to stimulate verbal interaction between classmates, to carry out exercises, reflections, and so on. The question that arises, then, is: how to do this? What are the tools and knowledge that we must have in order for our motivational task to be accomplished? In this essay, defending a perspective according to which the teacher is an eminently performative being, we will show that the humean theory of motivation operates as a forceful answer to this problem. Finally, our investigation ends with the elaboration of a lesson plan that takes into account David Hume's reflections on agency and motivation, also mobilizing knowledge from narrative studies, such as Syd Field's Paradigm, as auxiliary tools.