As I walked through the hallway at South High School in Minneapolis one day, I came across a small group of students laughing and talking as they crashed a bicycle into the hallway walls and fell over, one after another. The teacher, Morgan Fierst, was there too, laughing along and taking video footage on her phone. “This looks fun!” I thought, and I asked the students what the heck they were doing.

“IT’S A BACKWARDS BIKE!” they exclaimed, and offered that I could give it a try. The bike had been rigged up with a special gear so that when you turn the handlebars left, it would turn the front tire THE OPPOSITE WAY, turning the bike to the right. An avid cyclist myself, I thought the backwards bike would be easy to ride…. I was so wrong.

The Backwards Bike became a hit at South High School, and I would enjoy watching teachers, students, and administrators show their vulnerability and persistence as they fell off the bike over and over again. I thought the bike was a fun hands-on (constructivist!) learning experience for students, but I didn’t realize the full extent of its purpose until Ms. Fierst presented about it to South staff at a Professional Development. The Backwards Bike project was actually a lesson on self-regulation, motivation, modeling, and the wonderful effects of persistence on our plastic brains.

In this blog, I will relate the backwards bike learning process to the Social Cognitive Theory approach to learning. But first, you should probably watch this “Smarter Every Day” video that inspired the South High Backwards Bike so you know what I’m talking about:

Advanced Algebra teachers, Morgan Fierst and Sara VanDerWerf, set out to prove to their students that we are capable of learning anything if we put forth the dedicated effort to train our brains.

VanDerWerf relates the epic learning journey in her awesome teaching blog:

Our original intent with the bike was to begin learning to ride it for 5 minutes a day in the hallways of our school so we could be an active daily model of persistence to our students.

Social Cognitive Theory is a psychological model of learning behavior conceived by Albert Bandura in the 1970s that emphasizes how people learn through the observation of models (Denler, et al). The Backwards Bike experiment is a perfect example of teachers modeling Bandura’s key concepts of agency, self-efficacy, goal-setting, and self-regulation through their own struggles and persistence. In this case, the teachers represent a coping model, in that they struggle and make mistakes, and only eventually become proficient in their goal.

A key concept in Social Cognitive Theory is that people have agency, or “the ability to influence their own behavior and the environment in a purposeful, goal-driven fashion” (Denler). Fierst and VanDerWerf used this agency to set goals that provided the objectives for self-regulation, or “students’ management or control of their own learning behaviors” (Denler).

Fierst and VanDerWerf’s initial goal was simple: learn how to ride the backwards bike.

But through the 3 sub-processes of self-regulation — self-observation, self-judgement, and self-reaction — they learned they must break that goal into smaller, more attainable goals, in order to better recognize their progress. Soon, each tiny step in the process was a little victory. Now they focused on making one revolution of the wheel at a time… then another… and another. They weren’t just learning how to ride a bike, they were strategizing about HOW they were learning.  (That’s so meta…. Am I right?!)  Meanwhile, they were modeling this process publicly… at school… every day.

Modeling can also affect one’s self-regulated learning. The skills needed to manage one’s behavior, as well as beliefs and attitudes that serve to motivate self-regulation, can be obtained through modeling.

Denler, et al.

The teachers shared their joys and frustrations with each other and with their students. They realized the importance of normalizing struggle as part of learning. They gained new levels of empathy for students’ struggles in math, and related the tiny victory of one wheel revolution to celebrating the smallest victories of progress in student learning. (VanDerWerf) After several months of practicing the bike for 5 minutes every day, Fierst was finally able to ride the bike successfully. (Click here for a fabulous video montage of South staff trying to ride the bike and Fierst’s fierce dedication.)

The process of un-learning the old way of riding a bike and re-learning a new way is an example of our brains’ neuroplasticity. Through years of bike-riding experience, we have strong neural pathways that tell our bodies how to balance and turn on a bicycle. But very slowly, with lots of practice, we can forge new neural pathways.

A fixed mindset might tell a student that they can never learn to ride a backwards bike, or that they will never be good at math, because that neural pathway is very strong from past failures (Hammond). Our own self-doubt, accompanied by our brains’ negativity bias which causes us to pay 3 times more attention to our failures than our successes, plus structural inequities in school systems and microaggressions, can continue to strengthen those neural pathways that say “I’m no good at this” (Hammond).

But there is hope. If we can encourage self-efficacy, “the belief that you are capable of carrying out a specific task or reaching a specific goal” (Seiffert), and model self-regulation, we can help students shift their mindset to become self-motivated (Seiffert).

One amazing and powerful way that teachers can help students build self-efficacy is through “exposure to peer models who initially struggle but who are ultimately able to complete tasks effectively (i.e., coping models)” (Denler). As teachers, our modeling of struggle, self-regulating behaviors and persistence teaches students that they can conquer challenges too.

Fierst and VanDerWef conclude their presentation with a call to action. They challenge other teachers to practice something very challenging for 5 minutes a day, and to do it publicly so students and community can share in their struggle and little victories. One South teacher chose to shoot 100 basketballs each day, with the goal of someday making all 100 baskets (VanDerWerf).

So… What will you do for 5 minutes a day?  How can you model self-efficacy, self-regulation and persistence for your students?

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Sources

Denler, H., Wolters, C., Benzon, M. (2014, Jan 28). Social Cognitive Theory: An Overview for Educators. Retrieved from http://www.education.com/reference/article/social-cognitive-theory/.

Fierst, Morgan & Van Der Werf, Sara (2016). The Backwards Brain Bicycle in Math Class. Powerpoint Presentation. Retrieved from https://www.saravanderwerf.com/the-backwards-brain-bicycle-the-best-thing-we-did-all-year/

Hammond, Zaretta, & Jackson, Yvette (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Corwin, a SAGE Company.

Seifert, Kevin, & Sutton, Rosemary (2009). Educational Psychology (2nd ed.). The Saylor Foundation.

SmarterEveryDay (2015, April 24). The Backwards Brain Bicycle – Smarter Every Day 133. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0.

Van Der Werf, Sara (2016, August 18). The Backwards Brain Bicycle – the best thing we did all year. Retrieved from https://www.saravanderwerf.com/the-backwards-brain-bicycle-the-best-thing-we-did-all-year