Csikszentmihalyi's 8 Flow Criteria:
Locus of control
Immediate feedback
Skills matching the challenge
Deep involvement
Full engagement
Timelessness
Loss of concern for self
Desire for the activity
There are many different ways to help students obtain all the criteria to reach a flow experience within an instructional environment. Teachers should try to facilitate writing activities throughout all of their classroom lessons and activities, like drafting emails, blogs, journals. This will get students involved in writing skills that they don't even realize they are partaking in. Thus, they will associate the same skills used for larger assignments with excitement and times of happiness and also trust that their skills match the challenges (Shosh and Zales 2005).
Teachers can also allow students to discuss topics by using journals to keep track of their ideas. This is an effective way for the students to track their thoughts, ideas, and emotions throughout each individual step of the writing process to avoid unwanted negative emotions and produce mental clarity so they can achieve flow during their writing.
It is important for students to have one-on-one conferences with their teachers at multiple points of their writing process. Conferences have a multitude of benefits for both the educator and the student. A conference could be used to discuss the direction of the topic or research process or to discuss the outlining/drafting phase, or even conference about the finished project. There are a multitude of benefits to incorporating multiple conferences within the writing process. Another type of conferencing outside of the teacher is through peer editing, where the students can receive another set of immediate feedback from peers within their class.
Without conferences, students cannot get the feedback they need to trust they are reaching the goals of the assignment.
Effective Application within the Classroom Environment
To better understand how to incorporate Flow Theory and the writing process within an instructional setting, we created a series of steps that an educator could implement in any writing assignment. Within these steps, there is a series of activities that not only highlight the writing process, but also engage with student cognition and metacognition to enable the ability to be in the state of flow. These activities and forms of assessment (both informal and formal), outline the activity and the purpose they serve for both the student and the educator.
Step 1: Create an assignment that gives students autonomy in picking the written topic. Promoting student decisions not only allows the students to come to conclusions and make decisions, but it also promotes autonomy. Allowing the students to choose a writing topic or type of assignment creates motivation and interest within the topic. Autonomy is a vital characteristic to achieve flow during the writing process.
Step 2: Give students a handout for specifics goals of the writing assignment. This may include a specific set of guidelines that would be found within the written instruction of the assignment or even a rubric, which outlines expectations within various categories. Students can also create personal goals for the assignment that may include objectives such as completing all the steps on time, or reaching the maximum limit for the paper. Having teacher and student goals as a resource that the students can refer back to is very important right from the start. Without a goal, there cannot be meaningful feedback which would let the student know if they are on the right track to success.
Step 3: Allow for student discussion about their topics. A simple way that an educator can accomplish this is by creating a handout with suggestions for ways students can start a discussion and help other brainstorm their topic. Student discussions should not happen without the students' process journals. They should keep track of the ideas that have been tossed around so they can easily refer back to these ideas during the research process. Process journals will help the students keep track of their thinking and allow them to engage with their metacognitive processes later as they "think about thinking".
Step 4: Have one-on-one conferences asking students about their topic, and how they plan to approach the research process. This collaborative process offers the students immediate feedback to know and establishes trust that they are headed in the right direction. Just as Csikszentmihalyi had stated within his 8 criteria of flow, students benefit from immediate feedback to feel that their thoughts and ideas are validated and they can move forward with less negative feelings such as anxiety, stress, or worry.
Step 5: Have students write an outline so they can have order of consciousness and know how to tackle the writing process. As students engage with their cognitive and metacognitive process, they start to think about how they will effectively create successful writing. This drafting/outline process gives the students the opportunity to dissect the writing process as they acknowledge and focus on each step through this activity. Similarly, having the students write within their process journals after the fact can allow the students share their ideas and emotions as they tackle this portion of the writing process and why they made the decisions that they did.
Step 6: Have conferences asking students to articulate why they chose to build their outline the way they did. Very similar to step 4, having one-on-one conferences promotes positive feelings of validation and allows the students to think about their metacognitive processes. Giving the students the time to talk about and think through their decisions, ideas, strategies, and questions, it allows them to confide in the teacher for guidance while also enabling the students to trust their skills as they confidently talk the writing of a rough draft.
Step 7: Have students write a rough draft. This is the point where the students put their thoughts and ideas (and maybe even some research or textual evidence) into the proper format. This gives the students an opportunity to compile everything together to develop their ideas.
Step 8: Allow for peer review. As the students engage in a collaborative setting and work with their peers, they are receiving a whole new set of immediate feedback. Having multiple students evaluate each other's work can provide new perspective and provide each other with feedback that can help them revise or work on some weaknesses within the paper. Alongside that, having the students keep notes within their thought process journal explaining why they commented/edited their peer's paper the way they can allow them to think about their writing in different ways. The students can also record their emotions while completing this aspect of the writing process.
Step 9: Revise written works. The students now have an opportunity to engage in the cognitive and metacognitive processes to break down their own thinking and generate ideas as to how they can improve their writing in multiple aspects. The students can also refer to the guidelines and expectations from Step 2 to ensure that they are including what is necessary to the written work.
Step 10: Have a final conference with teacher to go over their final draft and allow for any last minute revisions. Having a final and brief conversation with each student can allow the students to verbalize any additional questions, insecurities, comments, or concerns regarding their paper before they turn it in. This conferencing also allows the students to better understand the final steps of finishing up an important piece of writing, reflecting upon the whole process of writing, and how it made them feel leading up to this point. The students can also have time to write in their thought process journal to write down their emotions or thoughts at this point in the writing process.
Step 11: Turn in final draft of written work. With all of the drafts, notes taken from process journals, and information received during conferences, teachers will have an abundance of work to assess their students writing. Grading can then be focused on the final product and/or the effort given in the steps leading up to the final work.
Why use this application of Flow Theory?
Just as Csikszentmihalyi (1990) had stated, “A matching of challenges and skills, clear goals, and immediate feedback, resulting in a deep concentration that prevents worry and the intrusion of unwanted thoughts into consciousness, and in a transcendence of the self, are the universal characteristics associated with enjoyable activities” (131). Within this set of activities, informal and formal writing, help promotes the necessary elements of Flow Theory within a school environment. As the steps are established in the classroom, it is at the utmost importance that majority of this series is student led instruction. The series of steps showcased how the students creativity and freedom to think openly was promoted and welcomed. Similarly, the immediate feedback and frequent conversations had lessened the unwanted thoughts and emotions about the process. This process also allowed the students to engage in emotional awareness and produce positive emotions towards the writing process as the immediate feedback and collaboration had produced trust in themselves that they are headed in the right direction and are on the right path to achieving their goals. Without process journaling, the tracking of emotions would be difficult to comprehend. Without self reflection, the students would lack the necessary skills to prevent negative or intrusive thoughts. Therefore, the need for process journaling was vital for a student to engage with their own cognitive and metacognitive processes that enable them to think about their own thinking and produce effective writing. The process journals also give them the opportunity to keep track of their emotions throughout the writing process, which effectively teaches them how to be emotionally aware and also what is holding them back from being successful.
Hopefully, with the implementation of the steps above, students will have the skills, confidence, and meaningful connection to reach the flow experience when they write their papers.