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The link above provides an brief summary and overview of the optimal experience of complete engagement and state of hyper-focus: Flow Theory. John Spencer, the creator of this video, talks through the history of this theory, the five factors of the theory that are vital for achieving flow, and various ways educators can implement this theory within the classroom environment. This video can be utilized as an aid to better understand the concept of Flow Theory and how it came to be.
Quick Facts about Flow Theory:
Who created it?
Flow theory was created by a renowned psychologist and professor, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Although many of his studies were focused on happiness and creativity, he was most well-known for the psychological concept of flow.
What is Flow Theory?
"Flow is the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it." (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, pg. 4)
During his research, Csikszentmihalyi discovered that people are truly happy when they are working to overcome challenging tasks.
Reaching flow is considered to be the optimal state of experience in which there is order in our consciousness. To have order we must have extreme attention on the task at hand, because according to Csikszentmihalyi (1990), without attention no work can be done. When a person has attention, they can focus on planning and achieving the goals for the task and when there is no more disorder in the task, the person finds themselves in the best flow experience.
How does Flow Theory benefit composition studies?
Gina Briefs-Elgin had discovered that Csikszentmihalyi had stated, "Students in flow write better than students who are anxious or bored and that successful student writers instinctively monitor their processes to achieve a flow-producing balance between anxiety and boredom." (Briefs-Elgin, 1997, pg. 71).
Flow Theory can teach writers to embrace the challenge of the writing task instead of dreading it. This helps students find positivity within writing, which can create happiness upon completion of the task. Once students are confident in their skills to tackle difficult writing tasks, they can then approach any writing task in any discipline and complete the task successfully.
metacognition versus cognition.docxCognition and Meta-Cognition in Flow Theory
Cognition
The typical state of consciousness students find themselves in is called entropy. In relation to Flow Theory, entropy is chaos and disorder.
"Entropy is the normal state of consciousness-a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable. To avoid this condition, people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever information is readily available, as long as it distracts attention from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings." (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, pg. 119).
In order to enter a state of flow, a person must be able to fully concentrate on the task at hand. That requires an optimal experience where the person has order of their consciousness and does not feel any threat to their cognition so they can achieve the highest level of concentration.
According to Csikszentmihalyi (1990), psychologists have determined that the following negative emotions affect concentration and normal functioning (pg.249):
Anger
Distress
Sadness
Fear
Shame
Contempt
Disgust
These emotions create an unsafe environment for the writer to fully dive into their assignment. In order to reach flow, a person must first be trained in how to disregard these emotions. Yet, to disregard them, one must first acknowledge them. As Csikszentmihalyi (1990), says, "The 'battle' is not really against the self, but against the entropy that brings disorder to the consciousness. It is really a battle for the self; it is a struggle for establishing control over attention. The struggle does not necessarily have to be physical, as in the case of the climber. But anyone who has experiences flow knows that the deep enjoyment it provides requires an equal degree of disciplined concentration," (pg. 41).
Metacognition
Writing is not just about putting thought to paper, it involves around-the-clock monitoring of our emotional states. One needs to be aware of the distractions around them that can limit their concentration. To fully understand their own limits a writer needs to know why they have to free themselves of these distractions and emotions.
Being meta-cognitively aware allows writers to think about their thinking. They have to learn to apply cognitive processes but also understand why they chose these processes so that they can re-apply them to future writing situations.
Look to the Classroom Activities to Promote Flow to learn how to help train students in meta-cognition.
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