Previously I wrote about teachers and advice in terms of their effectiveness. Recently I stumbled on some research that looks at the effects of students and advice giving. The study involved 318 students who were randomly assigned either to receive advice from an expert or to give advice. They found the statistically significant result that “middle school students who gave advice spent more time per week studying vocabulary than students who received advice”1. This may not be enough to say that giving advice will increase your success in the classroom but it does suggest that it could improve motivation.
The results of this study give impetus to the Tuakana-Teina model of pedagogy. Within this model is the implicit assumption that the expert “Tuakana” and the learner “Teina” will change depending on the topic: I may be the expert on geometry but for algebra you’re the expert, etc. If each student is given the authority and agency to give advice, then there is good reason to think that all students will be more motivated.
1 In Giving We Receive, 8.