Chapter 10 page 215
performing well will likely adopt quite strong performance goals rather than learning goals. Their
motivation may be limited to performing well on tests rather than on really learning the material.
Teachers can make evaluation and recognition private by engaging in activities such as the
following:
--Do not announce grades or scores aloud.
--Have private conferences with students to discuss performance.
--Give feedback in writing.
--Do not make praise a central feature of class discussions. (We’ll address this issue again in the chapter on
leading discussions.)
--Encourage students not to rush out of the class and compare their test scores, and explain why.
A more controversial recommendation of motivation researchers is to get rid of honor rolls. From
the perspective of motivational researchers, honor rolls promote performance goals among both successful
and less successful students, and they may encourage less successful students to stop trying hard. But
honor rolls are also vague, general forms of recognition, and motivational researchers believe that more
specific recognition (such as specific praise for strengths of a well-done project) are more conducive to
promoting high motivation and achievement.
Use mastery criteria for grading rather than grading on a forced curve. Many schools and
instructors still use forced grading curves. For instance, the Harvard Business School has a policy that
10% of the students in each class must receive an unsatisfactory grade of C. Any student receiving three
C’s will fail and be expelled from the university. This means that no matter how hard students work, 10%
will fail.
A large introductory class might also employ a forced grading curves. There may be a policy that
10% of students get A’s, 20% B’s, 40% C’s, 20% D’s, and 10% F’s. Even if 30% of the student get 95%
or better on the exams, only the top 10% will get grades.
In studies, forced curves have consistently negative impact on learning and motivation. In contrast,
mastery systems of learning promote much higher performance as well as very high levels of motivation. In
mastery learning systems, teachers set very high standards for getting A’s or B’s. Students learn exactly
what they must do to get A’s (such as writing compositions with particular, specified characteristics or
completing elaborate projects with specified features). Researchers have found that when mastery learning
systems are used, students work much harder and learn much more; the clear specification of standards
enables them to see what they must do to succeed, and students tend to work hard to meet these standards.
Avoid external rewards for activities that students already enjoy. In a previous chapter, I
discussed some of the research that suggests a harmful effect for giving rewards for performance. Most
motivation researchers acknowledge that rewards can be useful in an early stage if students are unwilling to
engage in an activity. But the rewards should be faded away as students’ interest in the activity increases.
When students are rewarded for doing activities that they already enjoy, they may well come to enjoy it
less.
Make room for student errors. Errors can be an essential part of learning. Students frequently
learn a great deal from their errors. But in classes with a strong performance orientation, students may
want to avoid errors at all costs, because making an error signals that one is not as “smart” as others.
Teachers can improve motivation and performance by strongly emphasizing that errors are a natural part of
learning and by treating errors as important, exciting events that provide an opportunity for learning.
Thus, teachers should avoid embarrassing students for making errors. As we will learn in later
chapters, they can avoid stating right away whether students have made errors or not and instead ask
students to explain their reasoning. This will lead students to consider arguments for and against different
answers; they will thus come to understand why some answers are better than others.