Chapter 10 page 209
Another useful idea for making tasks relevant is to make sure that new tasks clearly require
students to use what they have learned before. This will help them see that what they are learning in
generally useful.
Provide learning goals rather than performance goals. Teachers can teach in ways that
encourage learning goals rather than performance goals. One way is to establish tasks that emphasize
learning goals rather than performance goals. For example, a teacher can have students learn something in
order to teach it to another rather than to score high on the exam. Similarly, the main focus of learning can
be presented as solving a problem rather than preparing for a test.
In large part, teachers emphasize learning goals by how they talk about classroom activities. If
teachers constantly remind students that “this is going to be on the exam,” they will tend to encourage
performance goals. If, on the other hand, teachers regularly focus on what students will learn from
activities and how it can be used, students are more likely to adopt learning goals.
Teachers can also talk explicitly to students about performance goals. One high school teacher I
know spends time during the first two weeks of class in September talking to students about how important
it is to focus on learning rather than doing better than their neighbors on exam. He spices up his stories
with humorous examples from his own life in which he refused to buy into the idea that “he is better than I
am because he got two more points on his exam.”
Make sure that students understand the goals of the learning tasks. This means that you should
students with clear instructional objectives so that they know what they are supposed to be learning. You
will learn more about instructional objectives in Chapter 10.
When you tell students what they are going to be learning, then students have a built-in way to
assess their own progress. As the lesson continues, students realize that they are indeed attaining the goals
that the teacher outlined. This enhances their sense of competence and their belief that they can learn
effectively.
The questions at the beginning of each chapter in this text are an example of another way to help
students focus on the crucial information that they are supposed to learn.
Have different students do different tasks so that they can’t directly compare their
performance. Another way to discourage performance goals is to assign different tasks so that students
cannot directly compare their performance. If students are preparing presentations on different states, it will
not be as easy to see how their performance measures up to each other as if they are all making
presentations on the same state. If students are doing different kinds of book reports on different books,
students will be less inclined to rank order students in terms of quality of report, because the reports will
vary along so many dimensions that it is difficult to tell
Tasks should challenge students with a moderate degree of difficulty. Students find tasks that
are too easy to be boring because of their lack of challenge. Tasks that are too difficult produce poor
motivation because students lack an expectation of success. Tasks that are of moderate difficulty are ideal
because they are difficult enough to provide an engaging sense of challenge but not so difficult that students
have a low expectation of success. But keep in mind that a moderate degree of difficulty means different
things for different students.
Autonomy Dimension
By giving students choices in the classroom, teachers can promote greater motivation by directly
increasing students’ sense of autonomy. Here are several approaches to increasing autonomy.