Article 9: Refocussing Our Efforts

I have been well hearsed with the notion of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and I understand well how marks and grades can be used as forms of punishment or reward. I guess the take away from this article for me is the fact that there is evidence that students’ motivation to learn increases when grades are neither used as a significant motivator nor considered equivalent to learning.

 

Since my entry into the teacher education program here at UBC I have been continuously thinking about assessment and the ways I will implement grades and marks in my classroom. One piece of advice I loved to hear was for teacher’s to refrain from referring to grades, report cards, or tests while speaking to the whole class. Individual students who want to know this information can have a conversation with me on these issues, but that students are not allowed to mention these things in class.

 

One thing that I don’t understand is what it means to attempt to minimize tedious busy work. Being a physics teacher I believe it is of utmost importance for a student to practice questions to improve their skill. I have heard this phrase a lot since entering the program and it confuses me and my position on work as my position is to give them as much work as I can.

 

One thing that I did not know was that expected task contingent rewards produce a negative effect on motivation. I thought it would be beneficial for a student to receive partial marks based on effort and completing and activity sometimes regardless of performance quality. I thought that always being rewarded based on performance could demotivate some students sometime, especially students who struggle and do not always get things right.

 

One thing I believe is that reinforcement is necessary, even for a teacher. So it was nice for the article to identify some factors that will promote motivation: providing choice of topic (sense of autonomy) , allowing students to share their learning with peers, being involved in the assessment process, relating activities to students’ lives and the tasks must be within the student’s current level of ability and skill. However, one thing that I would like to more of is how to be able to transform the use of tests and grades from judgmental and unfair to informational and helpful to the learning process. I understood the idea of using of informative comments and providing feedback, but wonder if there were other ways to emphasize learning rather than using numerical grades and competition between students.

 

My favorite quote “It is not simply a matter of challenging the system, but of seeking to understand what makes the system be the way it is, and challenging that, while remaining conscious that one’s own sense of justice and equality is itself open to question”

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