Helping students to learn and grow

When teachers promote learning and mastery over grades and test scores, student engagement and motivation increases, research shows.

Motivation — why students do what they do — and engagement —whether students do the work, see the purpose of it, and find it interesting and enjoyable — are often intertwined. In fact, engagement has been described in education and other social sciences as the behavioral manifestation of motivation (Skinner & Pitzer, 2012). Educational research also shows that agency, personal interest, and joy are some of the core drivers of engagement and motivation alike — yet our current system may undermine the very foundational factors that spur learning (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). The focus today on extrinsic measures of success, such as GPAs, college acceptances, and ultimately financial status, can dampen students’ intrinsic motivation and engagement with learning. It can lead to a system that prioritizes high grades above all else, including learning.

Remedying this flawed system will take both a dismantling and a rebuilding of the ways schools approach assessment and how students perceive their own success. Based on our research and literature from other scholars, we believe that more students will be engaged in the classroom if we emphasize learning and mastery over and above grades and test scores.