Student Motivation, School Culture and Academic Achievement: What School Leaders Can Do by Ron Renschler
University of Oregon, February 1992

Topic 1 - Motivation and School Culture

This was an interesting topic to read in the article because I always question the role of my school culture and its effect on student learning in the school. There can be a very negative and separated feeling in my school most of the time, and it is apparent that the students can pick up on these slight nuances as much as the faculty tries to hide it from them. I wonder if I was a student how I would feel about learning if I knew that the principal thought that most teachers were always doing something wrong, as if they are stupid and cannot be trusted to give a quality education to them. If I was in a classroom like that, I would feel like school was a big joke. I would test my teachers to see if they could actually teach me something. I’d probably make them work harder and be less respondent just to prove a point. If I felt like the person instructing me was an idiot, I wouldn’t care about my work. I’d let my social life take over and go through the motions of doing work, with minimal effort. Sometimes I feel the school culture plays a big role in our classrooms at my school.

In the article it states that the administration has a heavy hand in the way a school culture is presented to faculty and students, and that once that model is in place the implementation would trickle down through the ranks. As I reflect on my administration, I don’t believe that they properly display the appropriate attitudes necessary to invoke motivation in staff and students. Even with that obstacle, as a teacher I feel that I do my best to avoid falling into the trap placed by administration to fulfill their “expect the worst” prophecies about the teachers in our school. I imagine, no matter how hard I try that there can be some residual, subconscious effects on my morale and dispositions. After thoroughly studying the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards, it seems apparent to me that teacher disposition is relied heavily upon in terms of creating successful students in the public school systems. I am an enthusiastic teacher and I have deep content knowledge, however, I question whether or not the amount of trust present within the administration may hinder my performance. Through that, I expect that there could be some negative consequences for the students attending classes in my school.

According to Maehr and Braskamp (1986), in their book The Motivation Factor: A Theory of Personal Investment, they focus extensively on motivation in organizational settings. They come to the conculsion “that there is a relationship between organizational culture and personal investment - that knowing something about the cultural facets of an organization allows us to predict employee’s job satisfaction and organizational commitment.” The dimensions Maehr includes in his model of the psychological environment of the school include:

-accomplishment - emphasis on excellence and pursuit of academic challenges
-power - emphasis on interpersonal competition, social comparison, achievement
-recognition - emphasis on social recognition for achievement and the importance of school for attaining future goals and rewards
-affiliation - perceived sense of community, good interpersonal relations among teachers and students
-strength/saliency - the perception that the school knows what it is about and that students know what is expected

The results of Maehr’s study on motivation in the school system shows that even though teachers usually hold the burden of motivating students, that it is equally the responsibility of the administrators in the building to increase morale in order to have a positive effect on the students performance.

All in all, my action research cannot control the administrative realm, only my own actions in my classroom - therefore, I plan on putting forth my best efforts to ignore the negative environment throughout my daily disposition. Hopefully, with that I can thwart the permeation of negativity in my students’ motivation.

Motivating the Students by Jo Budden

This article has several suggestions for improving student motivation in the classroom. Because it is written by a European author, it discusses teaching English to students that are EFL classified. While my students are American, I can relate their learning to EFL students because many of them are bilingual with English as a Second Language. Being one who has studied (unfortunately, not mastered) many languages, I can understand how learning a new language could present certain struggles and frustrations that people born and immersed in the language do not face. On the topic of motivation, I have personally experienced a lack of motivation to continue learning other languages. I reflect on this because if my students ever acted upon their desires to rid themselves of the frustration and stagnancy of learning English, I would have seen many future drop-outs in my classes. I applaud my students for their efforts because I believe that there is nothing worse than doing your best and not seeing any benefit to the work.
The article makes an excellent point, “Adults are usually in your classroom because they have made a choice to be there and in most cases, a financial commitment towards their learning. However, children and teenagers often haven’t made their own decision to attend the English class and they are obliged by either parents or the school to do so.”

Some of the strategies mentioned to increase motivation were:

-star charts and effort charts
-setting goals
-progress markers
-questionnaires
-feedback sheets
-personalization
-bringing in outside resources
-reminding students of the value of learning

I was thinking of star charts and effort charts, but sometimes I wonder if that would be considered an extrinsic motivator, with a reward for the highest achiever. For the purpose of my study, I have decided to glean the use of questionnaires, feedback sheets, bringing in outside resources and imparting the value of learning on to my students. I believe that we already set goals in the classroom, each student knows that the goal is to achieve the highest - but do they know what they have to do in order to reach that goal? Probably not, even though I tell them every day. What can I do differently to get the students to comprehend what I am telling them?

Motivating Students by Barbara Gross Davis
University of California, Berkeley (1999)

According to the article, there are many factors that influence a child’s desire to learn. “Interest in the subject matter, perception of its usefulness, general desire to achieve, self-confidence and self-esteem, as well as patience and persistence,” it states. My question to that is, what if none of those factors are present in the students you teach? Then how do you solve that problem?
The article also mentions that, “Most students respond positively to a well-organized course taught by an enthusiastic instructor who has a genuine interest in students and what they learn.” Now, I know I fill the role of the enthusiastic instructor who has an investment in her students and their learning, but well-organized....... I’d like to think I’m well-organized at least! My room is organized. Their folders and notebooks are organized. But for a well-organized course, I think I’m missing the mark.

Now, I’m not sure if there is truly anything I can do about it though, and let me explain. My school currently has several initiatives for the literacy classroom. We have a writer’s notebook the students are to use a few times a week with planned lessons out of the literacy team’s book study on notebooking. Also, we have a reader’s notebook that the students are supposed to reflect on their independent reading that is to be done in the classroom. In addition to the independent novel, the students are also supposed to work in small groups with leveled novels in a literacy component called “reciprocal reading”. After that, they are supposed to read the textbook anthology together and I am supposed to teach a minilesson on the story we are reading. We also have to have a period of writing, guided writing, independent writing, shared writing, and peer editing. Then there is the time put aside for conferencing with students and their revision and word processing time. This has to be done each week. Did I mention I’m also responsible for teaching Social Studies?

Forget organization because it seems impossible in my school! Heeeelllllp! I have to do these initiatives, but there are too many interruptions and schedule changes to accomplish everything each week. How can I meet the demands of my employer while giving my students a well-organized course?

Strategies from this article that I will employ in my classroom:

-ask students to analyze what makes their class more or less motivating
(refer to instructor morale, relevance of material, course organization, appropriate level of difficulty, participation of students, variety, rapport, and understandability of examples used to explain in class)
-letting students have some say in choosing what will be studied (democratic teaching style)
-emphasize mastery and learning rather than grades (question: what if students don’t really care about their grades?)

Increasing Student Engagement and Motivation by Cori Brewster and Jennifer Fager (October 2000) Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
After reading this article, I've come to several conclusions.
First, my main goal should be to create intrinsically motivated students. There are various reasons why, but I will cite them from the text as they were bulleted and easy to pinpoint in the article.

Intrinsically motivated students:

-earn higher grades and achievement test scores
-are better personally adjusted to school
-employ strategies that demand more effort and enable them to process info deeply
-are more confident about their abilities
-use logical informational gathering and decision making strategies
-are likely to engage in challenging tasks
-are likely to persist and complete assigned tasks
-retain information and concepts longer
-are more likely to be lifelong learners, continuing to educate themselves outside the formal school setting long after external motivators such as grades and diplomas are removed

These are the exact outcomes I seek for the students in my class. I'm wondering what I can do to promote intrinsic motivation in my students.

The article's research states that there are several ways I can increase the students' motivation. Some of these strategies I feel I already employ in my classroom, but still I'm not seeing the results. Is this because the students I see are not being broken of bad past habits? Is it because their home life negates the positive work we do in class?

Some strategies I already use are:

-using extrinsic rewards sparingly
-ensure clear expectations for performance in class
-making students feel supported and welcome
-responding positively to student questions
-working to build quality relationships with students
-breaking large tasks into a series of smaller goals

Some strategies I will try are:

-promote mastery learning by giving students another chance to complete assignments that they didn't do well on
-evaluate students based on the task, not in comparison to other students
-evaluate student work as soon as possible with clear and constructive feedbak
-model and communicate the value of lifelong learning
-develop ways to involve parents
-ensure course materials relate to students' lives
-highlight ways learning can be applied to real life situations
-arouse student curiosity about the topic being studied