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.