Can classroom assessment foster student motivation?

Olivia L. Griset

The author is a high school teacher of life sciences in her third year of teaching

Walk into my school on any given afternoon; you’ll feel the quiet presence of hundreds of teenagers breathing in and out, the scratch of pencils and the quiet swoosh of a page turning now and then. This place looks like a perfectly controlled environment where the eyes of the hidden cameras in the halls follow your every step. The principal sits in his office watching the monitors, making sure no student is in the hall without a pass. From an outsider’s perspective this appears to be success. As you wander down the hall you hear the voice of a teacher, the low endless drone rattles on, lulling you in a nostalgic and familiar state of mild stupor… and then you turn the corner. What are these sounds drifting down the hall towards you, dancing and lilting on the quiet air? As you come closer a veritable “din of learning” squeezes under the door of a science classroom. You peek in the windows and see groups of students, each with a tank of live specimens; some are drawing, some are using microscopes, some are working with a laptop, some are designing and testing their own experiment. It strikes you as unfamiliar – and maybe a little crazy.

Through the window, you see a young woman practically running from group to group, asking questions and laughing with some of her students and you feel bad for her. She must be so tired. Later, as you watch the teachers leave the building at the end of the day you noticed the expressions on their faces,; some look haggard, some unhappy, some preoccupied. You wait for the young teacher to leave. You wait, you wait, and you wait some more. Finally she comes out of the school weighted down with four bags, her hair in a state of disarray, the knees of her dress pants smeared with dirt, her eyes tired but a huge smile on her face.

This woman is me. I am the noisy teacher at the end of the hall that others probably wonder about. “How can she be teaching her content with all that noise?” they ask each other. Little do they know I often wonder the same thing. As a new teacher I find that I now live in the realm of gray. Nothing is black and white anymore. I find myself second-guessing decisions that I am forced to make on the fly. Time is my ultimate worst enemy: there just never seems to be enough of it anymore. I never understood how much of a perfectionist I am until I started teaching and realized quickly that some things just had to give – or else I wasn’t going to make it more than a year at this job about which I am so incredibly passionate. I also realized that nothing I have ever attempted to do in my life has mattered to me as much as teaching. Maybe teaching is so important to me because I feel the weight of the responsibility of helping to shape the lives of 120 adolescents everyday: attempting to challenge them to learn how to learn, to question, to seek knowledge, to believe in themselves and to take risks because they know that I care for them and believe in them. This is the type of job where you want to be your best all the time, even if you don’t have enough time.

Ask any teacher: although we idealists do not like to admit it, this job is all about compromise. After reflecting on the alignment of my practices to my ideals this year I have come to an important realization: there are things I am willing to compromise in my teaching, but student engagement is not one of them.

Even in the last five years, students’ educational needs have changed. Today’s children learn differently because we are living in a high-speed digital world, constantly bombarded with information. Moreover, because the content I teach is changing on a daily basis, today’s students need to learn how to solve problems rather than simply memorize yesterday’s facts. I need to teach my students how to think, how to question and how to sort through massive amounts of information quickly and efficiently. More than any concrete knowledge, these skills are the tools my students will take with them into their future. My job is to connect to their humanity, to create memories that will last long after the intricate details become fuzzy. I need to try to instill in them the joy of discovery. I will know I have succeeded when I see the satisfaction my students feel when they answer questions that they discover on their own.

Based upon my work this year, I have developed a new theory about student motivation and engagement. I believe that engagement is the first rung on the ladder to intrinsically motivated students. I have observed a progressive hierarchy in my classes. The first step in this progression involves students moving from a disengaged or partially disengaged state to a state of basic engagement: i.e. the student becomes involved in the basic goings-on of the classroom and starts to pay attention to discussions and activities. Once students have reached level one, through a process of creating a positive learning community students may then move to the second level of motivation; becoming extrinsically motivated students. Extrinsically motivated students are engaged in the learning taking place and are motivated by their teacher, grades, or other outside forces to complete work that meets standards on a traditional grading system. The third and final level of motivation in my model is when they become intrinsically motivated. Intrinsically motivated students produce high quality work that reflects a deeper passion for and understanding of the material. These students are independently generating and answering questions and consistently demonstrating their ability to apply their learning to real world scenarios. Interestingly, as teachers, we will have students on all of these levels, within one class, possibly at all times.

These observations in my classroom has led me to a truly multifaceted dilemma: how can I assist students in moving up this hierarchy, fostering in them a sense of independence and giving them skills that will aid them in starting to ask and answer their own questions? Is the way I assess students motivating and equitable for all? I ponder the ways in which I can change the way I grade to encourage my students to produce work that they are excited about and proud of, work that is truly demonstrating their actual ability and the journey they took to produce their final product.

I ask these questions this year because this is my first year teaching an honors level course. I walked into my honors biology course this fall so excited by my expectations: that my students would be highly motivated, already have a high-level skill set when they entered my class, and that we would really be able to do some exciting, generative work. After my first few weeks of hands-on exploration with them, I quickly realized that my honors class seemed to be composed of a huge range of abilities; the only factor that really determined placement in this class seemed to be non-disruptive behavior. In a strange way, this group was revealed to be my most heterogeneously grouped class.

In this class at the beginning of the year I had students ranging from the entirely disengaged, all the way to the most motivated in the hierarchy. I knew I had a challenge on my hands, and that I would need to implement a structure that incorporated individualized learning There are two individuals in this class who are amazingly bright students; they are practically brimming over with their excitement for learning. These two students push themselves from within and are really fascinated with everything we do. They read on their own and pepper me with interesting questions. These students benefit from my emphasis on performance assessments because these types of assessments are flexible enough for them to explore deeply and exceed expectations. Because I use a common rubric for major assignments, their grade may not truly reflect their excellence above their peers (yes, they have As but so do others in the class), but they seem less concerned with their grades overall and seem to gain a true sense of accomplishment by knowing they produced their highest quality work. This way of grading may not be equitable, but perhaps what these students will gain from my class exceeds the limitations of any traditional grading system.

The second group of students in my class is comprised of students who are extremely bright but are not, for whatever reason, intrinsically motivated. This is the group of students over whom I lose the most sleep. I know that two of these students are brilliant but I am finding it difficult to move them away from the idea that the grade, or filling in all the blanks quickly, is the most important aspect of their work. Their ability is so high that they can still get an A on my labs and projects (using my common rubric) without challenging themselves to their full potential. I am concerned that if I change the way I grade they will think it unfair to grade them harder then other students… and maybe it is unfair. I continually ask myself, what is fair and what is equitable for these students?

Several months ago I decided to revise my approach to encouraging these students to motivate to push themselves. To challenge this particular group, I decided that I needed to differentiate some of the reading and assignments that I offered. I wanted to encourage intrinsic motivation so I offered choice to the class explaining that some of the articles were more challenging than others. I strongly encouraged students to pick an article that would challenge them, but left them to decide. Initially, I thought that my pep talk and offering choice would motivate my students; sadly I found no change in the pattern. My already intrinsically motivated learners picked the difficult articles; the bright under-motivated students picked the easier articles (despite my strongly suggesting otherwise). Obviously this is not the solution. In the future I will try putting kids into literature groups for purposes of differentiation and not give them choice in the matter. By offering my under-motivated bright students interesting work that will challenge them, I hope they will be intrigued with the material itself and that this intrigue will start to move them closer to the top of the motivation hierarchy. In addition, this will help me support the students in the class that may lose motivation when they hit material that is simply to difficult too understand. This should help on both ends of the spectrum in this class.

The next step that I took in trying to work on this problem of motivating the under motivated was to continue to employ the same rubric for all the students in the class for formal grading purposes, but in addition offer individual feedback tailored to each student. I am still undecided about the impact of this solution. I believe that it has helped improve the quality of work I have received from some of my students but it is extremely time consuming, and only useful up to a point. After all, at some point these students will either stop reading all of my extensive feedback, or – worse – they will be dependent on pleasing me, essentially an extrinsic motivation. Feedback is a great scaffolding tool to use to help some of these students get to a point where they start to see the satisfaction of a job really well done.

Even in the past few weeks I have started to see this feedback strategy working for one of my students. I knew that this student was not working up to his potential, and wrote him notes asking him deeper questions and telling him that I believed he could dig deeper and produce higher quality work. He has responded well to my comments and is putting more effort into his work. I hope that in the end he finds a satisfaction in doing a job well, not just in simply completing the task for a basic A. In the end he may only see a slight difference in his grade in the class, but I hope he finds some deeper insight into his own ability when he sees what he can produce when he really works at it. This is the type of impact that supercedes the content and the grade; this is the thing that could change the course of a student’s life.

Peer and self assessments form another set of tools that I find successful in helping under-motivated students. Interestingly, I find with my honors students more than with any other students that they are deeply concerned with what their peers think of them. A few classes ago after completing an inquiry-based lab, which offered broad room for student choice, exploration and individual experimental design, I asked my students to peer assess each other’s final lab reports. The two bright under-motivated students had, of course, finished first and had turned their lab into me the day before. I gave them back their reports so that they could trade with another student in the class. One of the students said to me, “Oh, I need to fix this up if I am going to let someone else in the class read it.” I replied, “You were prepared to turn this lab report in to me as your final draft, but if one of your peers is going to read it you need to fix it up?” There is obviously a problem with this picture. Sometimes our students become so comfortable with us, the teacher, as a person who reviews their work daily that they do not see us as someone for whom they should really shine. This factor obviously plays most heavily a role for those students who are extrinsically motivated, and supports the true need for incorporating authentic audiences in one’s curriculum.

In addition to peer assessment, the reflection I have seen by students in self-assessments has shown me distinct moves towards motivating for intrinsic reasons. Offering students time to simply think about what they produced, the process they used, and how hard they worked to reach their end product helps demonstrate to them in a very real way action and consequence. I often find myself skipping this step with my students even though I know it is important for myself to become a better teacher. I get so caught up with the rush of school at times I forget that kids need to slow down, stop and reflect. I am starting to make this a routine now, which has been one of the greatest student centered changes in my teaching. Students who have tried, and know they have worked hard, are proud of their work. At the end of the day my students have expressed to me that they have gained a true sense of accomplishment that runs deeper than any grade I could assign. I have seen this transform some of my students in the course of a year.

Even as recently as last week I had an experience with a student that reminds of this amazing process. This student failed biology in her past and is now retaking it with me. I have worked with her to instill in her the belief that she can produce amazing things if she really commits to it. Her goal now in my biology class is to create work that is not only A quality, but work that is good enough that I will save it to show future classes in years to come. Best of all, she has formulated this goal on her own. She even suggested that I laminate her concept map that she created so that it would not be damaged during the summer months. Not only is her effort impressive, but her work product is of sufficient quality to laminate. This is a student who has come from total disengagement to self-motivation: an amazing success story.

As educators in today’s world we are endlessly bombarded with rhetoric about how we measure and quantify success. I am coming to the conclusion that my greatest success in teaching cannot be quantified and recorded in a grade book somewhere, proving to someone that I am an equitable, good teacher. In some ways, this is a scary conclusion: I am afraid that in our modern society of high stakes testing, my concentration on developing students as learners and my lack of focus on teaching the minutia of every scientific process that the state thinks is essential will come back to haunt me. Can I continue to teach in a culture that does not value supporting my students as developing humans and citizens, and does not value my professional judgment in the way that I measure success for each of my students?

Many of my peers have suggested that as teachers it is not our job to motivate students to do their work in our classes, and that motivation is essentially out of our control. I strongly disagree that motivation is out of the teacher’s control; I understand that I will not be able to magically transform a room full of students into 100% intrinsically motivated learners, but I can build a community with them in which they will experience success when they put forth a true effort. After all, at the heart of true intrinsic motivation lies self belief: a knowledge that one is capable to ask questions that may not have answers and to attempt to answer questions that may be too difficult to answer well.

Deep down, many of my students, lack the confidence in themselves to take true risks, to challenge themselves to take on a task that may be so hard they will really have to knuckle down and work, and could potentially fail to succeed by traditional standards. I think for some of my students, especially my honors students, what I interpret as a failure to push themselves is actually a cover up, a manifestation of a deep-seated fear of coming up short and failing publicly. Recognizing their fear has helped me understand the importance of taking the time to build their confidence and ultimately alter the way they view themselves and the role they play in their own education.

Last year after I started to realize the importance of confidence in motivation I had a transformative experience with a class full of students who other teachers had written off as failing students. The class consisted of fourteen boys and one girl who had repeated biology three years in a row. I will never forget my first time meeting these kids. When I walked into the room, they all had their arms crossed, their bags strewn about the floor, a couple had their heads down. My heart sank, and I tried not to show my fear as I buzzed around the room trying to introduce myself and get to know these kids. When I asked them to tell me something about themselves they all said, “I hate school.” When I asked them what they do with their free time, they said “nothing.” They were completely disenfranchised with anything associated with school and they were determined to hate me. Gaining the trust of this group was the hardest, most brutal experience I have had in my life. I have to give them credit; they really put me to the test.

Looking back on this experience I can’t pinpoint one particular thing that moved this group of students from the very bottom of the motivational hierarchy to the top two rungs in the course of one year. I do know however, that though it sounds clichéd, it was all about my approach. Simply put, I absolutely refused to give up on them, no matter what it took. I would not, under any circumstance, allow them to sit in my class another year and fail. I became a cheerleader of science. I was determined to create curriculum so active and experiential that they couldn’t help but at least be engaged even if they were not at all motivated. Interestingly, due to the active nature of the class some of the students who had truly failed in a traditional setting year after year actually started to really succeed with the material. Over the course of a year this motley crew transformed into an always unpredictable, but amazing, group of students that I looked forward to seeing everyday. Another key to my success with them was they felt like they were in an environment that was safe enough for them to yell out a wildly wrong answer; yes, maybe we all would chuckle, but it wasn’t at anyone, it truly was with them. At the end of the year, that biology class had a higher overall grade average than any other biology section. More importantly, almost every single one of those kids signed up this year to take a science class as an elective – an amazing result! At the beginning of last year, I would never have believed this possible. I don’t know if these kids could ace the science section on the SAT, but I do know they learned how to think and question. They realized that science is interesting and something at which they could ultimately succeed if they truly tried.

As I reflect on some of my classes this year I find myself revisiting my original dilemma. I am realizing quickly that my traditional grading system isn’t measuring true success in my classroom because for some of my learners the greatest success of the year would actually be to fail. In my opinion being confident enough to try and then to fail at something that is truly challenging and outside your comfort zone is, in actuality, the truest manifestation of success. Unfortunately, if I assign a student a failing grade this would be interpreted – by them, their parents, and the world – as punitive and could hold them back from future opportunities in life; thus the only way I can deal with this situation in the moment is through revision and feedback, not through a final grade. This idea is challenging the common assumption of what a grade truly means: is it a demonstration of a deep and meaty process where students are becoming thinkers or is it simply jumping through the right hoops, dotting the i’s and crossing all the t’s, conforming to societal standards? What is the value of this way of grading our students? In the end, does the final stage of reaching an “A” convey to students that they have reached the pinnacle of learning in this topic and there is no more room for further exploration? This is the exact opposite of the goal that our education system touts: “making all students life-long, intrinsically motivated learners.” In the end, in my class the grade really means nothing. I want my students to forget about grades altogether, not to worry about it, but rather to focus on the process. The grade will come in the end.

My dilemmas around the issues of engagement and motivation run deep and continually frustrate and fascinate me. I fear there are no good answers to my questions of how to create a system in which students become more motivated for learning that is equitable for all, that encourages intrinsic values, but is still in the realm of at least somewhat traditional grading. Perhaps this is actually an issue that runs deeper than grades, and may need to be approached from an entirely new angle. I do know that by providing positive environments where my students are being challenged appropriately at an individual level and where they start to believe in themselves as thinkers and learners, truly transformative things have happened. This belief will sustain me when I think I am too tired to add that extra comment on the 110th paper I grade on a given night, or when I feel that it is just to much work to go collect three articles about the same topic on different reading levels for the lab the next day. This belief will help me continue to refuse in compromising on my ideals of the value of engaging students in their learning and attempting to instill in them a understanding of the joy one can feel with a job truly well done!

I believe ultimately that teaching is about humanity. All too often we lose sight of our own humanity and our students humanity. In the end we need to find a balance between covering content and developing our students as capable thinkers who have a fundamental understanding of the learning process. In the future our students will be adults that are shaping the lives of a new, younger generation and our country. It is our responsibility to start asking the hard questions now, to continually challenge the status quo so that we can develop more equitable ways to assess our students and motivate them to see the value of learning for the joy of learning’s sake alone.

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