Encouraging Mastery

A key question for teachers returning from spring break is "How can I keep students engaged and working hard for the remainder of the semester?" At the end of the year, everyone's energy starts to flag. Finding the motivation to finish well can separate the successful students from those who fail. While much of this difference has to do with a student's temperament, there are techniques a teacher can use to encourage students' motivation.

This week's tips are based on the belief that students perform better when they sense they have a growing sense of mastery over their work. Students who feel lost or overwhelmed are unlikely to learn much even where instruction is well designed and performed. Teachers can increase student effort by helping them appreciate the mastery they are gaining because of the course. Below are some suggestions that might help make students more confident.

Encouragement

Students who attribute their successes and failures to forces outside themselves do not sense the accomplishments they have made and continue to feel less capable then they actually are, leading to lower motivation. Here are some tips that help redirect this attribution of success to more internal sources.

Comments. Use informal comments to guide students' thinking. Encourage students by praising what they have done. Respond to external attributions like, "I was lucky" with ones that help them recognize what they did right, such as "You put in a good effort that paid off."

Responses. When responding to papers, exams, and other student work, keep a balance between recognizing what was correct as well as what was incorrect. Confirming what was done well is a more powerful teaching tool than listing errors.

Corrections. Explain errors in terms of mastering the subject. Give enough feedback so that students know what to do right next time. To save time, develop a list of common mistakes and keep handy a set of responses to provide for each.

Challenge Right. Design activities that are developmentally appropriate. If students seem unable to respond successfully to an assignment, they may not be ready for it. For a model that can help define developmental stages, contact the CIRT.

Giving Control

Teachers can design their courses in ways that give students a greater sense of control over how to meet learning expectations. Some ideas:

Organization. Share with students the plans and purposes for assignments. Show how work is designed to contribute to a greater understanding of the subject.

Presentations. Make your points clear and accessible. If students get lost in examples or layers of complex ideas, they lose motivation. Be clear and emphasize the structure of your ideas.

Learning. Students who work hard but in wrong ways may lose confidence. When giving assignments, offer recommendations about how to work productively. Suggest teams, study strategies, or other ideas.

Quizzes. Random quizzes can have negative effects on morale that outweigh their intent. Announce quizzes and recommend study ideas so that students can give their best effort.

Re-do. When appropriate, teachers can give students a second chance to work on an assignment that they have done poorly. Re-writes, second exams, repeat presentations all allow students to learn from their mistakes and re-learn the material based on your feedback

Teachers can review any of their classroom practices with an eye towards whether or not they build learning confidence in their students. Looking at the consequences of your practices in terms of whether or not they strengthen a student's feelings of mastery will help you discover what it is that you do to keep students motivated and working in your course.

Final Comments

The fact that a presentation is accurate or an assignment is absolutely fair is not enough to assure effective teaching. Student learning is strongly affected by the motivation students have toward the subject. Motivation, in turn, is shaped by feelings of control and mastery. While teachers are not responsible for a students' motivations, they can create conditions that encourage and teach confidence in learning a subject. The CIRT will be glad to send you a copy of an essay on student motivation that describes these ideas in more detail. The effective teacher avoids those practices which confuse, surprise, or otherwise keep students feeling overwhelmed and builds, instead, mechanisms that support their feelings of mastery. Viewing your teaching in light of how it supports students' confidence in learning is one of the most certain ways to make any teaching approach more effective.

This Teaching Tip was first published by Indiana State University’s, Center for Teaching and Learning on March 22, 1999