“I can’t solve a single problem correctly!” I shout into my calculus textbook. After I toss my pencil and calculator onto the desk, I close the textbook and shove it over to make room to lay my head down into my crossed arms. There’s only 24 hours until the calculus II exam starts and cramming is doing nothing but consuming time. After endless practice in the most insufferable class of this semester, it seems no further review will improve my understanding of sequences or series. About a minute passes before I notice that my cheeks are wet and that I had dotted my sleeve with tears. It takes every nerve in my body to keep from having a nervous breakdown. Without much time or many options left, I text Ryan, one of the higher-than-average classmates, to ask for some explanations. I just need a little confidence booster. His reply gives me the exact opposite: it would be impossible to learn any concepts in this amount of time before the exam. Sorry Faith.
Unbelievable!
My mind is telling me to give up, but I know if I do, I will not only fail the suggested problems, I’ll fail the final. The biggest problem I faced: lack of motivation.
It seems like I’m not the only one facing this issue, though. An interesting study conducted by the Adana Science and Technology University, in Turkey, asks six questions to 9th grade students regarding motivation, willingness to learn, level of subject difficulty, and teacher impact in their class. During the study, they found a strong correlation that suggests that the willingness to learn increases motivation and, in return, high motivation increases the capacity to learn. A positive feedback loop! The answers they received to the questions mostly express a recurrent lack of interest in subject matter and difficulty in memorizing dense material. This makes motivation for a subject a lot harder to achieve.
As a student in health science at Dawson College, I can tell you that it’s been a constant struggle to find motivation to study for many of my science classes. My R score sits just above a 31, and if I hadn’t asked my friends how they scored, I wouldn’t have realized that I was on the low end of a health student’s R score range. Before I take a test, I see my future being spelled out by each shameful grade I’ve received. A twinge of guilt sits in my stomach, regretting all the nights I spend procrastinating instead of learning. On days before exams like the calculus final, the library feels like it’s closing in on me, and –– as Boyle’s ideal gas law indicates –– if the volume of a closed space decreases enough to crush me to death, then the pressure in my chest is sure to be insurmountable. I feel like I have to become the best student I can be with no mistakes and flawless grades for science programs in university to notice me in the sea of numbers. Except right now, I’m just a low grade; a two-dimensional digit on an infinite plane. Like a fractal in space, the spiral I’m falling through is never-ending.
So how are students like Ryan so motivated to compete to be at the top of the class while stomping on others to get there? In fact, there’s a reasonable explanation for why CEGEP students tend to compete and compare each other’s grades: it is essentially what the R score does.
Vanier College’s academic advising page indicates that the R score is based on two components, with the most alarming one being that it bases its value on “how well, on average, all the Quebec students in the course or group of courses performed in their compulsory Secondary 4 and Secondary 5 courses.” Using grades from over two years ago seems like an ineffective way to be determining success. Is it to say that my R score will forever be tainted by the 66% I received for my secondary 4 math ministry exam? I’m not too sure about that –– the R score is a mysterious calculation. However, the other component of the calculation is based on the “student’s position within the course or group of courses, with better performing students receiving higher [scores].” This means that it places you in relation to your class average — the ultimate method of comparison.
Grades are the biggest factor for student motivation. People aren’t afraid to leave others behind to get ahead *cough* *cough* Ryan! It also doesn’t help that students commonly expect class averages to be given to them by their teachers to have a tangible way to judge their marks in relation to their peers. Why not judge your own marks in relation to the material you’ve learned thus far? Finland, the country that’s been crowned the happiest country in the world for 3 years, according to Forbes, is doing just that.
The Los Angeles Times offers some insight on how Finland is so successful in terms of their happiness, specifically in school. Their success is based on equity, community, and helping the weakest links step up to where they need to be. This mindset greatly contrasts to North America, where only the brightest minds are rewarded, and “happiness and success are perceived as individual pursuits, indeed, even competitive ones. In Finland, success is a team sport.” Plus, Finland’s grading system does not set students up against each other to compete with the class average, nor do the grades reflect directly on the teacher’s ability to teach.
In schools across North America, teachers take the blow for their students’ poor academic standing. Test scores and student enrolment directly affect the funding of a school and its teachers’ salaries, according to Tuscon Weekly. The Ontario government has even cut over six hundred million dollars to its schools in 2019, eventually expecting there to be “thousands fewer teachers” in the next four years. It’s unimaginable to fund schools based solely on numbers over the care that a good educational system needs. In fact, the teachers interviewed from Finland said they would quit if funds were based on their teaching skills. Moreover, the study in Turkey received a unanimous answer on the topic of teacher impact, indicating that the students felt that 100% of the learning experience Is impacted by their teacher. Teachers play the single most important role in education and are the most essential figures in learning everywhere; their value is paramount. There’s a term in environmental ecosystems for a species like this, known as the ‘keystone species’. If it is removed from the ecosystem, the entire ecosystem crumbles, leaving a mess of non-livable conditions in its wake.
This puts an insurmountable weight on teachers’ shoulders to keep each student happy and engaged with the material they’re teaching. Natasha Goodz, a recent graduate from McGill University’s department of education, supposes that “a lot of the pressure comes from the teachers themselves, knowing that they have so much responsibility in shaping their students into the people they’re going to be.”
The most difficult part is getting students into the habit of studying and becoming more motivated to be better students. Often times, teachers use what is known as operant conditioning to encourage their students through positive reinforcements. This conditioning works with rewards and punishments to increase or decrease a particular behaviour. When students do their homework, a teacher can condition their students to expect a Kahoot game with prizes for the winners! When teachers notice a lack in participation and work habits, they can condition the class to expect a pop quiz when homework is incomplete. Then homework will likely be done in the future to avoid such an event to occur again.
I was definitely no fan of my sec 5 physics teacher’s conditioning method. It was difficult to feel any motivation when he often expressed us as being failures very pointedly with “The initial velocity of the rock falling vertically in free fall is…? Come on, you should know by now that it’s the same number you’ll see on your final grade: zero!”
I wasn’t laughing. There must have been a better way to get us understanding a simple physics concept.
Goodz explains that the best way to get students engaged and to feel motivated is by creating relevance with things that actually matter to them. “If it’s fun, exciting, and has meaning to it, they’re going to learn more,” she states.
A happy class environment is magnified by motivation. I can remember the first time my biology II teacher recommended browsing Science Magazine last semester for a piece of reading outside of the course requirements because the articles were “interesting and relevant.” For a few split seconds, I actually considered it. Then a resounding groan hit the class. Without skipping a beat, the bio teacher recognized how little her students were motivated to read any articles because it ostensibly posed no benefit if we did nor any threat if we didn’t. So she did what all teachers would do to get their students to do something they’re unwilling to do: if we read an article, we’re granted bonus marks. A reward!
According to Caitrin Blake from Resilient Educator, reward-driven motivation is one of two types of motivation known as extrinsic motivation, the other type being intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation helps students become more driven and competitive because they know that they will receive something from their work. Blake states that if this reward is removed, students’ interest “diminishes entirely.”
Ironically, a student’s lack of interest in their courses is quite an interesting dilemma because it raises the questions: Why is this field of study meaningful to me and how rewarding will a career in it be?
Having little value for a field of study but nevertheless working for excellent grades stems from a mindset of setting performance goals rather than learning goals (Ambrose et al. 72). For example, physics makes me confused and afraid for the outcome of my grade. I’ve joined the “do well enough just to pass” performance goal. I’m being extrinsically motivated by the desire to be accepted into a science-related field in university. But the same goal cannot be applied to my interest and enjoyment in learning the piano. There are no passing grades or fear of failure. It’s intrinsic motivation –– the desire to learn & set learning goals –– that keeps me practicing.
I’m sure by now you’ve noticed that extrinsic motivation creates a disparity between people who have a passion for fundamental learning and application of knowledge and people who absorb facts and calculations to throw them onto paper for a numerical grade. It teaches students that success, in its naked form, is only a reward.
By nature, animals crave rewards, so it’s not a bad thing to expect a reward after hard work. Think of the last time you had a piece of chocolate. You probably ate it for more than its delicious taste and nutritional benefits. Chocolate contains the key ingredient tyrosine which is the component of the neurotransmitter dopamine, linked to the reward and pleasure response centre of the brain. When the dopamine pathway of the brain is activated, the brain searches for the source of that dopamine spike again, making you crave more chocolate (Erkane). This concept can be applied to receiving a grade. If you worked hard for a test and didn’t get the grade you were expecting, reward yourself. It will remind you to keep trying. And in the case of intrinsic learning where your progress does not yield grades, remind yourself why the end goal matters, because “the mind is virtually inexhaustible when it is engaged in something it perceives as meaningful” (Shore).
How then can we find enjoyment in the subjects we learn to fuel our own intrinsic motivation? Do classes need to focus less on grades and more on the real world beauty of a subject to get students to be truly appreciative of it? It’s a tough balance that we haven’t quite reached yet. Brooklyn Middle School 442 has come very close to finding such a balance with their new grading system — or rather lack of grading, but is it sustainable? Time will tell. Maybe you don’t exactly know where to start to feel motivated. A good hint is to start with yourself. Take it from me, I still have a lot to learn about being a student. Sometimes it takes more than staring at textbook page filled with garbble and a few low grades to realize that there’s more that needs to be done to achieve my goals. Standardized tests that pressure students to compete with their classmates need to be thrown out the window at an initial velocity of 50km/h. Celebrate high grades as a milestone in your knowledge and understanding, even if it’s a small milestone, and don’t forget to learn from the low grades. But definitely keep the comparisons between your success and your friends’ as far away as possible. It feels rewarding to motivate yourself without climbing above others to reach your goals.
Faith’s Blog 