Key Beliefs

Howell and Nolet (2001) have outlined a set of “key beliefs” students should hold in order to best approach learning tasks (p. 437):

  1. Goals: My academic goals should be clear and important to me.
  2. Internal Effort Attributions: Achievement of my academic goals depends on what I do.
  3. Success: I am successful as long as I am learning and progressing toward academic goals.
  4. Interest: I am interested in my academic goals.
  5. Response to Errors: To learn best I must always keep working and look for other ways to study.
  6. School Partnership: I know that I am part of this class, and belong in this school, because my teachers and administrators agree with me about points 1-5. I can tell by the things they say and the way they support me.

Related to these key beliefs, teachers may choose to pre-assess students and conduct a follow-up interview with each student to fully understand where students may need additional support (p. 500).

Example of Motivational/Interest Survey:
Directions:
Answer “yes” or “no” to each of the following questions.

  1. I work best when I know what I am trying to learn.
  2. If I fail, it is most likely because the task is too hard.
  3. I don’t need to get the best score in class—I just need to do better than I have before.
  4. I don’t find most schoolwork to be interesting.
  5. If I make mistakes, it means I should think about changing the way I am studying.
  6. During class, my teacher sometimes compares our work.
  7. I only study what the teacher wants me to know.
  8. If I fail, it is my job to fix the problem.
  9. I like to pick simple things to do so I know I’ll get a good grade.
  10. I find most of school interesting.
  11. If I’m doing well, I don’t need to study as much.
  12. The teacher knows my goals and helps me reach them.
  13. It is hard for me to learn when I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do by the end of the lesson.
  14. I often get good grades because I am very smart.
  15. I like to pick hard things to do because I feel good when I learn something challenging.
  16. If I could pick stuff to learn, it wouldn’t be what we have to study.
  17. When I am having trouble learning something, it means I must work harder.
  18. Sometimes it seems as if my teacher is more interested in my finishing the work than in my learning.
  19. Knowing that I must reach a certain target makes the lesson scary and/or unpleasant.
  20. My teacher doesn’t give me grades—I  earn them.
  21. It doesn’t matter if I get a higher score than last time; all that matters is that I get a good score.
  22. The things I am learning in class are the things I would like to be learning anyhow.
  23. If I make mistakes, I should stop working because I’ve run into something I can’t do.
  24. In our school there are as many rewards for improvement in classes as there are for attendance and sports.
  25. As teachers, it might be hard to view student responses to such a survey as correct or incorrect, but in terms of how students are oriented toward the learning process, it is safest to regard answers as healthy or unhealthy. Howell and Nolet (2000) provide an answer key that aligns the survey responses with the six key motivational beliefs of students. Four questions are asked per key belief, with the appropriate responses being equally divided into yes and no answers (p. 500).

    The answer key:

Key ideas:

  1 2 3 4 5 6
  Goal Internal Success Interest Persevere Partnership
YES 1,13 8,20 3,15 10,22    5,17 12,24
NO   7,19 2,14 9,21 4,16 11,23 6,18