Summary of Five Articles

Derek Schetselaar

Dr. Smith
English 2010

26 July 2017

Five Summaries

Van Etten, Shawn, et al. "College Seniors' Theory of Their Academic Motivation." Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 100, no. 4, 01 Nov. 2008, pp. 812-828. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.uvu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ823714&site=eds-live.

            In the Journal of Educational Psychology, Shawn Etten, Michael Pressley, Dennis McInerney, and Arif Liem published an article titled “College Seniors’ Theory of Their Academic Motivation. The purpose of the article was to enlighten the world to their study that they conducted about college students. The authors felt like in the past studies were created to prove a predetermined point that the study creators wanted to prove. This caused some bias in past surveys. The authors wanted this study to be more “Qualitative and inductive.” The study was conducted from a group of 91 college seniors at an unnamed four-year college. The students had to have taken 91 credits, and be enrolled in a four-year program. They chose different ethnic groups of students with diverse backgrounds and majors. The chose to do a study on college seniors to complement the previously done research conducted on freshman, and as an attempt to stop an increasing senior dropout rate. The authors had two individuals conduct the survey. They conducted the survey by interviewing and watching the seniors in stages. They found a wide variety of results from the survey participants. The authors created five categories as a result of all the responses. First, the college seniors mentioned that good grades, and a college degree caused motivation. Secondly, they mentioned that internal factors affected motivation for grades. These factors included the class system that they came from, their goals, and their beliefs. Thirdly, the students mentioned external factors including social life, college environment, and their extracurricular activities. Fourth, seniors mentioned that academic factors including class size, group size, and competition contributed to motivation. Lastly, social factors including teachers, family dynamic, and peers affected the senior’s motivation to do well in school. The authors concluded that finding one motivation for grades is very complicated, and has a wide variety of reasons.

Holtgreive, Joseph . “Inside Higher Ed.” Students focus too much on grades to the detriment of learning (Essay), Inside higher ed, 16 Aug. 2016, www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/08/16/students-focus-too-much-grades-detriment-learning-essay. Accessed 26 July 2017.

In an article by Joesph Holtgreive titled Too Smart to Fail, Holtgreive talks about students focusing too much on grades. Holtgreive starts off the essay by sharing an experience he had as a professor at Northwestern University. He had a student come in asking if she could drop the class after the drop date. After some discussion he found out that she wanted to drop the class, because she had done poorly on the midterm exam. She was expecting that the class would be easy enough, where she could get an A without effort. Holtgreive points out that although she really liked the material discussed in class, she was not willing to learn it for a bad grade. He discusses that this is becoming common problem, and names two potential causes. Firstly, he talks about how students who breezed their way through high school creates a “inverse relationship between grades and effort.” He states that this means that when grades exceed effort the student feels smart, while on the flip side when effort exceeds grades the student feels dumb. Holtgreive believes that this looking at the wrong outcome. On the flip side he observes that when students focus more on learning the create a relationship of more effort=more learning. This is a positive reinforcement to effort. As an example to this Holtgreive mentions another story of a student seeking to be in graduate school. The student focused too much on grades and his performance was suffering, after they talked the student focused more on learning. The focus created more joy and less stress in his life. Once he noticed that he could make it in to graduate school again—the student began to focus on grades once again causing stress to rise and his grades to fall. Holtgreive believes that focusing on learning in school creates excitement and joy.

Guskey, Thomas R. "Making the grade: What benefits students?." Educational Leadership 52.2 (1994): 14.

In an article titled Making the Grade: What Benefits Students? by Thomas R. Guskey; Guskey talks about the practices that benefit students. Guskey starts out the article talking about a educator by the name Warren Middleton. Middleton was assigned to revise his schools grading and reporting system. Because of this Middleton asked the question—Can all educators in the school agree? Guskey argues that this is the same today with a diverse group of kids in the school systems, but that, because of research, we have principles that we know work. He names five principles that can help teachers regarding grading and reporting. First, we know grading and reporting is not essential to instruction. Second, no on method of grading and reporting serve all purposes. Third, grading and reporting needs to remain subjective. Guskey states that the more detailed and analytic the grading scale is the more subjective it is. Fourth, grades only have value as rewards, not punishments. Fifth, grading and reporting should be about learning, and should have nothing to do with a curve. Guskey agrees with Middleton, he believes that there is not one right answer to the problems in education. Instead of an all out solution, he gives some practical advice to teachers. These include, grades need to communicate what has been learned, what the student needs to do, and the future expectations of the students. Additionally, teachers can implement good principles by having concern for their students, communicating effectively, having clear thinking, and careful planning.

Cherif Abour H. , et al. “Why Do Students Fail? Faculty's Perspective.” Higher Learning Commission, 2014, cop.hlcommission.org/Learning-Environments/cherif.html. Accessed 26 July 2017.

In a study conducted by Abour Cherif, Gerald Adams, Farahnaz Movahedzadeh, Margaret Martyn, and Jeremy Dunning the authors seek to identify why students fail in college. The seek to achieve this by conducting a survey of 190 faculty members from several different colleges around the United States. They categorized these responses into 3 different sections; Student-related factors, life and socioeconomic issues, and failures of the educational system. The rest of the responses were grouped into subcategories in the three sections. The overall majority of educators said that 68% of the problem of students failing came from student related factors. Some of the factors are lack of effort, motivation or preparation for college. The most voted on one was students were not ready for college. (38%) The second highest rated system to blame was the failure of the educational system section at 20 %. Some of the factors in this section included teacher instruction and behavior (12%) and facilities, materials, and delivery systems. The lowest section was life issues (12%) which included life, work and career issues. (9%), economic issues at (3%). The final conclusion by the authors was that a lot of the reasons why students failed was preparing for college. The professors argued that students were not pushed in high school which led to failure when they were pushed in college.

McMorran, Chris, et al. "Assessment and Learning without Grades? Motivations and Concerns with Implementing Gradeless Learning in Higher Education." Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 42, no. 3, Apr. 2017, pp. 361-377. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/02602938.2015.1114584.

An article written by Chris McMorran, Kiruthika Ragupathi and Simei Luo titled Assessment and Learning without Grades? talks about the strengths and weaknesses of a gradeless system. The authors specifically focus on the National University of Singapore as the main target of the study. The National University of Singapore implemented a gradeless first year in August 2014. The University allowed students to replace C or higher grades with a S (satisfactory), or if a C or lower an U. This method is a combination of a pass/fail method and the common letter grade system. The university sought to help their students relive stress, and to focus on taking risks in their first year. The authors interviewed 1200 first year students that had participated in the gradeless learning system. The analyzed the student’s responses into strengths and weaknesses. The strengths mentioned by the students included reduced stress, the ability to take academic risks, ability to have a high GPA, and the ability to adapt to the university. The weaknesses mentioned by the students were poor learning attitudes and behavior, system issues, and confusion about the policy. The conclusion was that most students approved of the change, but they discovered recent problems and stress with the new program. Additionally, the authors concluded that more research was needed to come to conclusion about the most effective education program.