We operate today with a misguided understanding of what really motivates us. Often, we assume that the only way to get people to perform is to incentivize them through external rewards and punishments, or extrinsic motivation, rather than focusing people on a desired behavior, or intrinsic motivation.
As a seasoned teacher who has taught in the classroom for nearly 10 years, I see this paradigm consistently. Students have become more focused on the rewards and punishments, namely grades (an extrinsic motivator), and less on the desired behavior, learning (an intrinsic motivator). Students often refer to themselves as “A” students, “B” students, or “C” students in conversations with each other and feel a sense of shame when they get failing grades. When they refer to their classes, they say things like, “That class is an easy A,” or, “It’s hard to get a good grade in that class,” or, “Don’t take that class because it will ruin your GPA.”
When students ask questions about assignments, quizzes, exams, or absences, it’s almost always in reference to points and grades. A favorite question is, “Can I get any extra credit to raise my grade?”
What’s apparent in all this focus on grades is that there’s no real emphasis on learning—the true purpose of education. It is a rare occurrence that students come to talk with me about concepts or new material presented, and even in learning-focused discussions, the topic of grades almost always arises.
When I encounter students after they have graduated, they almost always remember what grade they received in my class; yet when I ask about what concepts they learned, they hesitate before answering.
“What’s apparent in all this focus on grades is that there’s no real emphasis on learning—the true purpose of education.”
What can we as teachers do to refocus students on the learning and get away from this emphasis on grades? I’ve found Montessori educational principles can provide us with some useful ways to rethink our current grading system and get students interested in what matters most—the learning.
WHY STUDENTS FOCUS ON GRADES—AND HOW TO REVERSE THE TREND
Carl Rogers, a psychologist and one of the founders of the humanistic psychology movement, offers some insight into why students focus so much on grades as opposed to learning in his book On Becoming a Person. Rogers suggests that a person focuses on that which is important to the maintenance of the “Self.” Students focus on grades and degrees because they think that will help them get a good job and advance their careers—maintaining the Self. It appears they don’t relate acquired knowledge and skillsets with getting a good job.
The irony is that what was acquired and developed during their formal education is what is imperative to retaining employment. After a few years in a career, a person is rarely asked about GPA. What is learned, not the grades earned, is more important to keeping a job and advancing a career.
According to Rogers, we are born with a desire to learn and reach our human potential. Students need to be placed in the proper environment to nurture this desire. Yet, as educators, we continue to reward student behavior with grades while putting less emphasis on developing this innate desire to develop and grow. Instead, learning should be the goal of education.
Maria Montessori, who opened the first Montessori school in 1907, believed in fostering children’s enthusiasm for learning. She felt students should love everything that they learn, and that this love of learning nurtures mental and emotional growth.
Let’s imagine a fully engaged classroom where, instead of learning and education being viewed as a chore, our students follow their innate tendency to explore their environment, i.e., their intrinsic desire to grow and learn. A key ingredient in this vision is autonomy—which is a principle of Montessori education. It puts emphasis on students’ freedom, within limits, to control their own educational process and goal setting, which links both success and failure with their actions and the consequences of their decisions. In other words, students are encouraged to be creative, imaginative, and free to make mistakes. Learning from those mistakes and failures is normalized as part of the process.
As such, Montessori teachers are viewed as guides, rather than people who impart knowledge. One important focus for these teachers is to design, organize, and prepare an appropriate learning environment for students, where they can freely take responsibility and self-direction for the ways they choose to learn.
Following the intrinsic motivation model, Montessori principles believe that students will be guided by their interests. They are led to those things that are valuable and meaningful to them personally. The result of this process is the development of competence, self-confidence, and mastery. Competence fosters confidence, which in turn inspires students to tackle subsequent challenges. This cycle builds on itself and leads to a lifelong quest for learning.
RETHINKING THE GRADING PARADIGM
From my experience in the classroom, our current paradigm based on grades creates an environment in which students fear the possibility of failure rather than focusing on the possibility of learning. Students are afraid to speak up, ask questions, and make mistakes for fear that it will impact their grade.
But when classes are structured as learning laboratories—like they are at Montessori schools—and students aren’t penalized for exploring new methods, making mistakes, asking questions, or admitting failure, they become more creative and self-directed. They seem to open up and thrive when asked to write one-page reflections and implication papers about what the concepts or materials mean to them. In many such classes, students appear to be having fun while they are working on class exercises and engaging in active discussions related to the topic presented.
DO EMPLOYERS REALLY CARE ABOUT GRADES?
Many people think that without grades and grade point averages (GPAs), employers would have no way of evaluating students for potential employment. But smart employers have already put less emphasis on GPAs and have instituted their own internal tests and simulations to figure out what a potential job applicant knows or is interested in knowing.
Asking students what they know about a particular subject or topic is a great way to find out about a student’s knowledge in a given area. Some employers will even look at the courses a student has taken and ask questions about what they learned in a particular class. These are all great ways to assess knowledge and may be better indicators of what a student knows than relying on a GPA or an individual grade.
Since I have incorporated these Montessori-based intrinsic motivation principles into my current classes, I have begun to recognize that these principles are incongruent with a grade-based extrinsic motivation system, which takes away from students’ natural desire to learn. Therefore, I would prefer to use a pass or fail (P/F) grading system, which allows me to focus on what an individual student is learning as opposed to an external standard of what a grade of A, B, C, D, or F represents.
I believe that if more educators used this grading structure, student cheating would be diminished, grade inflation would be eliminated, and students would be much more inclined to discuss what they are learning because the classroom would become more creative, self-directed, and meaningful to them. By becoming learning labs, these classrooms would nurture a love of learning. What’s more, perhaps implementing these changes would make achieving excellence more attainable for all student groups.
RESTORING STUDENTS’ LOVE OF LEARNING
Why do we educators hang on to the current extrinsically motivated grading paradigm? I think at a gut level many of us feel that it is not working well, yet the whole educational system is built around it. And trying to imagine how the whole educational system would function without grades can seem monumental.
Reimagining how this would change our roles as educators can be threatening to both individuals and their institutions. Yet, if there is one thing that we have all learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that both people and organizations can adapt to change very quickly and creatively when necessity dictates.
It is time for the entire educational system to start re-examining our current grading paradigm. With the help of other educators, students, parents, and interested groups, we can take steps to improve this grading system and restore students’ love of learning. Change starts with conversation, and I hope that all of you will join me in this one.
