I'm currently on a goal and motivation research reading interest, so I think I can add value to this.
School pedagogical approaches are weird and appears broadly to be testing a student's ability to endure forcing themselves to learn material they may not find interesting. Obviously, this divides the student population and people with better executive functioning, or stricter parents, float to the top. It's what we've done for so long, we're anchored around the concept. From a motivational standpoint, for many students this can kill curiosity and desire for learning.
Goal attainment research consensus clearly demonstrates specific and sufficiently difficult tasks lead to better performance. It's even more ideal when the individual sets the goal or at the very least is involved in developing the organizational goal. This goes against the grain in schools. Sometimes teachers are incredibly vague, others specific. And, unless the student is in a highly individualized learning environment, like working on a capstone project, they do not play a role in course goal setting.
You start to see the potential problems when research demonstrates, the highest individual performance occurs when individuals are provided a specific and sufficiently difficult goal with a learning oriented approach and decreased emphasis on performance (tests and grades). On the other hand, when an individual already possesses skills and knowledge for assigned goals, then a performance approach, not a learning approach, yields an overall higher performance rating. Also, by far, the worst goal orientation, among the aforementioned, is performance avoidance, that is performing to avoid negative consequences.
Students are in school, they're in the process of obtaining skills and knowledge for a career they may not even have solidified yet. Students are largely falling into the performance avoidance category, then the performance approach category, and, finally, for the luckier few, the learning approach category. Add in the teacher quality variable, whether they assign specific or vague and easy or sufficiently difficult assignments, and you start to see how this creates problems for students and for society.
I speak from experience. I failed miserably during school, even dropping out of high school, for a variety of reasons outside of my control and am extremely fortunate to be where I am today.
School pedagogical approaches are weird and appears broadly to be testing a student's ability to endure forcing themselves to learn material they may not find interesting. Obviously, this divides the student population and people with better executive functioning, or stricter parents, float to the top. It's what we've done for so long, we're anchored around the concept. From a motivational standpoint, for many students this can kill curiosity and desire for learning.
Goal attainment research consensus clearly demonstrates specific and sufficiently difficult tasks lead to better performance. It's even more ideal when the individual sets the goal or at the very least is involved in developing the organizational goal. This goes against the grain in schools. Sometimes teachers are incredibly vague, others specific. And, unless the student is in a highly individualized learning environment, like working on a capstone project, they do not play a role in course goal setting.
You start to see the potential problems when research demonstrates, the highest individual performance occurs when individuals are provided a specific and sufficiently difficult goal with a learning oriented approach and decreased emphasis on performance (tests and grades). On the other hand, when an individual already possesses skills and knowledge for assigned goals, then a performance approach, not a learning approach, yields an overall higher performance rating. Also, by far, the worst goal orientation, among the aforementioned, is performance avoidance, that is performing to avoid negative consequences.
Students are in school, they're in the process of obtaining skills and knowledge for a career they may not even have solidified yet. Students are largely falling into the performance avoidance category, then the performance approach category, and, finally, for the luckier few, the learning approach category. Add in the teacher quality variable, whether they assign specific or vague and easy or sufficiently difficult assignments, and you start to see how this creates problems for students and for society.
I speak from experience. I failed miserably during school, even dropping out of high school, for a variety of reasons outside of my control and am extremely fortunate to be where I am today.