Effects of grade-related and progress-monitoring statements on students' intrinsic motivation and learning

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of two kinds of teacher's evaluative statememts on students' intrinsic motivation and learning. Two experimental conditions were set up during daily classes at a junior high school. One condition was the grade-related statement condition, where the students took quizzes that were supposed to become parts of their final grades. The other condition was the progress-monitoring statement condition, where the students were told to evaluate their own understanding of the subject by taking quizzes. In both experimental conditions, five classes were conducted experimentally, and the last five minutes of each class was spent on a quizz. The results suggest that the grade-related statement condition decreases intrinsic motivation relative to the progress-monitoring statement condition. In addition, several dependent scores in the progress-monitoring statement condition were significantly higher than that of the grade-related statement condition, such as perceived competence, perceived tension and anxiety, positive attitudes toward quizzes, and retention. These results suggest that administration of grade-related tests can undermine students' intrinsic motivation and adversely affect their learning.