Making the Grade: A Self-Worth Perspective on Motivation and School Reform

By Martin V. Covington

Book Overview

Achievement behavior in schools can be understood best in terms of students' attempts to maintain a positive self-image. For many students, expending effort is frightening because a combination of effort and failure implies low ability. They have a variety of techniques for avoiding failure, ranging from cheating to setting goals that are so easily achieved that no risk is involved. Although teachers usually reward achievement and punish lack of effort, for many students risking the sense of defeat that comes from trying hard and not succeeding is too daunting. In Making the Grade, Martin Covington extracts powerful educational implications from self-worth theory and other contemporary views that will be useful for educators, parents, and all people concerned with the educational dilemmas we face.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 052134803X
• ISBN13: 9780521348034
• Release Date: April 1992
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 364 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A Fresh Perspective

For all the talk about the current "crisis" in our schools, few new perspectives on the cause(s) of that crisis have been offered in recent years. On the one side, conservatives rail that "higher standards," meaning higher standardized test scores (and "back-to-basics" curricula), should be required. Liberals rail that higher teacher pay, lower class sizes, and higher expenditures per-pupil are necessary. Both arguments are neither new nor groundbreaking. Martin Covington attacks the school "crisis" from the perspective of student motivation for learning. His argument is that our current "crisis" is due to a severe lack of motivation to learn on the part of our students: A problem he feels can be overcome by teachers/schools. He exposes the problems of the traditional, competitive motivational framework and for whom this model is ineffective and why. He explores at depth - and with insightful research - the differences in attribution of success and of failure between students, the essence of self-worth theory, and the effects of these differences on student motivation to learn (for example, "I failed because I'm dumb" as opposed to "I failed because I was sick"). Finally, Covington offers ideas on how to motivate the current plethora of amotivated students. In all, a fantastic book, even if the first 60-80 pages are a bit dry (the history of perspectives on motivation is perhaps dull to all but the most narrow specialist). Plod through them, and by the middle - if you have any interest in education, our schools, or our children - you will be engrossed. By the end, you will amost assuredly transform your views on why our schools are "failing" and how that failure could be changed. An absolute essential for everybody who claims to be interested in improving our schools.