How to Help Students Value School and Schoolwork. In ‘Education Review’

Abstract

How much students value school and schoolwork will have a significant bearing on many educational outcomes, including their engagement, learning, and achievement. In numerous ways, COVID-19 has impacted students’ valuing of school and schoolwork. In this article, I want to look at where valuing sits in the scheme of students’ motivation, how COVID-19 has impacted it, the key parts of students’ valuing, and what practical strategies educators can apply this year to boost and sustain students’ valuing.

Full text

Citation: Martin, A.J. (2022). How to help students value school and schoolwork. In ‘Education Review’, February,
https://www.educationreview.com.au/2022/02/how-to-help-students-value-school-and-schoolwork-this-year-opinion/
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How to Help Students Value School and Schoolwork
Andrew J. Martin
School of Education, UNSW Australia
How much students value school and schoolwork will have a significant bearing on many
educational outcomes, including their engagement, learning, and achievement. In numerous ways,
COVID-19 has impacted students’ valuing of school and schoolwork. In this article, I want to look
at where valuing sits in the scheme of students’ motivation, how COVID-19 has impacted it, the
key parts of students’ valuing, and what practical strategies educators can apply this year to boost
and sustain students’ valuing.
Motivation and Engagement
For over 20 years I have been researching the major parts of students’ motivation and engagement. I
developed the Motivation and Engagement Wheel, below, to map out the positive and negative
aspects of students’ motivation and engagement. The Wheel has been adopted by schools around
the world to help them help their students’ learning at school.
Motivation and Engagement Wheel (reproduced with permission and downloadable from
www.lifelongachievement.com).
The Wheel has four overarching themes, each comprising specific motivation and engagement
facets:
- positive motivation (self-belief, valuing, learning focus)
- negative motivation (anxiety, failure avoidance, uncertain control)
- positive engagement (planning, task management, persistence)
- negative engagement (self-sabotage, disengagement)
The task for educators is to increase the positive motivation and engagement factors in students’
academic lives and to reduce the negative factors. I have developed resources for assessing students
Self-
belief
Valuing
Learning
focus
Plan &
monitor
Task
manage
Persistence
Anxiety
Failure
avoidance
Uncertain
control
Self-
sabotage
Disengagement
POSITIVE
MOTIVATION
POSITIVE
ENGAGEMENT
NEGATIVE
MOTIVATION
M
NEGATIVE
ENGAGEMENT

Citation: Martin, A.J. (2022). How to help students value school and schoolwork. In ‘Education Review’, February,
https://www.educationreview.com.au/2022/02/how-to-help-students-value-school-and-schoolwork-this-year-opinion/
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on the Wheel (the Motivation and Engagement Scale) and for helping students improve on each part
of the Wheel (the Student Motivation and Engagement Booster Program).
Valuing School and Schoolwork
Now that schools, educators, and students are in their third year of navigating COVID-19, there are
some parts of the Wheel that have come under pressure and that require closer attention as we seek
to optimise student’ academic journeys. Valuing is one of these.
There are four main parts to the value that students attach to school and schoolwork:
1. Importance value: This refers to the extent to which students believe what they learn at school is
important, significant, and meaningful.
2. Intrinsic value: This is the extent to which students believe what they learn at school is
interesting, enjoyable, fun, and arouses curiosity.
3. Utility value: This refers to the extent to which students believe what they learn at school is
useful, helpful to their lives now, and relevant to things they may do in the future.
4. Cost value: This is where students believe that the ‘cost’ of trying and investing effort at school
(rather than, for example, playing a computer game, social networking, etc.) is worth it.
When students value school and schoolwork in these ways, they are more likely to invest effort,
persist longer, learn more effectively, and achieve to potential.
COVID-19 and Students’ Valuing
In a few ways, COVID-19 has put students’ valuing of school and schoolwork under some strain—
particularly utility value and cost value.
Why?
Students have been confronted with a multitude of external pressures and events that are beyond
their control, including lockdown, isolation, rapid shifts in and out of remote learning, and so on.
These have led to many uncertainties about future academic activities and events. For example,
there have been numerous times when the nature and dates of assessments have been unclear—and
even doubts about whether some exams and assessments would happen at all. There are also
uncertainties about post-school learning modes, such as whether university or college classes will
be on campus, remotely delivered, or a hybrid of both. Looking at the post-school job market, there
are also uncertainties on that front, such as the future of work in some sectors (e.g., tourism and the
arts).
The upshot of this is that students may question the utility (usefulness) of learning if they come to
the view that this learning will not be useful for a future assessment. They may come to the view
that there is not much purpose in preparing for university if there is a lack of clarity about what
university studies will actually look like during COVID. They may not see the utility of some
school subjects if they are not connected to more predictable and guaranteed job markets.
There is also a cost component. Students may decide that the cost of investing academic effort is not
worth it relative to the short-term upside of playing a computer game, or watching YouTube, or
social networking.
Strategies to Boost Students’ Valuing
How can educators maintain students’ valuing when confronted with these challenging realities?
Here are 4 strategies:

Citation: Martin, A.J. (2022). How to help students value school and schoolwork. In ‘Education Review’, February,
https://www.educationreview.com.au/2022/02/how-to-help-students-value-school-and-schoolwork-this-year-opinion/
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1. Bring certainty to students’ academic lives so they can be sure that their efforts are worth it.
Develop and time their assessments in ways that are not so vulnerable to COVID-related
disruptions. Take the time to assure students that universities, colleges, and employers are relying
on and planning for them to pursue their future pathways and there is good reason for students to
strive to their potential while at school.
2. Use one part of valuing to compensate for another. If the utility (usefulness) value of a subject is
difficult to demonstrate, educators can draw on intrinsic value instead. In real-time, educators can
set a fun activity, arouse curiosity, or inject some humour into the lesson. Thus, regardless of
whether the subject is useful for a future assessment or job, in the here and now it has intrinsic
value. Furthermore, when things are fun or interesting, students do not see it as imposing so much
of a cost on them.
3. Help students make good decisions around cost value. Let’s be real: computer games, YouTube,
social networking, surfing the web, etc. are fun. When a student chooses to do homework or study
instead of these, there is a significant opportunity cost to the fun they could be having. We have to
be honest with them about this and talk about ways they can minimise the cost through a study
schedule or good planning that allows sufficient time on homework and study and also some time in
a day or a week when they can have some fun.
4. Model a valuing of school and schoolwork. Teachers are powerful role models for students. If
students can see that in the face of COVID-related frustrations, their teacher is able to focus on the
important, interesting, and useful aspects of a topic or subject, students are more likely to focus on
these things as well.
Through these strategies, educators can help students build and maintain a valuing of school and
schoolwork that will support them through times that are good, bad, and disrupted.
Further Information
Martin, A.J. (1999-2022). Motivation and Engagement Scale. Sydney: Lifelong Achievement
Group. https://lifelongachievement.com/pages/the-motivation-and-engagement-scale-mes
Martin, A.J. (1999-2022). Motivation and Engagement Student Booster Program. Sydney: Lifelong
Achievement Group. https://lifelongachievement.com/pages/motivation-and-engagement-
booster
Martin, A.J. (2010). Building classroom success: Eliminating academic fear and failure. New
York: Continuum.
Martin, A.J. (2020). How to optimize online learning in the age of coronavirus (COVID-19): A 5-
point guide for educators. In ‘UNSW Newsroom’, March,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339944395_How_to_Optimize_Online_Learning_in
_the_Age_of_Coronavirus_COVID-19_A_5-Point_Guide_for_Educators
Andrew Martin is Professor of Educational Psychology in the School of Education, UNSW
Australia. His publications can be accessed via his ResearchGate account:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrew-Martin-22