School & student learning

School & student learning

Introduction

An atmosphere or environment that nurtures the motivation to learn can be cultivated in the home, in the classroom, or, at a broader level, throughout an entire k-12 school. Much of the recent research on educational motivation has rightly centered on the classroom, where the majority of learning takes place and where students are most likely to acquire a strong motivation to gain new knowledge. But achieving the goal of making the individual classroom a place that naturally motivates students to learn is much easier if students and teachers function in a school culture where academic success and the motivation to learn is expected, respected, and rewarded. An atmosphere where students learn to love learning for learning's sake, especially insofar as it evolves into academic achievement, is a chief characteristic of an effective school.

Discussion

The literature on school culture makes it clear that effective schools, that is, schools that demonstrate high standards of achievement in academics, have a culture characterized by a well-defined set of goals that all members of the school—administration, faculty, and students— value and promote. If a principal can establish and clearly communicate goals that define the expectations of the school with regard to academic achievement, and if the principal can rally a constituency of teachers and students to support those goals, then the motivation to achieve the goals is likely to follow. Most reviews of the effective school literature point to the consensus that school culture and climate are central to academic success (Glickman 2006).

There is a close correlation between positive school culture and academic quality: The literature indicates that a student's chance for success in learning cognitive skills is heavily influenced by the climate of the school.

The first, and least effective, stage, administrator, is characterized by the principal's desire simply to run “a smooth ship.” At the second stage, humanitarian, principals focus primarily on goals that cultivate good interpersonal relations, especially among school staff (Glickman 2006). Principals at the third stage, program manager, perceive interpersonal relations as an avenue for achieving school-level goals that stress educational achievement. At the fourth and highest stage, systematic problem solver, principals become devoted to “a legitimate, comprehensive set of goals for students, and seek out the most effective means for their achievement” (p. 51). One of the chief characteristics of highly effective principals at the systematic problemsolver stage is the ability to transfer their own desire and motivation to achieve valued goals to the other participants in the educational process.

As Leithwood and Montgomery comment: Highly effective principals . . . seek out opportunities to clarify goals with staff, students, parents and other relevant members of the school community. They strive toward consensus about these goals and actively encourage the use of such goals in departmental and divisional planning. Such behaviour can be explained by the principal's knowledge of human functioning and the actions consistent with such knowledge. Highly effective principals appear to understand that school improvement goals will ...