Open access peer-reviewed chapter
Abstract
Since 2011, we have engaged in professional development, to foster the creation of autonomy supportive, student-centered, learning environments to enhance students’ learning and success. The IMPACT program has been nationally recognized and featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2018 as one of six innovations poised to change classroom culture and the landscape of higher education. The important innovation, discussed in this chapter, is a focus on human potential and motivation to foster students’ (and instructors’) satisfaction of basic psychological needs. Our work is grounded in self-determination theory (SDT), a theory of human motivation which approaches psychological growth, development, integrity, and wellness from an organismic integration perspective. SDT postulates that humans are naturally curious and strive to connect with people, their environment, with people and their environment by satisfying three basic psychological needs; autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy supportive instructors meet students’ basic needs by acknowledging and understanding students’ experiences and perspectives. These instructors create engaging and autonomy supportive learning environments which foster students’ learning experiences across many disciplines, including STEM. In fact, the creation of an autonomy supportive environment regardless of the transformation implemented, is the most important and consistent predictor of the motivational and educational outcomes studied.
Keywords
- student-centered pedagogy
- course transformation
- student learning
- motivation
- learning experience
1. Introduction
Higher Education is facing a crisis. As students and instructors return to in person instruction following the Covid pandemic, the level of student disengagement is concerning. Faculty as well as departmental and college leadership are struggling to find solutions to the engagement challenges and find ways to engage students and spark interest, in hopes or returning to pre-pandemic level of engagement and motivation. Even students who choose to continue to take online classes out of convenience are not demonstrating the level of engagement that was perceived to be once there. As a faculty developer, my staff and I work with instructors who are coming to the teaching and learning center to find a community of other instructors and professional development staff to brainstorm with and find gold nuggets that can enhance student’s learning experiences, motivation, and engagement. How can we foster the creation of learning environments that will engage and motivate students?
In 2006, Derek Bok, in his book,
Since 2011, at Purdue University, we have engaged in professional development, working with instructors from all colleges, to foster the creation of autonomy supportive, student-centered, and engaging learning environments to enhance students’ learning and success. The IMPACT program which stands for Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation, was built to address these challenges. It is a cohort-based faculty development program which features a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) to promote engagement and student-centered learning and teaching. The IMPACT program has been nationally recognized and featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2018 as one of six innovations poised to change classroom culture and the landscape of higher education. The important innovation of the IMPACT program is not a tool or a technique, it is a focus on human potential and human motivation and fostering the satisfaction of basic psychological needs of students (and instructors).
Efforts to improve undergraduate education should include a focus on what transpires in classrooms across the entire institution, build upon collaborations among many stakeholders, support the entire instructional community through faculty development built around faculty learning communities, and value teaching and learning as a core mission of an institution of higher education. Conceptualized from its inception as a comprehensive, campus-wide, collaborative effort, between multiple key campus stakeholders (Provost’s Office, the Center for Instructional Excellence (CIE), Teaching and Learning Technologies (TLT), Institutional Assessment (IDA + A), and the Evaluation and Learning Research Center (ELRC)), IMPACT aims to empower instructors to create student-centered learning environments by incorporating active and collaborative learning as well as other student-centered teaching and learning practices into the learning environment. Most transformations incorporate a substantial amount of technology, but technology is not the innovation. The use of technology per se is not enough to make a transformation/redesign student-centered. Many transformations and course redesign programs closely adhere to a limited number of redesign models. This was the focus of IMPACT in the beginning, which was modeled against the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) [3]. The close adherence to the NCAT redesign models was perceived as constraining and limiting and discouraged many instructors from engaging in professional development. With IMPACT, we have been able to shift the culture at the institution toward more student-centered practices, and engaging learning environments for students, but providing choices and options to instructors and supporting their motivation. The technologies adopted or the redesign models implemented are simply tools used to create engaging learning environments. They do not drive the success of a redesign or transformation. They are in service of the learning environment, not the focus per se of the innovation. This approach requires us to deeply understand human motivation and the types of environments that can foster students’ learning through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs. The way forward in higher education, the innovation, is a commitment to a deep focus on
2. How can we foster students’ learning? Through motivation and the creation of autonomy supportive, student-centered learning environments
Academic leaders must pay more attention to quality teaching; how to improve it, value it, foster it, and reward the improvement of it [4]. To realize the needed culture change, classroom initiatives and in general course transformation efforts, must be engaging, relevant, appealing to instructors and be adaptable to a broad range of disciplines in order to influence the majority of students across the institution. It’s about engagement and motivation. In order to positively impact student engagement, motivation, learning, performance, and retention, instructors must utilize pedagogies that are authentic and truly transformative, which resonate with their practices and their fields, and focus on the need for deep reflection, and go beyond institutional requirements [5, 6, 7]. This speaks to the importance of the people doing the teaching, the entire instructional community. The instructional community is the most important asset in creating environments that foster students’ learning experiences.
3. Self-determination theory
To focus on the people in the instructional community means that we pay attention to people’s needs and motivation. Self-determination theory (SDT) is a theory of human motivation which approaches psychological growth, development, integrity, and wellness from an organismic integration perspective [8, 9]. SDT postulates that humans are naturally curious, active, social beings who strive to connect with people, their environment, and the world in general. SDT proposes the existence of three basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) which I will describe later in this chapter. In a healthy state, when environmental conditions are supportive of the basic psychological needs, humans are naturally inclined toward proactive engagement, behavioral self-regulation, and actively internalizing information into a coherent and integrated whole. Under optimal and positive conditions, humans are equipped to deal with difficult environments and can remain oriented toward prosocial altruistic behaviors, kindness, growth, development, cooperation, and overall well-being. These inclinations manifest in behaviors of exploration and curiosity associated with intrinsic motivation, the development of mutually supportive relationships, and the internalization and integration of social norms, rules, and regulations. The latter is essential for critical processes associated with behaviors and activities that are necessary but not fun, pleasant, or interesting; this is often the case when we think about academic pursuits and in general behaviors that are necessary for the good functioning of society, or external valued goals, or pathways to some desired end.
SDT is functionally important because it empirically examines features of the environments and contexts which would foster or hinder motivation and satisfaction of the needs underlying effective growth, development, self-regulation, engagement, and wellbeing. The focus and integration of the SDT principles and human motivation into course transformation became the thread that tied everything together and enacted a culture shift at Purdue University. It also led to a move away from a focus on course redesign per se and a move toward a focus on professional development. SDT provided us with the theoretical framework to inform the operationalization of active learning and student-centered learning using the basic psychological need.
4. Basic psychological needs
Basic psychological needs are nutrients essential for humans’ growth, integrity, thriving, and well-being. The conditions which foster the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs will lead to growth, well-being, creativity, exploration, curiosity, proactive engagement, and optimal self-regulation. These environmental conditions are the building blocks of an autonomy supportive environment.
4.1 Autonomy
Autonomy is the need to self-regulate and be the initiator of one’s experiences and actions. When the need for autonomy is met, people feel volitional and experience their actions and behaviors as being in line with their values and beliefs and other parts of themselves. It is important to understand that autonomy does not mean independence, self-reliance, or doing only what one wants to do. Autonomy is about feeling volitional and choiceful. It is about ownership, a feeling of agency, and endorsement of one’s actions. In different contexts, people can be autonomously dependent or independent. For example, a person could fully endorse the choice to do something for a friend going through a difficult time, and in doing so feel completely volitional and autonomous. In contrast, the same person could feel conflicted or forced to help a family member and, in that moment, feel constrained and experience their behavior as not integrated or congruent with their values, interests or other behaviors.
4.2 Relatedness
Relatedness is the need to feel connected; to care for, be responsive to, and be connected with others, as well as being cared for, and included by others. It is the need to experience mutually satisfying relationships. The need for relatedness is about belonging and feeling significant among others. It is characterized by a sense of closeness and trust. The need for relatedness, although central for human beings’ growth, development, health, and well-being is often neglected when discussing motivation and achievements in academic pursuits. I believe this is a fundamental gap in our understanding of what makes academic environments engaging and autonomy supportive.
4.3 Competence
Competence, according to SDT is the need to feel effectance and mastery. In SDT, the need for competence is understood as effectance motivation and as such includes the tendency to investigate and want to understand things that matter and are important to us, or in general to engage fully in the environment [10]. Formal education is certainly an important area for the satisfaction of the need for competence for many individuals at different times in their life, and the need for competence in higher education has been heavily discussed, from a variety of theoretical perspectives, as an important component of motivated action [10, 11].
5. Creating autonomy supportive environments
Although it is important to foster all three basic psychological needs when creating student-centered autonomy supportive learning environments, here I want to focus on autonomy and relatedness, the two needs that are often neglected in higher education. In education, great emphasis is often placed on the satisfaction of the need for competence. This is understandable given the context. But for optimal outcomes, for healthy functioning, the need for autonomy and relatedness will also be fostered. What we have found in our own research is that to create environments that are autonomy supportive in higher education, and to build competencies, these competencies have to be developed in an environment that also supports the needs for autonomy and relatedness [12, 13].
Basic psychological needs can be easily thwarted in environments that are not optimal. The need for competence is easily thwarted in environments that are too difficult or challenging, or where negative feedback is pervasive or when under persistent person focused criticism and social comparison. Persistent social comparison or person focused criticism will also thwart the need for autonomy and relatedness. These conditions, unfortunately, are often found in competitive environments such as higher education in STEM fields, such as math and engineering. Autonomy supportive environments are associated with factors that foster the satisfaction of the three needs and associated with subsequent positive outcomes, whereas controlling environments hinder the fulfillment of the three needs [14, 15, 16, 17].
Research suggests that clusters of behaviors are typically demonstrated by autonomy supportive instructors. Autonomy supportive instructors tend to acknowledge and understand students’ experiences and perspectives broadly, listen more, attend to students’ interests, make fewer directives, resist giving students answers too quickly and are more responsive to students’ questions and comments, as well as give them an opportunity to talk and express themselves [18]. These behaviors help instructors notice when students are struggling, or need extra support, which also fosters students’ need for relatedness and competence. Autonomy supportive instructors also provide choices and options to students whenever possible, which could be as simple as letting the students choose their topic for a given assignment or giving them the option of demonstrating their knowledge through a presentation or a project. It could be to let students have the option to take a final exam or count one of the regular semester exams for more points. Instructors that are autonomy supportive make time for students’ independent work, and encourage as well as acknowledge signs of efforts, improvement, and mastery. They provide frequent and timely feedback and offer hints that foster progress when students are stuck, without overly directing their learning or immediately providing the answers. The feedback that they provide is informational, which means that it provides essential information to students to guide the improvement of their performance, master and develop skills, foster growth and a general sense of direction and competence.
In contrast, educators that are more controlling tend to make more demands, give more controlling directives, use directive types of questions as a way to control the flow of the conversation, and make frequent use of controlling language such as “should” and “have to”. They tend to monopolize the learning material, provide students too little time to work independently on solving problems, and instead tell students the answers without giving them an opportunity to formulate their own. The feedback that they provide tends to be vague, pressuring, and is not informational, which means it does not provide opportunities for improvement, development, mastery, development, and growth, and in turn does not foster well-being [19].
Out of the list of behavioral markers described above, arguably one of the easiest and most meaningful to foster autonomy support is to provide choices and options to students, and to understand, acknowledge and take their perspective into consideration as they engage in a task. A meta-analysis reviewing 41 studies involving participants of different ages and for a variety of behaviors, demonstrated that the provision of choice enhances the need for autonomy, as well as effort, task performance, and perceived competence [20, 21]. The provision of choice also led the students to perceive the course as more valuable [22]. Even though the provision of choice in a variety of learning environments is associated with a host of positive outcomes, often instructors, especially in introductory required classes, feel compelled or obligated because of accreditation requirements, to teach a certain content in a specific way to ensure that the students will be prepared to succeed in the following course in the sequence or meet requirements. In these cases, provision of choices and options may not be possible, and supporting students’ autonomy has to focus on other factors such as listening to students’ perspective, giving students and opportunity to talk and being responsive to their comments and questions, encouraging students’ effort and very importantly providing a meaningful rationale for the required and often difficult or boring academic work.
More recently, SDT researchers have extended this work by examining behaviors that would be associated not only with autonomy support, but also relatedness support and competence support, operationalized as the provision of structure [23]. In this work, the behaviors of being enthusiastic and eager and putting effort and energy into the class session were associated with relatedness support; the behaviors of giving clear instructions, offering the student a rationale for tasks, and providing positive feedback, were found to be associated with competence support (structure). Importantly, this work also demonstrated that the provision of a strong and meaningful rationale not only fosters the need for autonomy, but also provides competence support through the provision of structure [23]. It is often necessary for students to follow requirements and work within a structure for attainment of optimal outcomes. Understanding why this is necessary through the provision of a rationale is very important to foster self-determined motivation.
In higher education, choices are often limited because of accreditation requirements or course sequencing which puts pressure on instructors to cover certain material in certain courses. Therefore, the power of a meaningful rationale, to create environments that are autonomy supportive, cannot be understated in our work with faculty in higher education. When provision of choices and options for independent work is not possible, then the power of a meaningful and strong rationale is extremely important and fosters the internalization of the reasons for learning and in turn put more effort into their learning [24, 25].
In our recent research work around satisfaction of basic needs in higher education, we have taken a special interest in exploring the relative importance of the basic psychological needs, and how their intersection would influence motivational outcomes, learning outcomes and academic performance in higher education [26]. When instructors are first exposed to the importance of the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, they often wonder what it truly means to foster the basic psychological needs, especially the need for autonomy and relatedness. Research and experiences have provided several examples for the satisfaction for the need for autonomy, as I have discussed in this chapter. However, there is a lack of research examining the need for relatedness especially in higher education. Recent work around IMPACT has focused on the potential multidimensional nature of relatedness and the distinction between relatedness between the students themselves and the relatedness between the students and the instructor. One of the questions we have been asking is whether one aspect of relatedness is more important than the other in higher education. To answer this question, researchers in our lab have been conducting work to formally differentiate the two components of relatedness [27]. They created items to separately examine the connection students experience with their peers and their instructors. Results show that considering the potential multidimensional nature of relatedness is important. The extent to which students reported feeling connected with their instructor was most predictive of student interest and enjoyment in the course as well as self-reported effort. In contrast, peer relatedness was not significantly associated with any of the outcome variables.
Other novel and emerging work in SDT is specifically examining the intersection between autonomy supportive and culturally responsive environments. Early research shows that environments that are autonomy supportive can also be culturally responsive, inclusive, and respect the diversity of all students in the classroom and their lived experiences [28]. This work builds on research examining the psychosocial factors which influence the creation of positive learning environments including but not limited to teacher support, student support, and autonomy support [29, 30, 31].
This research has demonstrated and isolated the influence of four constructs fostering autonomy-supportive, culturally responsive learning environments: inclusiveness, cultural inclusion, diverse language and diverse pedagogy [28]. An autonomy-supportive learning environment which is also inclusive would fully include the students, allow them to communicate in their own language, be flexible, and adopt an open, warm, and curious attitude toward diversity and differences, which would allow instructors to gain a deep insight into the lived experiences and motives of their students.
6. Effects of autonomy supportive environments: Fosters self-determined motivation
When basic psychological needs are met, and autonomy supportive environments are created, it fosters an increase in self-determined motivation or autonomous motivation. In general, the behaviors of autonomy supportive teachers are positively associated with students’ autonomous motivation whereas the behaviors of controlling teachers are all negatively correlated with students’ autonomous motivation [18, 32].
SDT proposes the existence of 6 different types of motivation organized on a continuum based on their underlying level of self-determination from least self-determined (amotivation) to most self-determined (intrinsic motivation). In between these two forms of motivation are four different types of extrinsic motivation, and those are the ones I would like to specifically focus on in this chapter. These extrinsic forms of motivation vary in their underlying level of self-determined or autonomous motivation. Some forms of extrinsic motivations are self-determined, volitional or autonomous, while other forms of extrinsic motivation are non-self-determined, coerced, or controlled. Although all forms of extrinsic motivations underlie behaviors that are instrumental or serve as a means to an end, some of them are more internalized or self-determined than others. This means that the quality of the extrinsic motivation can vary and affect outcomes very differently (see Figure 1).
Figure 1.
Continuum of motivation.
6.1 Non-self-determined types of extrinsic motivation
Under the category of non-self-determined (controlled) extrinsic motivations, we find two types of extrinsic motivations: external regulation and introjected regulation. In general, when motivated by these forms of controlled motivations people feel pressured to act, either externally or internally. Extrinsic motivation that is regulated by external regulation underlies behaviors that are under external controls. This type of motivation is what people often refer to as simply extrinsic motivation. When extrinsically motivated, people engage in behaviors to obtain an external reward, to comply with an external demand, or avoid a negative outcome or punishment. In contrast, extrinsic motivation that is regulated by introjected regulation underlies behaviors that are under
6.2 Self-determined types of extrinsic motivation
Under the category of self-determined (autonomous) extrinsic motivations, are extrinsic motivations that are regulated by identification and integration. In general, when motivated by these forms of autonomous motivations people feel like their behaviors are aligned with their true sense of self and they feel a sense of agency in engaging in the behaviors. Extrinsic motivation that is regulated by identification underlies behaviors that are personally valued, relevant, and important. Often, this type of motivation is simply referred to as identified motivation or identification. Identification is a type of motivation that underlies behaviors that are consciously endorsed and valued. Therefore, people who mostly behave out of identified motivation perceive their behaviors as personally important to them and are able to clearly articulate the reasons why they engage in those behaviors. Personally accepting the value of a behavior would allow people to feel volitional in carrying it out. Extrinsic motivation that is regulated by integration underlies behavior that is integrated with other parts of the self or other behaviors. Often, this type of motivation is simply referred to as integrated motivation or integration. Integration is an active and transformational process which requires introspection and deep reflection. This process allows people to bring behaviors that could be introjected into alignment and congruence with the self and other values toward integration.
7. Fostering students’ learning experience through professional development
Our role as professional developers is to help instructors design courses that are autonomy supportive and student-centered, and that will enhance students’ learning experiences. We help instructors create these learning environments that will meet students’ basic psychological needs and foster self-determined, autonomous motivation, in order to foster growth, development, and well-being. We are not simply teaching the mind of the students; we are teaching the whole student and need to focus on students’ growth and well-being in addition to academic goals and pursuits.
It is important to note that there is still a lack of research using SDT motivation principles to understand learning environments in higher education. The work emanating from our research lab and coming from our work with IMPACT is contributing to this body of knowledge and builds on the large amount of research conducted during the pre-college years. In conducting this research and growing the IMPACT program over the years, we have found that it is possible to come along side and teach college instructors how to become more autonomy supportive and create these autonomy-supportive learning environments for their students.
These learning environments created by instructors and perceived as autonomy supportive by college students across many disciplines, including STEM, are associated with greater satisfaction of basic psychological needs, self-determined motivation, well-being, and in turn higher levels of achievement as measured by course grades (GPA) and higher levels of perceived learning as assessed by the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) [33]. In fact, the creation of an autonomy supportive environment regardless of the transformation implemented, is the most important and consistent predictor of the motivational and educational outcomes studied, including basic psychological needs, student motivation and engagement, perceived learning attainment and learning transfer, as well as actual performance as measured by grades [12, 29, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39].
In recent years, especially during the Covid pandemic, the importance and prevalence of online learning has risen. In addition to the necessities of online learning created by the pandemic, online learning provides access to higher education to students who otherwise would not be able to benefit from education. Our research work in this area suggests that the teaching and learning motivational model based in SDT is applicable to the online learning environments with similar results then those found across in-person environments [8, 9, 36, 40, 41].
8. What are we teaching during professional development?
In our professional development program IMPACT, and other professional development workshops we offer to instructors, we generally emphasize the applications of SDT principles and specifically the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This allows us to shift our professional development approach from a mostly prescriptive course redesign model philosophy to a more flexible, autonomy-supportive model of professional development. In working with instructors, we also focus on supporting their basic psychological needs, emphasizing autonomy and choice in designing the learning environment and building a relationship of trust where instructors feel like they belong, as we work to transform the learning environment for the students. The community that is created during the professional development program provides a space to regularly exchange ideas, share challenges and successes with other instructors and developers who are experiencing very similar things in their classrooms. This cultivates and fosters an authentic sense of belonging and trust. An additional benefit of this approach is that it allowed us to successfully scale the IMPACT program from 12 courses in 2012 to 60 courses a year and over 600 courses transformed to date and as many instructors involved across all colleges at Purdue who have together reached 91 percent of the students enrolled at Purdue University [42].
In essence and at the core of what we do during professional development with instructors, is to focus on an innovative way of thinking about and approach teaching and learning; to focus on people;
In contrast, when focusing on the “what” of redesign, and specific models and tools, faculty report feeling restrained, constrained, and limited by the lack of flexibility and the imposition of certain redesign models for their transformation. This is especially true for instructors in the social sciences who tend to make use of narratives and stories to engage students with their experiences as disciplinary experts. When the structure of a professional development program is too constraining, instructors perceive that the value of their work on creative assignments and activities is being diminished in favor of cookie-cutter redesign models. It is experienced as a loss of autonomy and agency. Allowing faculty to explore and sample different tools and strategies and combine them together in a flexible way, under the guidance of our support team of instructional developers, re-establish instructors’ autonomy, volition, and agency, therefore supporting their basic psychological needs, which in turn enhances their commitment, engagement, and effort toward professional development. Being more flexible and autonomy supportive with instructors allows them to clarify their own transformation goals while also allowing the support team members to draw from their particular expertise to foster successful transformations.
This approach in working with instructors creates a shift in their way of thinking about their teaching. In supporting instructors’ basic psychological needs, it allows them to explore their pedagogical practices deeply, safely, and intentionally. It teaches them a set of habits of mind around teaching and learning, and fosters a process of inquiry and reflection which frequently brings to mind questions like “how can I support my students’ basic psychological needs?” and “how will this assignment be perceived by students?” or “will this activity or assignment foster the need for competence while also supporting the students’ needs for autonomy and relatedness?” or “am I creating an environment that is autonomy supportive, inclusive, and equitable so all my students can succeed and feel like they belong?” and “which voices are heard in my syllabus, course content, assignments?” It is a sort of metacognitive and “meta-affective” exercise encouraging instructors to think about what will get their students involved by reflecting on the types of environments that contribute to motivation and engagement. When faculty fellows realize and deeply understand that students are humans just like them, and therefore guided by the same motivation principles which contribute to engagement, well-being, and growth, they start to think, feel, and act differently in regard to their teaching [42].
Through this type of professional development, faculty fellows learn to apply teaching and learning principles based in SDT, in new contexts, situations, and courses they are teaching, not only the course they initially intended to redesign. This shift has led instructors to apply and transfer the skills and insights they acquire during the professional development program to hundreds of other courses they are also teaching. We refer to those as “influenced courses”. Everyone on the team is involved in a deep process of reflection, applying the principles presented in the sessions to their experiences in the classroom, outside of the classroom, and facilitating the FLC. It also provides a renewed emphasis on student engagement and student-centered learning. Throughout our discussions, we strive to bring it back to the student and the student experience. This emphasis on student engagement and student learning as a primary goal of educators also contributes to enhance the focus on mastery and competency, and de-prioritize grades and DFW rates as the only or most important measure of student success.
9. De-prioritizing grades and high stakes evaluation is good for student engagement and learning
SDT has a lot to say about the emphasis on grades and high stakes evaluations as a way to motivate students. Although grades and evaluations are ubiquitous in school and most certainly in post-secondary education, their effect on intrinsic motivation and engagement has been shown to be consistently deleterious when used as a motivator of behavior [43]. In education, grades are perceived to be the ultimate reward and incentive and are a universal feature of classrooms all around the country and most of the industrialized world. In school, almost everything is evaluated and graded, and normative comparisons are made with grades as a way to compare students against one another. This social comparison with grades is very pervasive especially in normative grading practices. Although it is often accepted in higher education that grades and other academic rewards serve as great motivators of student behavior, the overwhelming research evidence instead suggest that grades consistently act to reduce intrinsic motivation and internalization, and to be a poor motivational strategy [43].
Educators and school administrators assume that rewards and grades serve as an incentive that will direct behavior in a certain way toward certain outcomes. In fact, this is exactly why grades tend to be perceived as controlling and reduce intrinsic motivation, self-determined motivation, and internalization [9, 43]. Their main function tends to be perceived as a way to control behaviors and shift the perceived locus of causality of the behavior toward external incentives as opposed to internalized and self-directed behaviors. In fact, there is very little empirical evidence or theoretical support suggesting that grades and evaluations have any positive effect on motivation, engagement, and competence [9, 43].
Even though the research evidence supporting the negative impact of grades on motivation is compelling, grades and persistence rates are nonetheless often included as outcome variables in models testing the effect of autonomy supportive environments on educational outcomes. Among the education community, for better or worse, grades are considered a proxy of academic performance and often an outcome variable of interest. In addition, grades, retention, and persistence rates are also common variables required in studies funded by large federal grants, such as those from the Department of Education (DoE) or the National Science Foundation (NSF). In our own research work based on the IMPACT program, we have often included grades as an outcome variable for the reasons mentioned above. What we tend to find is that the effect of autonomy supportive environments and satisfaction of the basic psychological needs on course or semester grade is often small, although positive and significant in the IMPACT very large data sets [12, 36].
Rewards in general and grades specifically carry two distinct functional meanings or significance; one is informational and the other one is controlling. The informational aspect of grades provides competence-relevant feedback to students and can foster improvements in performance through the provision of clear informational feedback, which provides guidance to students. The professional development program IMPACT fosters the use of informational feedback and encourages instructors to think about grades and other forms of evaluations and assessments as a way to provide information to students to foster their academic growth, development, and learning. In some instances, instructors have adopted pedagogical strategies where they do not assign formal grades to students, but instead focus on a developmental process where students are guided to reflect and evaluate their own performance against their own standards, established in collaboration with the instructors. This emerging assessment strategy, referred to as “ungrading”, is very much aligned with the motivational principles of SDT and has been recently discussed in peer reviewed journals and at national conferences [44, 45]. It emphasizes student learning rather than sorting and judging students. It is focused on student self-evaluation and use of metacognition to assess their own performance and growth. The students assigned themselves a grade at the end of the term, which the instructor has the right to change as appropriate. However, instructors who have been using the practice for several years report that students grade themselves incredibly fairly, sometimes too harshly, and if anything, instructors have had to raise students assigned grades not lower them at the end of the term [45].
Most of the time, however, grades are perceived to be controlling and a way to rank students and place them in categories, with no information on how to improve. Without the informational feedback, grades provide a normative rank about one’s standing in relation to other students. They serve a strong social comparison function and often pressure students to do better than someone else, or to perform in a certain way under certain arbitrary conditions. This focus emphasizes the controlling aspect and meaning of the grade and deter students from being interested in learning [9, 43]. These effects are seen in longitudinal naturalistic settings examining the negative impact of grading on outcomes in subsequent years and in controlled laboratory environments [46, 47]. Results showed that the students who studied with the goal of taking a test, reported lower levels of self-determined motivation as well as worse performance on the actual test compared to the students who studied with the goal of teaching the material to other students. This can be explained because the students who studied in order to take a test, mostly experienced the controlling aspect of the grading practice, focused on passing the test, and felt pressured and controlled by the experience. In contrast, the students who focused on teaching the material to others, experienced more of the informational aspect of the activity, and the opportunity to relate the material and actively use the material in an interaction with other students. This condition fostered an autonomy supportive environment through the satisfaction of the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness [46].
One of the most interesting impacts of professional development programs aimed at fostering basic psychological needs and motivation such as the IMPACT program, is the culture shift that occurs once a critical mass of instructors take part in the professional development and begin to experience the benefits of the changes in their pedagogical practices. Instructors talk to other instructors about what they are learning in the program and how they are applying the principles to the courses and the changes they are noticing in their students. Instructors report increased level of engagement in their students, as well as enhanced critical thinking and problem-solving skills, from implementing the motivational principles and creating learning environments that are autonomy supportive and engaging through meeting their students’ basic psychological needs. Over the years, instructors have reported on their impressions of the IMPACT professional development program through interviews and focus groups. In the early years of IMPACT, tenured faculty would talk about how good IMPACT was, but they would not recommend instructors to engage with professional development like this too early in their career, because of the greater need to focus on research. In recent years, this narrative has shifted. Tenured faculty are now saying that instead of discouraging early career instructors from participating in IMPACT, everyone should participate in professional development like this in their first year as instructors. Talk about a culture shift! Emphasizing motivational principles and focusing on people, instructors, and students, as agents of change, and supporting their basic psychological needs, is enacting a shift in the teaching and learning culture and pedagogical practices. It is imperative that we continue to spread this work so that a shift in higher education can occur [42].
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