Hard Work and High Expectations: Motivating Students to Learn

by Tommy M Tomlinson

Across America, in state after state, years of major reforms in education have failed to produce the anticipated improvement in the quality of our schools or the academic achievement of our students. Late in 1990, as the reform debate intensified, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement held a national conference on student motivation to help answer such questions What part should students play in learning? What are their responsibilities? What can we do to raise the amount and quality of student effort to the levels that excellence requires? This booklet is a sketch of what attendees learned. The touchstone of the conference was the mounting imperative that ALL of America’s students must rise to the challenge of higher standards of achievement if the nation is to continue to thrive. One conclusion cannot be Unless the untapped power of student effort and engagement is activated and harnessed to learning, we are unlikely to realize the benefits to achievement that the new reforms aim to make possible. Tommy M. Tomlinson conceived, organized, and chaired the conference and prepared this concise summary of the contributors’ views and conclusions.

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992