Students’ Motivation for Standardized Math Exams

Bibliographic Data

ID9730839
AuthorsKatherine E Ryan (The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 230B Education Building, 1310 South Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820; . Her research interests include educational accountability issues and high-stakes assessment, corresponding author), Allison M Ryan (The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 230B Education Building, 1310 South Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820; . Her research interests include motivation and engagement and the intersection of social and academic concerns for students during early adolescence), Keena Arbuthnot (Harvard Graduate School of Education, 13 Appian Way, 450 Gutman Library, Cambridge, MA 02138; . Her research examines issues related to educational measurement, testing policy, and racial and gender achievement gaps), Maurice Samuels (The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 230B Education Building, 1310 South Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820; . His research interests include the evaluation of school accountability systems at the school and state levels and the use of democratic and culturally responsive approaches in program evaluation)
Year2007
Volume36
Issue1
Pages5-13
Publication date2007-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducational Researcher (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-189X • E-ISSN: 1935-102X
PublisherAmerican Educational Research Association (AERA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3102/0013189x06298001
OpenAlexW2124560652
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited55

The recent No Child Left Behind legislation has defined a vital role for large-scale assessment in determining whether students are learning. Given this increased role of standardized testing as a means of accountability, the purpose of this article is to consider how individual differences in motivational and psychological processes may contribute to performance on high-stakes math assessments. The authors consider individual differences in processes that prior research has found to be important to achievement: achievement goals, value, self-concept, self-efficacy, test anxiety, and cognitive processes. The authors present excerpts from interviews with eighth-grade test takers to illustrate these different achievement-related motivational beliefs, affect, and cognitive processing. Implications for future research studying the situational pressures involved in high-stakes assessments are discussed

Academic achievement · Accountability · Achievement test · Affect (linguistics · Anxiety · Cognition · Developmental psychology · Mathematics education · Need for achievement · Situational ethics · Standardized test · Test (biology · Test anxiety · Education, Achievement, and Giftedness · Psychology · School Choice and Performance · Social Psychology · Student Assessment and Feedback

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