Page 409 - Learning to Learn

LEARNING TO LEARN: BECOMING A SELF -GROWER 409
EXPERIENCE 14: MY TURN TO SHINE
R EADINGS
Case studies about reactions to evaluation (below)
Pajares, F. (2000, January). Schooling in America: Myths, mixed messages, and good intentions. Lec-
ture delivered at the Great Teachers Lecture Series, Cannon Chapel, Emory University, Atlanta.
http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/pajaresgtl.html (Read at least from “What are self-efficacy be-
liefs” to the end.)
Case Study One:
A high school honor student spent his high school career coasting
through by obtaining As in classes that required no outside work and
Bs in classes that would require outside effort to get As. After being
accepted into a highly selective college, he decided that he would
have to work harder. The first college assignment in his freshmen
seminar was a 15-page paper. He put 40 hours of work into this first
paper and felt confident in the thought and effort that he put into the
paper. Although this college didn’t have grades, the feedback was not absent of evaluation. As everyone
in the class was reading through the comments the instructor had written on each page of their papers, he
was surprised by the lack of any comments on any page of his paper. He began to wonder if his instructor
had even read the paper until he saw a single statement written on the bottom of the last page: “Dan, the
English language is not just foreign to you but alien.”
His reaction to this evaluation was to carefully avoid situations where he would have to write papers
in the future. Even during the pursuit of a triple major, a Masters Degree, and a PhD, he was able to
avoid additional formal writing with the exception of his senior thesis, Masters thesis, and dissertation.
Through help from friends, in terms of editing, reviewing, and proofreading, Dan was able to avoid
having to do any formal writing until his doctoral committee found out about his academic liability and
forced him to take a technical writing course.
Case Study Two:
As a student, Jim worked hard in high school and was able to get mostly As with few Bs and one
memorable C. With this record, he was able to get into a very good public university. During the first
semester, applying the same strategies that had worked in high school, he was able to manage only Cs.
While many of the people in his life were telling him that he should consider transferring to a community
college, he decided to work harder and try one more semester before making any change in schools.
Fortunately, he found a study group that included Ralph, a classmate in one of Jim’s engineering classes.
Ralph studied in a way that was very different from what Jim had always done: Ralph would predict
what content would most likely be on the exam, make up potential exam questions and work to answer
them, and challenge himself by solving problems in different ways (instead of simply memorizing the
sample problems worked in class or presented in the textbook). Jim began to work with Ralph, trading
questions with him, comparing different methods of solving problems, and challenging each other.
At the end of the next semester, all Jim’s Cs had turned into a mixture of Cs and Bs. Not long afterward,
Jim’s grades were a mixture of As and Bs. Eventually he began graduate school.
R ESOURCES
Nurturing Academic Confidence by Frank Pajares, Emory Report, Vol 52, No. 21 available at:
www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erarchive/2000/February/erfebruary.14/2_14_00pajares.html