Improving children's attainment, motivation and self-esteem

Abstract

Psychological Services are committed to working with local authority colleagues to close the gap between the lowest achieving and attaining group of pupils and the rest of the school population. Children who do not experience success in school often become discouraged. They blame themselves, feel 'stupid', and lack motivation. This can mean that they avoid practising those very skills that they need in order to progress. This applies to a significant number of children. This project aimed to address this problem by changing the ways children think about themselves and the ways they explain their lack of achievement to themselves. It was hypothesised that by helping the children to think more positively about themselves and by changing the ways in which they thought about success and failure (changing their attributions from ability to effort) they could be helped to increase their motivation and their attainment. Gains were made by pupils in the measured areas of reading and spelling. Post-project questionnaires were issued to pupils, teachers, and parents and results indicated that parents and especially the pupils are very aware of positive changes in motivation, attainment and self esteem. These changes are less apparent to the teachers.