To be effective educators, teachers must measure student understanding against high expectations. If expectations are low, students will find the content and/or performance tasks to be too easy and will lack motivation to learn. On the other hand, if expectations are appropriately challenging, students will be more motivated to learn.
High Expectations = High Motivation to Learn
Low Expectations = Low Motivation to Learn
The difficultly level of assessments is strongly correlated with how students perceive a teacher's expectations for their learning. Goodwin and Hubble (2013) explain that designing and using assessments that challenge students is a great way for teachers to reflect high expectations. Therefore, teachers should be mindful to create challenging assessments to let students know that they are expected to actually learn.
Another way to reflect high expectation is to focus grades on student learning (Goodwin and Hubble, 2013). Oftentimes teachers make the mistake of focusing grades on something other than learning, which can soften expectations. As Bursuck et al. (1996) note, expectations are most commonly softened by making exceptions and allowances for effort, ability, behavior, or attitude in the grading process. Hence, teachers should avoid this error and keep grades focused on actual student learning. By doing so, high expectations will be consistently communicated to students.
High Expectations = High Motivation to Learn
Low Expectations = Low Motivation to Learn
The difficultly level of assessments is strongly correlated with how students perceive a teacher's expectations for their learning. Goodwin and Hubble (2013) explain that designing and using assessments that challenge students is a great way for teachers to reflect high expectations. Therefore, teachers should be mindful to create challenging assessments to let students know that they are expected to actually learn.
Another way to reflect high expectation is to focus grades on student learning (Goodwin and Hubble, 2013). Oftentimes teachers make the mistake of focusing grades on something other than learning, which can soften expectations. As Bursuck et al. (1996) note, expectations are most commonly softened by making exceptions and allowances for effort, ability, behavior, or attitude in the grading process. Hence, teachers should avoid this error and keep grades focused on actual student learning. By doing so, high expectations will be consistently communicated to students.