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Influencing graduatestudents' classroomachievement, homeworkhabits and motivation tolearn with verbal praiseDawson R. HancockPublished online: 02 Dec 2010.
To cite this article: Dawson R. Hancock (2002) Influencing graduate students'classroom achievement, homework habits and motivation to learn with verbalpraise, Educational Research, 44:1, 83-95, DOI: 10.1080/00131880110107379
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In� uencing graduate students’classroom achievement,homework habits andmotivation to learn with verbalpraiseDawson R. Hancock, Department of Educational Administration,Research, and Technology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte,Charlotte, North Carolina 28223-0001, USA
Summary
Identifying factors that in� uence students’ learning in the classroom continuesto be an important objective of educators at all levels. To address this issue,researchers have investigated a multitude of instructional variables that impactstudents’ motivation to learn. One instructional variable, verbal praise, has oftenbeen identi� ed as an important mediator in the enhancement of students’ moti-vation to learn. However, the lack of consistent � ndings regarding students’ reac-tions to verbal praise, combined with the lack of research on adult learners,prompted the current investigation. Using an experimental design, this studyrevealed that graduate students exposed to well-administered verbal praise by aprofessor performed signi� cantly better on a professor-created examination,spent signi� cantly more time doing homework and exhibited higher motivationto learn in the classroom than did students who received no verbal praise. Charac-teristics of effective verbal praise that contributed to these outcomes, the poten-tial usefulness of verbal praise as a reinforcer of student motivations anddirections for future research are discussed.
Keywords: motivation to learn, classroom achievement, homework habits,graduate education
Determination of factors that in� uence students’ learning in the classroom con-tinues to be an important objective of teachers and administrators at all levels
Address for correspondence: Dr Dawson R. Hancock, Department of EducationalAdministration, Research, and Technology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte,9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, North Carolina 28223-0001, USA.
Educational Research Vol. 44 No. 1 Spring 2002 83–95
Educational Research ISSN 0013-1881/print/ISSN 1469-5847 online © 2002 NFERhttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/0013188011010737 9
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(Carrotte, 1999). To address this issue, researchers have investigated a multitudeof instructional variables that impact students’ motivation to learn (Covington,1998; Marshall, 1992; Yair, 2000). One instructional variable, verbal praise, hasoften been identi� ed as an important mediator in the enhancement of students’motivation in the classroom (Bergin, 1999; Mueller and Dweck, 1998; Thomp-son, 1997). Almost all of the current dominant theories of motivation – goalorientation theory (Ames, 1992; Anderman and Maehr, 1994; Nicholls, 1989),attribution theory (Weiner, 1985), expectancy 3 value theory (Eccles [Parsons]et al., 1983;Wig� eld and Eccles, 1992), � ow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) andself-ef� cacy theory (Bandura, 1997) – include as an element the in� uence ofverbal praise and other forms of external reinforcement on students’ motivation(Silverman and Casazza, 2000). Although popular among motivation theorists,the impact of verbal praise in the classroom has often been mixed (Elliott, Huftonand Hildreth, 1999; Pintrich and Schunk, 1996; Stipek, 1998; Theall andFranklin, 1999).
Most recent research has supported the early � ndings of Brophy (1981) thateffective verbal praise must (a) specify clearly the behaviour being reinforced;(b) be believable to the recipient of the praise; (c) be contingent upon the behav-iour being reinforced; and (d) be offered soon after the occurrence of thebehaviour being reinforced (Burden, 1995; Woolfolk, 1998). Other investigationshave revealed that teachers should praise (a) students when they show self-management skills, such as monitoring their time in order to complete a taskduring an allotted period; (b) students’ accomplishments and progress during aninstructional period, not just the students’ participation in it; and (c) meaning-fully by withholding undeserved praise, either because the student has not trulyearned it or because task accomplishment is too easy to be especially praiseworthy(Eggen and Kauchak, 1999). These research efforts have demonstrated that ifimplemented in accordance with these principles, verbal praise can signi� cantlyenhance learning in the classroom (Brophy, 1999; McCown, Driscoll and Roop,1995).
Unfortunately, some research efforts have discovered negative outcomesassociated with verbal praise, particularly when teachers are not aware of how toavoid its potential pitfalls. For example, some investigations have shown thateffusive praise given after every answer is ineffective, even if the teacher is sincere(Emmer, 1988). Other studies have found that misbehaving students remain dis-ruptive when teachers use verbal praise as their sole classroom management strat-egy (P� ffner, Rosen and O’Leary, 1985). Burden (1995) found that if each andevery desired student response is praised, the praise often sounds stilted and the� ow of the lesson is disrupted. Others have suggested that teachers’ use of praisesometimes focuses students on learning to win rather than on learning for its ownsake (Woolfolk, 1998). Some researchers have suggested that verbal praise mayconvey a message of teacher control at the expense of fostering student auton-omy (Good and Brophy, 1994; Kohn, 1993). Finally, studies have shown thatmany teachers’ use of praise depends as much on the type of student – highachieving,well behaved, attentive – as on the nature of a student’s answers. Theseteachers tend to praise based on the responses they expect to receive as much ason those they actually hear (Brophy, 1981; Eggen and Kauchak, 1999).
Learning in the classroom is often inferred from students’ achievement levelson teacher-made examinations (Oosterhof, 1999; Wood and Wood, 1996).Whenwell-designed and constructed, teacher-created tests provide valid assessments ofmany aspects of student learning (Gronlund, 1998). Research has demonstrated
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that a signi� cant portion of teachers’ time is often devoted to encouragingstudents to engage in behaviours that lead to high achievement levels on teacher-made tests (Linn and Gronlund, 2000). One behaviour often associated withincreased student achievement has been engagement in homework outside of theclassroom in preparation for each day’s lesson.
Homework is a common form of independent practice, and its positive effectson learning have been well-established (Eggen and Kauchak, 1999). Particularlywhen it is aligned with classroom work and when teachers comment on it(Cooper, 1989; Dempster, 1991), homework’s positive effects have includedimproved comprehension, more constructive use of in-class time and bettergrades (Brophy and Good, 1986; Keith, 1982). In light of these � ndings,teachers’ use of verbal praise to encourage students to engage in homework is afrequent occurrence in many classrooms.
Student motivation to learn course content is another outcome often exam-ined by educational researchers (Hunter, 1985; Pintrich and Schrauben, 1992).One frequently used measure of motivation, the Motivated Strategies for LearningQuestionnaire (MSLQ: Pintrich et al., 1993), views students as active processorsof information whose beliefs and cognitions are important mediators of instruc-tional input. The MSLQ is a self-report instrument that may be used to assesscollege students’ motivational orientations in a college course. Many researchers(Barlia and Beeth, 1999; Bembenutty et al., 1998; Lin and McKeachie, 1999;Pintrich et al., 1993) have demonstrated the MSLQ’s usefulness in measuringstudents’ motivation to learn in the classroom.
Unfortunately, the majority of research on the use and effects of verbal praisehas been conducted on populations in kindergarten through 12th grade. Yet evenin the few studies involving older students, research � ndings have often con-� icted. For example, Barker (1992) found that college-age students reacted wellto verbal praise that provided information about their competence or the valueof their accomplishments. On the other hand, Good (1987) reported that olderstudents ignored praise they perceived as invalid and interpreted praise given foreasy tasks as an indication that the teacher had low expectations of them.Hancock (2000) discovered that although effectively administered verbal praisesigni� cantly increased college students’ motivation to do homework, the samepraise did not result in comparable increases in achievement on a teacher-createdtest.
The lack of consistent � ndings regarding students’ reactions to verbal praisein the classroom, combined with the scarcity of research on post-secondarystudents, was the purpose for conducting the current study. Based on previousresearch suggesting the potential usefulness of properly administered verbalpraise, this study hypothesized that post-secondary students exposed to well-administered verbal praise by a professor would demonstrate higher achievementlevels on a professor-made examination, would spend signi� cantly more timepreparing at home (i.e. doing homework) for each lesson and would demonstratehigher levels of motivation to learn in the classroom than would students whoreceived no well-administered verbal praise.
Method
Fifty-four � rst-year graduate students, enrolled in a one-semester course titled‘Educational Research Methods’ at a middle-size, state-supported university in
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the south-eastern United States, participated in this study. Each student was pur-suing an advanced degree in the � eld of education; 93 per cent had previouslyearned an initial teaching license; and 49 of the students were female and � vemale.
The 54 students were enrolled in one of two sections of relatively equal size –sections #1 and #2 contained 28 and 26 students respectively. The professortaught the two sections on consecutive evenings once a week for 16 weeks. There-fore, each section met a total of 16 times during the semester. Each lesson was 2hours and 50 minutes in duration and included a 10-minute break in the middleof each lesson.
Since random assignment of students to the sections was not possible, carefulmatching of the sections’ populations occurred with respect to age, gender,degree programme, cumulative grade point average and socio-economic status.No signi� cant differences existed between the two sections with respect to thesevariables.
During the � rst of the 16 lessons, each student in each section was given a per-sonal copy of a ‘Time spent on homework’ log (see Appendix) and was asked towrite her/his name at the top. The ‘Time spent on homework’ log was similar toa piece of graph-paper upon which students could record the amount of timespent doing homework in preparation for selected lessons. The horizontal axis ofthe log re� ected the lesson numbers (i.e. #1 to #16) of the course. The verticalaxis of the log, divided into 5-minute intervals from 60 to 240 min, allowedstudents to indicate the amount of time spent studying for each selected lesson.Then, reading from a script to ensure uniformity of instructions between sec-tions, the professor told the students that at the beginning of a few randomlyselected lessons of the course, he would ask the students to record the amountof time that they had spent on homework in preparation for that day’s lesson.Towards that end, students were told to place a dot in the rectangle correspond-ing to the amount of time spent studying (illustrated on the vertical axis of thelog) for that particular lesson (illustrated on the horizontal axis of the log). Inaddition, students were told that the department expected most students todevote an average of about 3 hours (i.e. 180 min) of time outside of the class-room preparing for each lesson. Furthermore, students were told that the reasonfor keeping this log was to allow the professor to know how much time studentswere spending on homework in order to ensure that his assignments were in com-pliance with departmental expectations. To control for the extraneous variable ofstudents’ concern that their course grade might be impacted by the amount oftime they reported as having spent on homework, the professor emphasized thatthe course was objective-based and criterion-referenced; therefore, no portion ofone’s course grade would be based on the amount of time spent on homework.As a reminder, this fact (i.e. that time spent on homework in preparation forlessons would not be part of a student’s course grade) was reiterated at the begin-ning of lessons #3, #9 and #13.
During the 16 lessons of the course, the professor began � ve randomly selectedlessons (i.e. lessons #2, #4, #8, #11 and #14) by giving each student in eachsection his or her personal ‘Time spent on homework’ log. Then, the professorasked the students to record the amount of time they had spent on homework inpreparation for that day’s lesson by placing a dot in the appropriate rectangle.After waiting approximately 1 minute for the students in each section to place adot in the appropriate rectangle, the professor walked around the room collect-ing each individual’s ‘Time spent on homework’ log.
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While collecting the logs, in order to implement the treatments of ‘no verbalpraise’ or ‘verbal praise’, the professor’s behaviours in section #1 differed fromhis behaviours in section #2. In section #1 (i.e. the ‘no verbal praise’ treatment),as he took each student’s log, the professor looked brie� y at the student’s place-ment of the dot for that lesson and simply said ‘thank you’ to the student. Asdetermined by Brophy’s (1981) early research � ndings, the words ‘thank you’wereconsidered an innocuous acknowledgement that homework was accomplishedand not an expression of verbal praise. However, in section #2 (i.e. the ‘verbalpraise’ treatment), as he took each student’s log, the professor looked brie� y atthe placement of the dot for that lesson, and if the dot had been placed at orgreater than 180 min (i.e. 3 hours), the instructor enthusiastically said either‘good job,’ ‘very good’ or ‘great work’ to the student. In accordance with Brophy’sresearch � ndings, ‘good job’, ‘very good’ and ‘great work’ were considered overtexpressions of praise. If the student’s dot had been placed at less than 3 hours,the professor responded in the same manner in which he had responded to allstudents in section #1 by simply saying ‘thank you’ to the student. In both sec-tions, all students within the section witnessed and heard the professor’s verbalresponse of either ‘thank you’, ‘good job’, ‘very good’ or ‘great work’ after heexamined each student’s ‘Time spent on homework’ log.
Once all logs were collected, the professor, who was also this study’s primaryinvestigator, taught each day’s lesson in exactly the same manner in each section.To ensure similarity of instruction between the sections and to minimize thepossibility of experimenter bias, lessons #2, #8 and #14 were video taped andexamined by two impartial raters who did not know which section was the ‘noverbal praise’ treatment and which the ‘verbal praise’ treatment. Mean correla-tions of 0.801 between the raters were obtained, suggesting that no experimenterbias existed.
During lesson #15, students were asked to complete the � rst section of the 81-item MSLQ designed to measure students’ motivation to learn in the course. The26 items in this section assessed students’ motivational tendencies towards intrin-sic and extrinsic goal orientation, task value, self-ef� cacy, competence, socialdesirability, control belief and expectancy for success. Students were asked toconsider only the class in which they were taking the MSLQ when responding tothe items. Students responded to each item using a seven-point Likert scale inwhich the � rst and seventh points were anchored (i.e. ‘not at all true of me’ to‘very true of me’). Students spent an average of 16 min completing the ques-tionnaire. Each student’s motivation level was attained by averaging his/her itemresponses.
Examining a whole pattern of research � ndings produced by Garcia andPintrich (1995), Lin and McKeachie (1999), Pintrich and Garcia (1991) andPintrich et al. (1993), support for the internal consistency, predictive validity andconstruct validity of the MSLQ has been established. Internal consistency esti-mates have ranged from 0.62 to 0.93. Examining predictive validity in terms ofrelations between MSLQ scores and standardized course grades, the motivationalcomponents have shown signi� cant correlations (average r = 0.29) with � nalgrades in the expected directions. Goodness of � t indices generated by a LISRELprogram have suggested that the general model of motivation is indeed a reason-able representation of the data.
During lesson #16, a professor-created, criterion-referenced � nal examinationwas administered in both sections. The examination required students to answerquestions related to many of the lesson objectives taught during the course. A
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total of 37 features were expected in each student’s answers to the test items.Points were awarded when features were present.
The content validity of the professor-made test was established by aligning thetest items to the lesson objectives and having two experts review the test forcontent. All evidence indicated acceptable content validity. Once all examinationswere scored, a split-half reliability coef� cient of 0.76 was obtained using theSpearman–Brown formula.
Once all data were collected, the average scores on the professor-made test, theaverage amounts of time spent on homework for the � ve randomly selectedlessons and the average levels of motivation were calculated for each section. Totest the hypothesis that post-secondary students exposed to well-administeredverbal praise by a professor would demonstrate higher achievement levels on aprofessor-made examination than would students who received no well-admin-istered verbal praise, a t-test was computed to determine if the achievementmeans of the two sample distributions differed signi� cantly. To test the hypoth-esis that post-secondary students exposed to well-administered verbal praise bya professor would spend signi� cantly more time preparing at home (i.e. doinghomework) for each lesson than would students who received no well-admin-istered verbal praise, a t-test was computed to compare the amount of time spenton homework by the ‘no verbal praise’ treatment group with the amount of timespent on homework by the ‘verbal praise’ treatment group. To test the hypothe-sis that post-secondary students exposed to well-administered verbal praise by aprofessor would demonstrate higher motivation levels to learn in the classroomthan would students who received no well-administered verbal praise, a t-test wascomputed to determine if the motivation levels of the two sample distributionsdiffered signi� cantly.
Results
As illustrated in Table 1, the 26 students in the ‘verbal praise’ condition (i.e.section #2) completed and submitted their ‘Time spent on homework’ logs a totalof 130 times (i.e. 26 students times � ve equals 130 submissions). Of those 130submissions, the students heard the professor enthusiastically say ‘good job’, ‘verygood’ or ‘great work’ 35 times (i.e. the number of times students indicated ontheir logs that they had studied 3 hours or more for the lesson). The other 95times (i.e. the number of times students indicated on their logs that they hadstudied less than three hours for the lesson), the students heard the professorsimply say ‘thank you’. In other words, students in this condition received verbalpraise approximately 27 per cent of the time.
As expected, the 28 students in the ‘no verbal praise’ condition (i.e. section #1)heard the professor simply say ‘thank you’ 140 times (i.e. 28 students times � velessons in which the ‘Time spent on homework’ logs were completed and returnedto the professor).
Testing the hypothesis that post-secondary students exposed to well-admin-istered verbal praise by a professor would demonstrate higher achievement levelson a professor-made examination than would students who received no well-administered verbal praise, a t-test analysis revealed that the 28 students in the‘no verbal praise’ treatment group scored an average of 81.86 per cent on theexamination (SD = 6.06), whereas the 26 students exposed to the ‘verbal praise’condition averaged 85.11 per cent on the examination (SD = 5.49). This
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difference (3.25 per cent) was statistically signi� cant (t(52) = 2.065, p = 0.044)with an effect size of 0.54.
Testing the hypothesis that post-secondary students exposed to well-administered verbal praise by a professor would spend signi� cantly more timepreparing at home (i.e. doing homework) for each lesson than would studentswho received no well-administered verbal praise, a t-test analysis indicated thatthe 28 students in the ‘no verbal praise’ treatment group spent an average of137.14 min (SD = 15.17) studying for each lesson, whereas the twenty-sixstudents exposed to the ‘verbal praise’ condition studied an average of 149.38min (SD = 22.16) for each lesson. This difference (12.24 min) was statisticallysigni� cant (t(52) = 2.38, p = 0.021) with an effect size of 0.80.
Testing the hypothesis that post-secondary students exposed to well-admin-istered verbal praise by a professor would demonstrate higher motivation levelsto learn in the classroom than would students who received no well-administeredverbal praise, a t-test analysis revealed that the 28 students in the ‘no verbal praise’treatment group averaged 4.97 on the motivation instrument (SD = 0.251),whereas the 26 students exposed to the ‘verbal praise’ condition averaged 5.11on the motivation instrument (SD = 0.221). This difference (0.14) was statisti-cally signi� cant (t(52) = 2.170, p = 0.035) with an effect size of 0.56.
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of a professor’s verbal praiseon post-secondary students’ achievement levels, amount of time spent on home-work and motivation to learn in a higher education course. The � ndings revealthat students exposed to well-administered verbal praise by the professor demon-strated signi� cantly higher achievement levels on a professor-made examination,spent signi� cantly more time doing homework for each lesson and exhibitedsigni� cantly more motivation to learn in the course than did students whoreceived no well-administered verbal praise. In light of previous con� ictingresearch regarding the usefulness of verbal praise to in� uence students’ moti-vation to engage in activities associated with learning,we should examine why this
Learning motivation, achievement and homework 89
TABLE 1 Professor’s responses to ‘Time spent on homework’ log submissions
Treatments————————————————————–‘No verbal praise’ ‘Verbal praise’
(Section #1) (Section #2)N = 28 N = 26
Total number of times professorresponded to ‘Time spent onhomework’ log submissions 140 130
Number of times professorsaid ‘very good’, ‘good job’or ‘great work’ 0 35
Number of times professorsaid ‘thank you’ 140 95
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relatively simple strategy had such a profound impact on these students’ class-room achievement, homework habits and motivation to learn.
In this study, the characteristics of verbal praise and the manner in which itwas administered adhered to some of the guidelines for effective praise discov-ered in previous research (Brophy, 1981; Burden, 1995; Eggen and Kauchak,1999; Woolfolk, 1998). For example, the verbal praise speci� ed clearly the behav-iour being reinforced. In each of the � ve lessons during which he had studentsannotate on their logs the amount of time they had spent preparing for that day’slesson, the professor deliberately and noticeably examined each student’s log ashe collected it. Then, depending upon the treatment and the number of minutesthe student had recorded on the log, the professor stated very clearly either ‘thankyou’, ‘good job’, ‘very good’ or ‘great work’. The clarity and purposefulness withwhich the professor performed these activities made it obvious to the students inthe ‘verbal praise’ treatment that different amounts of time spent on homeworkevoked different responses from the professor. On the other hand, students in the‘no verbal praise’ treatment witnessed no differences in the manner in which theprofessor responded to their logs and could not make an association between timespent on homework and different reactions of the professor.
In addition, the administration of verbal praise was clearly contingent uponstudents’ performance of the behaviour of completing at least 180 min of home-work for a lesson. Students in the ‘verbal praise’ condition who studied 180 minor more were routinely praised for their accomplishment. Students who studiedfewer than 180 min in the ‘verbal praise’ condition and all students in the ‘noverbal praise’ condition received no praise for their performance.
Furthermore, the words ‘good job’, ‘very good’ and ‘great work’ were offeredby the professor and likely viewed by students as genuine expressions of the pro-fessor’s positive impression of the efforts of students who did the appropriateamount of homework. In contrast, the words ‘thank you’were offered by the pro-fessor and probably viewed by students as a polite but bland acknowledgementof students’ homework performance. As evidenced by the results of the study,students seemed to respond more favourably to expressions of praise that theyconsidered genuine and less favourably to expressions that they thought were per-functory.
Additionally, in the ‘verbal praise’ treatment, students who studied outside ofclass for 180 min or more received praise immediately after the professor’sexamination of their ‘Time spent on homework’ logs.The timeliness of the praisereinforced the students’ perceptions that the professor expected them to spendat least 180 min studying prior to each class. Had the professor waited a signi� -cant amount of time before offering the verbal praise, the association betweenhomework behaviour and praise received for demonstrating satisfactory home-work behaviour would have decreased.
Finally, the verbal praise in this study was offered for an activity for whichstudents could take personal responsibility, namely homework. The amount oftime that a student chose to spend on homework was a decision of the individualstudent and an activity that each student could personally control. Verbal praisewas not offered for something that students could not impact.
Although the aforementioned usages of verbal praise followed guidelines foreffective praise established in previous research, the verbal praise in this studyalso differed in at least two signi� cant ways. First, contrary to some research thathas suggested that verbal praise should be administered individually and quietly(Stipek, 1984), the professor’s praise in this study was provided quite publicly –
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all students in the ‘verbal praise’ classroom witnessed and heard the professorsystematically praise each student who studied the desired amount of time. Like-wise, all students in the ‘verbal praise’ classroom recognized that praise was with-held whenever a student’s out-of-class preparation was less than 180 min.Students in the ‘no verbal praise’ classroom heard only the words ‘thank you’ andnever received or heard expressions of praise for their homework habits. Con-trary to Stipek’s (ibid.) � nding that praise should be administered individually,one could assume that for this population of students, the public nature of thepraise served as an incentive to spend more time on homework. Unlike youngerstudents on which most verbal praise research has been conducted, post-secon-dary students may respond better to publicly administered praise in order toavoid embarrassment among peers or the judgement of a professor. An alterna-tive explanation, consistent with Hancock’s (2000) � nding that West Point cadetscompleted more homework when exposed to public praise, may be that the com-petitive nature of graduate students at a civilian university is similar to that ofhighly competitive undergraduate students at West Point. In other words, it maybe that for students with a propensity towards competitiveness, verbal praiseadministered in the presence of others is much more effective than praise pro-vided in private. This may partially account for this study’s discovery of signi� -cantly higher achievement levels, amounts of time spent on homework andmotivation levels by students in the ‘verbal praise’ condition than by students inthe ‘no verbal praise’ condition.
In addition, some research has suggested that praising students for accom-plishing easy tasks may have a negative effect on those students’ subsequentbehaviour. For example, Meyer (1982) found that praise for success on an easytask was interpreted by students as an indication that the teacher had a low per-ception of the students’ abilities. In the current study, one might argue that doinghomework was a relatively easy task; hence, providing praise for such a task mighthave been counter-productive. However, this was not the case. The analysis of theimpact of ‘verbal praise’ versus ‘no verbal praise’ on students’ achievement in thecourse, as represented by the students’ performance on the professor-created,criterion-referenced � nal examination, revealed that students in the ‘verbalpraise’ treatment group scored signi� cantly higher than the students exposed tothe ‘no verbal praise’ condition. Similarly, the analysis of the in� uence of verbalpraise on the students’ motivation to learn in the course, as evidenced by thestudents’ scores on the MSLQ, revealed that students in the ‘verbal praise’ treat-ment group were signi� cantly more motivated to learn than were the studentsexposed to the ‘no verbal praise’ condition. These differences in the two groups’achievement and motivation levels indicated that students exposed to verbalpraise not only studied more for each lesson, but also achieved more and weremore motivated to learn. In other words, students who received praise for the rela-tively easy task of doing homework were not only compelled to do more home-work in response to verbal praise, but were also more likely to learn more anddesire to continue to learn more than students who received no verbal praise forstudying outside class.
Conclusion
Although the current dominant theories of motivation offer an array of instruc-tional variables through which to in� uence students’ desire to learn, teachers and
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administrators continue to seek uncomplicated and demonstrably effective waysto improve the motivation levels of many students. This study’s � ndings demon-strate the signi� cant impact of properly administered verbal praise on post-secondary students’ motivation to engage in homework. In addition, this studyindicates that students who experience well-administered verbal praise for doinghomework achieve more and demonstrate higher levels of motivation to learn inthe classroom than do those students who experience no verbal praise for theirhomework habits.
This research effort reveals that properly administered verbal praise can be apractical means of in� uencing students’ motivation to engage in behavioursassociated with learning. Future studies should continue to examine the impactof verbal praise on other behaviours related to learning, such as participating inclassroom discussions, taking notes in class and following the teacher’s instruc-tions. Similarly, the effects of other forms of verbal praise other than those usedin this study should be examined. Finally, because the quantity of adult studentsenrolling in higher education is projected to increase dramatically in the next fewyears and because most research on verbal praise has been conducted on school-age children, future research on this topic should continue to focus on olderpopulations. If other research efforts continue to demonstrate the bene� ts ofeffectively administered verbal praise, professors of higher education may havean in� uential and previously underestimated ally in their search for simple anduseful ways to in� uence student achievement and motivation to learn.
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Appendix: ‘Time spent on homework’ log
Learning motivation, achievement and homework 95
Stud
entÕs
nam
e __
____
____
____
____
____
____
____
___
__
Tim
e S
pen
t on
Hom
ewor
k
L
esso
n nu
mbe
rs
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
1
12
13
1
4
15
16
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-
240
235
230
225
220
215
210
205
200
195
190
185
180
175
170
165
160
155
150
145
140
135
130
125
120
115
110
105
100
95
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
Inst
ruct
ions
: W
ith
your
pen
cil
or p
en,
plac
e a
dot
in t
he c
entr
e of
the
rec
tang
le t
hat
corr
espo
nds
to t
he n
umbe
r of
min
utes
you
spe
nt p
repa
ring
for
the
less
on. R
ound
off
to th
e ne
ares
t fi
ve m
inut
es. T
he d
ashe
d li
ne i
n ea
ch r
ecta
ngle
at
180
min
ref
lect
s th
e av
erag
e am
ount
of
tim
e th
at th
e D
epar
tmen
t ex
pect
s
stud
ents
to
spen
d du
ring
the
cour
se o
f 16
less
ons.
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