Does irrelevant information reduce the quality of teacher judgments of student motivation?

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Abstract

Teachers utilize information for motivation judgments inappropriately – commonly relevant information is ignored (Dicke et al., 2012) while irrelevant information is utilized (Brandmiller et al., 2020). We were interested if the mere availability of rather irrelevant information reduces utilization of relevant information when judging motivation. N = 150 pre- and in-service teachers judged eight fictitious students either based on relevant information (mastery goal orientation, and work avoidance; with three levels: “low”, “average”, or “high”) or based on the same relevant information accompanied by gender (male; female) and academic achievement (below-average; above-average). Prior to motivation judgments, participants’ primary task was to remember student characteristics to assign students to heterogeneous working groups later. The intention was to simulate a realistic school setting in that participants needed to remember student information, but judged motivation after information was no longer available. Whereas participants utilized students’ mastery goal orientations when solely relevant information were available (η² = .206), they neglected students’ mastery goal orientations when irrelevant information was additionally available (η² = .023). Furthermore, academic achievement was utilized instead (η² = .157). These results show that academic achievement is a leading source of information for judging motivation even when motivation-relevant information is equally available. Thus, it should be discussed how to minimize the importance of academic achievement when teachers think of motivation as a central prerequisite for learning.

Speakers from the University of Münster

Beck, Jan Ulrich	Institute of Educational Sciences (IfE)
Dutke, Stephan	Professorship for Psychology of Learning in Education and Instruction (Prof. Dutke)
Utesch, Till Onno Friedrich	Junior professorship of educational science with the focus on school pedagogics: pedagogical diagnostics and potential development (Prof. Utesch)