Supporting intrinsic motivation and learning-friendly attributions in German student–teacher-conferences

Abstract

ABSTRACT Promoting students’ motivation to learn and supporting learning-friendly attributions is an important task for teachers. While doing so is possible in the classroom every day, there are also special situations with particular formats, such as student–teacher-conferences, which can be well-suited to supporting students’ motivation to learn. German student–teacher-conferences (=German: Lernentwicklungsgespräche (LEGs); translated literally: learning development conversations) are a form of performance assessment and performance feedback in which elements of formative assessment can be implemented. This article examines whether LEGs correlate with intrinsic motivation and learning-friendly attributions when they are perceived by students as supportive of learning. For this purpose, 392 children in grade 2 (mainly at the age of 7 and 8) filled out questionnaires in a pre–post design. The results show that, from the children’s point of view, LEGs are mostly implemented in ways that learners perceive as supportive of their learning and motivation; that said, there were significant differences both between teachers and between teachers’ different LEGs. In addition, we observed a relationship between LEGs, intrinsic motivation and learning-friendly attributions, although it was depended on the children’s perspective of how the LEGs were implemented.