Shaping Academic Success: Understanding the Interrelationship Between Intelligence Beliefs, Motivation, Learning, and Achievement

The findings of recent studies in the area of achievement indicate that the motivation to learn contributes to academic success, apart from intelligence, individually and significantly. While the early motivational theorists concluded that cognitive skills and abilities were factors of intelligence, and that behavioral and psychosocial attributes were factors of motivation, the more contemporary motivational researchers have found that the belief one holds about intelligence influences both cognition and behavior, more powerfully than previously estimated. Presented here are the main social cognitive components of motivation: (a) competence beliefs and self-efficacy, (b) attributions, (c) intrinsic motivation, and (d) achievement goals. The research on each of these components was reviewed, along with its relationship to academic achievement, based upon which suggestions are offered for instruction and assessment. The goal of this project is to provide a useful means by which student motivation might be increased and achievement improved, thereby shaping student success. This project includes an Instructional Booklet for Educators, including Learning Motivation and Academic Achievement Models, which were designed by the author to inform teachers of the ways in which beliefs about the nature of intelligence (i.e., those of students, teachers, and parents) affect academic achievement. In addition, this booklet may guide educators in instructional and classroom design, along with the informal assessment of intelligence beliefs, which they may use to shape academic achievement through the feedback and the developmental actions that foster motivation and learning, immediately and continually