Refocusing Our Efforts

Throughout the article, I thought of my experience in high school and what motivated me and from what I remember, from grade 8 to grade 11, how I did on tests was important to me but it was not my primary motivation. For the subjects that I was interested in, it was the intrinsic motivation the pushed me. It think it is important to note that in grade 12, the extrinsic motivation of marks and competition became a big factor in my efforts in school. I wanted the high marks to get into university and I am confident that this I am not the only one that felt this way. I also think this is quite interesting and possibly puzzling that I feel that of all my years of schooling, this was the time that I learned the most. While my grades in that year were the highest I’ve had, I would not say that is the reason why I consider this to be the period of the most learning for me. I think that I say that I learned the most in this period because I believe I have retained the most information. Thinking about the importance of the grade 12 year, I wondered how their study would have gone if they had chosen a Physics 12 class instead of Physics 11. I was glad to see that they mentioned this at the end in their reflections. I think changing the focus to learning will be tough and I think, as pointed out in the last line, that it requires changing the culture of grading.