Why your child doing poorly at school may have nothing to do with low motivation

To a struggling student, the return on each hour of self-learning may be meagre compared to the high yield experienced by star students. Getty Images

When students struggle at school and allocate little time for homework, a reasonable assumption is a lack of motivation – or the unwillingness to study. This pushes schools and parents to focus on incentivising the child to work harder. Recent research suggests that differences in the productivity of time spent on homework are potentially far more important, implying a fundamentally different remedy. Gaining a precise understanding of the science of student performance is critical for the success of the educational reforms under way across the Arabian Gulf.

When I was a child, I enjoyed playing soccer, but I only did so casually. I avoided the hundreds of hours of regimented drills that must be put in by someone who seeks to become a professional player. This ensured my career lay away from the green grass of soccer fields.

To an onlooker, there are at least two possible explanations for my failure to become the next Lionel Messi. The first is that I lacked the motivation to put in the necessary hard work. Or, that I lacked the ability and knowledge needed to transform my hours on the training field into a career as a professional soccer player.

From the perspective of the Arab Gulf countries, replicating such studies in local contexts can play a significant role in educational reform

The same line of thinking can be applied to students who struggle at school while spending less time on homework than their more successful peers: do they lack motivation, or is homework an unproductive enterprise for them?

To a struggling student, the return on each hour of self-learning may be meagre compared to the high yield experienced by star students. The steps needed to improve a student’s motivation – such as helping them appreciate the importance of doing well at school or improving their self-confidence – are very different from other interventions that may be required to make a student’s self-study more productive. Understanding the cause is critical for prescribing the correct remedy.

And there are parallel case studies in other fields. Take the Arabian Gulf, for example, and the economies that are undergoing transformations. There is a need for policy decisions that quickly deliver improvements before income from hydrocarbons falls.

Accordingly, understanding the underlying factors contributing to student success is a priority. This need is accentuated by studies of the relationship between human capital and economic growth: for an economy to thrive, one must not simply focus on the average or best students – even the weaker ones must improve: like a chain, an economy is only as strong as its weakest link.

The problem for educators in the Arabian Gulf and elsewhere is that it is very difficult to accurately diagnose the cause of a student’s struggles. How does one measure motivation and homework productivity reliably and discern the role played by each of those factors? This challenge has led to educators taking a more qualitative and one-size-fits-all approach, with a presumption that for many students, low motivation is a chronic cause of underperformance.

New research presents an alternative path. Christopher Cotton, professor of Economics at Queen’s University, Canada, and his colleagues gathered precise, student-level data for more than 1,600 students in the Chicago Public Schools system over several years. Critically, they were able to manipulate determinants of motivation, for example, by paying students to do their homework, and observed exactly how homework time was spent and how students benefitted.

The study’s key conclusion is that contrary to conventional wisdom low motivation was not the primary cause for the underperformance of students. Instead, students who struggled spurned the opportunity to do homework that would improve their grades primarily because the productivity of such time was so low, in contrast to the high returns on homework realised by better-performing students, which is to say, better grades.

Professor Cotton and his colleagues also identified solutions to the problem. Beyond the role that high-quality schools play, the researchers demonstrated productivity improves when homework is broken down into distinct, structured learning tasks with clear feedback.

For example, the online platform required students to solve five of six problems correctly per task. This structure made effort more effective, reduced time wasted and increased learning. Moreover, the judicious use of financial incentives – in the form of payments for correctly solved homework tasks – accelerated the process of learning and hence improved productivity, with lasting positive effects on a student’s performance.

From the perspective of the Arab Gulf countries, replicating such studies in local contexts can play a significant role in educational reform. Such an approach not only ensures that what worked in Chicago can work in this region, it can also equip educators and scholars with the advanced research methods needed to study this issue and related ones with the necessary rigor that can sometimes be elusive in the Arabian Gulf region.

Should the Chicago study’s findings materialise in the Gulf, the lesson is clear: motivating students matters, but making their study time work harder for them matters even more. A shift in focus towards productivity-based interventions could be the difference between cosmetic reforms and a genuine leap in educational performance.