Catholic School Students, Achievement, and Motivation

By James Frabutt, Ph.D., and Anthony Holter, Ph.D., Remick Leadership Program.  Janine Bempechat and colleagues explored beliefs about academic achievement among a sample of low-income, urban adolescents enrolled in Catholic schools.  Their 2008 article, Beyond the Rhetoric: Understanding Achievement and Motivation in Catholic School Students, describes a longitudinal project in which students were interviewed in depth about the role of education in their lives, their teachers’ goals for them, and family and peer support for learning.  Qualitative analysis of interviews and focus groups with the students revealed three major themes, outlined below.

1. A Culture of Caring Pervades Catholic Schools.  Students routinely mentioned the caring and family oriented environment of their school, noting that teachers were interested not only in students’ academic success, but their emotional and social well-being as well.  One student explained: “It’s like they care for you so much at this school, they make sure they don’t want nobody, you know, to fall down in their grades and fail and not be able to, you know, reach their goals in life” (p. 171). 
2. Students Believe They Must Take Personal Responsibility for Learning. Students explained that goal setting, consistent effort, and persistence were the drivers of academic performance.  When their academic achievement was poor, students tended to attribute this to internal factors (e.g., “I wasn’t careful in my work”) rather than external ones (e.g., “That teacher doesn’t like me”). One female student clarified, “I mostly think that effort is something that you put in, and it shows if you have effort, it shows if you don’t have effort” (p. 172).
3. Adaptive Achievement Beliefs Pervade Catholic Schools.  Students explained that “mistakes and setbacks are a natural part of learning.”  When a student encounters an instance of academic failure, it need not be debilitating and lead to feelings of helplessness. In dealing with the academic challenges of high school, one student said “failure is not really something bad; I would try my hardest to do it again” (p. 173-174).

 
The authors summarized that “when given the opportunity to express their views, these Catholic school students focused on their teachers’ commitment to them as learners and articulated mature and sophisticated views about their learning” (p.174).  They further concluded that a better understanding of Catholic school students’ apparent motivational advantage can enhance educational reform efforts more broadly.
 
 
Reference
 
Bempechat, J., Boulay, B. A., Piergross, S. C., & Wenk, K. A. (2008). Beyond the rhetoric: Understanding achievement and motivation in Catholic school students. Education and Urban Society, 40(2), 167-178.