Impact of Motivational Intervention on Student Academic Output

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if a group of at-risk 9th grade students in English would increase motivation after participating in a targeted goal setting intervention. The study used a SMART Goal tracker with weekly check-ins as the intervention. The pre-test and post-tests included teacher surveys, student surveys, grades, and work completion percentages. Both the control and experimental groups showed a statistically significant gain in academic output and when comparing the two, the experimental group did not achieve high enough to show a statistically significant gain. The anecdotal information provided by the teacher showed a greater increase in motivation among the experimental group. Further research is needed to determine if a goal setting motivation will truly impact the intrinsic motivation of students, as the statistical data does not correlate to the subjective data presented by the teacher and the researcher.