Experiencing learning success increases motivation and confidence
If you first use the assessment to start learners at the level that is right for them, and then use the games according to the suggestions here, your learners will be experiencing frequent learning successes. The psychologist Teresa Amabile has shown that the more frequently people experience successes, the more motivated they become (Amabile, 2001).
Amabile developed this idea about employees in businesses, but it is a part of human nature that seems to apply just as well to children in schools. With these games, children respond to their own learning successes with increased levels of motivation and confidence.
Positive impact for low-income and Black learners
Allowing learners to experience frequent learning successes may be especially important for low-income children. According to a review paper by David Arnold and Greta Doctoroff (2003), “[L]ow-SES children often suffer a negative cycle of failure and disinterest, whereby failure increases disengagement, and disaffection fosters additional failure. Hope arises from the knowledge that equally potent positive cycles are possible, in which academic success could foster interest and vice versa.” The relevant article cited in that review used family income to measure socioeconomic status (SES).
The frequent successes experienced by learners who use these games may be helpful to Black learners, too. Frequent successes support the practice of positioning individual students as competent. According to Wilson et al. (2019), positioning individual students as competent is a particularly effective way to support Black learners.
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References
Amabile, Teresa M., and Steven J. Kramer. 2011. “The Power of Small Wins.” Harvard Business Review 89(5): 70-80.
Arnold, David H., and Greta L. Doctoroff. 2003. “The Early Education of Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Children.” Annual Review of Psychology 54:517-545.
Wilson, Jonee, Mahtab Nazemi, Kara Jackson, and Anne Garrison Wilhelm. 2019. “Investigating Teaching in Conceptually Oriented Mathematics Classrooms Characterized by African American Student Success.” Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 50(4):362-400.
August 14, 2020