Understanding teacher judgments of student motivation: The role of (un-)available cues

Accurately judging student motivation enables individualized and student-centered instruction. However, teachers in school tend to judge student motivation inaccurately. Low availability of motivation-related cues, like mastery-approach goals and work-avoidance goals, may explain neglecting these cues in judging motivation. Instead, gender and academic achievement might be overly utilized because they are easily available. To test teachers’ utilization of highly and equally available cues when judging student motivation. In the first vignette experiment, pre-service and in-service teachers (N = 205) judged eight fictitious students’ motivation sequentially. Teachers received either achievement goal cues (EG1) or additionally gender and academic achievement cues (EG2), creating an information-adequate environment. In Experiment 2, newly recruited pre-service and in-service teachers (N = 213) evaluated the same vignettes in the same groups, but vignettes were presented simultaneously, and cues had to be memorized, resulting in an information-rich environment. Teachers then formed judgments based solely on their memory without further access to the vignettes. When teachers judged student motivation sequentially, they strongly used mastery-approach goals and work-avoidance goals—regardless of whether other cues were available. In memory-based judgments, teachers primarily used gender and academic achievement. Results demonstrate that in information-rich environments where cues have to be memorized, teachers tend to overlook motivation-relevant cues. Instead, they focus more on cues that do not inherently indicate motivation. These findings suggest that teachers could benefit from assessment environments, like formative assessment, that allow for the direct processing of available cues to better judge student motivation. •Previous studies demonstrated teachers judge student motivation inaccurately.•In two experiments, teachers judged motivation based on text information.•In the experiments, achievement goal cues were used for judging student motivation.•Less relevant cues impeded the use of achievement goal cues in difficult situations.•School environments are needed that enhance accurate judgments of motivation.