Sometimes students' motivational goals actually undermine academic achievement. Often they are a negative byproduct of the competitiveness of performance goals (Urdan, 2004). If teachers (and sometimes also fellow students) put too much emphasis on being the best in the class, and if interest in learning the material therefore suffers, then some students may decide that success is beyond their reach or may not be desirable in any case. The alternative—simply avoiding failure—may seem wiser as well as more feasible. Once a student adopts this attitude, he or she may underachieve more or less deliberately, doing only the minimum work necessary to avoid looking foolish or to avoid serious conflict with the teacher. Operating this way is a form of self-handicapping— deliberate actions and choices that the reduce chances of success. Students may self-handicap in a number of ways; in addition to not working hard, they may procrastinate about completing assignments, for example, or set goals that are unrealistically high. Another self-handicapping strategy is to become involved in too many other activities or place undue importance on other tasks. The main idea here is that self- handicapping allows individuals to attribute their failure to factors other than their own ability . Blaming my poor performance on the project on the fact that I’m really busy is less damaging to my self-esteem than blaming my performance on the fact that I didn’t really understand the concepts.

As just mentioned, procrastination can be a form of self-handicapping, but people procrastinate for many reasons beyond protecting their sense of self-worth. And it is not always deliberate. Students might be overwhelmed by the complexity of a significant paper or project, for example, and not know how to get started. Others may experience anxiety over the sheer quantity of work they have to get done, and this may lead to a kind of paralysis. Still others may be completely bored by the task.

Teachers can help students overcome procrastination and other types of self-handicapping by tackling the problem head on. Scanning the classroom a few minutes after assigning a worksheet will reveal students who are not working. Wise teachers also build in early check-points for longer term projects in order to uncover problems before they become too large. Like many self-defeating behaviors, acknowledging responsibility for self-handicapping is an important first step. Next comes an exploration for why students are undermining their own successes. Understanding the underlying reasons helps identify the approaches that will be most effective.

Learned helplessness has roots in self-efficacy as well as attribution theory. If a person’s sense of self-efficacy is very low over repeated experiences, he or she can develop learned helplessness, a perception of complete lack of control in mastering a task. The attitude is similar to depression, a pervasive feeling of apathy and a belief that effort makes no difference and does not lead to success. Learned helplessness was originally studied from the behaviorist perspective of classical and operant conditioning by the psychologist Martin Seligman (1995). The studies used a somewhat “gloomy” experimental procedure in which an animal, such as a rat or a dog, was repeatedly shocked in a cage in a way that prevented the animal from escaping the shocks. In a later phase of the procedure, conditions were changed so that the animal could avoid the shocks by merely moving from one side of the cage to the other. Yet frequently they did not bother to do so! Seligman called this behavior learned helplessness. Click here for a short demonstration of inducing learned helplessness in the classroom.

In people, learned helplessness leads to characteristic ways of dealing with problems. They tend to attribute the source of a problem to themselves, to generalize the problem to many aspects of life, and to see the problem as lasting or permanent; in other words, an internal, stable attribution of failure. More optimistic individuals, in contrast, are more likely to attribute a problem to outside sources, to see it as specific to a particular situation or activity, and to see it as temporary or time-limited. Consider, for example, two students who each fail a test. The one with learned helplessness is more likely to explain the failure by saying something like: “I’m stupid; I never do well on any schoolwork, and I never will.” The other, more optimistic student is more likely to say something like: “I failed this test because I didn’t study hard enough; I can study harder next time.” Note that the latter example implies that there are factors within one’s control that can be adjusted in the future.

Self-handicapping , learned helplessness, and some types of procrastination stem from an underlying perception of low competence as well as the feeling that they don’t have much control over their circumstances. Teachers can minimize these challenges in students by encouraging their sense of self-efficacy as well as their sense of control over factors that can influence their success.

Here are some best practices to support students’ needs for autonomy and competence , and help encourage students’ positive sense of self-worth:

Students who tend to be perfectionists, like those who exhibit learned helplessness, are motivated by an aversion to failure. Research suggests a continuum of perfectionist tendencies, ranging from healthy to dysfunctional (Christopher, 2010). While a healthy dose of perfectionism can drive individuals towards great accomplishments, dysfunctional perfectionists set unrealistic goals, are overly sensitive to critique, and can become paralyzed by their fear of failure.

Many of the approaches to reducing students’ tendencies towards perfectionism are similar to those designed to help students who show learned helplessness and self-handicapping.

(University of Texas at Austin Counseling and Mental Health Center, 2012).

Perhaps the most challenging situation in the classroom is working with students who are alienated or disaffected from the learning process (Brophy, 1998). Disengagement is characterized by apathy, lack of effort, avoidance - when possible - and frustration or noncompliance when avoidance is not an option (Skinner, Kinderman, & Furrer, 2009). Although the reasons for disengagement vary, it is important for teachers to strive to reconnect the student to learning and to school.

Teachers will encounter many challenges as they seek to foster students’ motivation to learn. Drawing on theories of motivation, research points us toward effective ways to tackle the challenges.

Self-Handicapping

Learned Helplessness: Why Bother?

Dealing with Perfectionism

Brophy, J. (1998). Motivating students to learn. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Christopher, M. (2010). The relationship of perfectionism to affective variables in gifted and highly able children. Gifted Child Today , 33 (3), 20-30.

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Schubert Walker, L. W. (2000). Overcoming the powerlessness of procrastination. Guidance & Counseling , 16 (1), 39.

Schwinger, M. (2011). Prevention of self-handicapping — The protective function of mastery goals. Learning & Individual Differences , 21 (6), 699-709.

Shih, S. (2011). Perfectionism, implicit theories of intelligence, and Taiwanese eighth-grade students' academic engagement. Journal Of Educational Research , 104 (2), 131-142.

Skinner, E. A., Kinderman, T. A., & Furrer, C. J. (2009). A motivational perspective on engagement and disaffection: Conceptualization and assessment of children's behavioral and emotional participation in academic activities in the classroom. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 69 (3): 493-525. doi: 10.1177/0013164408323233

University of Texas at Austin Counseling and Mental Health Center (2012). Perfectionism versus healthy striving. Retrieved from http://cmhc.utexas.edu/perfectionism.html

Urdan, T. (2004) Predictors of academic self-handicapping and achievement: Examining achievement goals, classroom goal structures, and culture. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96 (2), 251-264.

Weiner, B. (2005). Motivation from an attribution perspective and the social psychology of perceived competence. In A. Elliot & C. Dweck (Eds.), Handbook of Competence and Motivation, pp. 73-84. New York: Guilford Press.