Parents and 'Personal Bests' - Motivating for student achievement

It is well-documented that a supportive home environment is essential for student achievement. However, parents need to go beyond asking their children how school was or if they had finished their homework to fully flesh out such an environment. Specific behavioural actions and interventions are more effective in helping raise their child's achievement level in school.

One useful way that parents can spur their child's achievement is through the use of 'personal bests' or 'pb's'. A borrowed term from the world of sport, 'pb's' are targets that are incremental in nature, building on the student's current performance level, while taking into account his potential.

4 Ways to use PBs

Building Shared Perspectives between Parent and Child
Instead of setting unrealistic targets that do not take into account the child's abilities, parent and child can benefit from the shared perspectives that take place through the negotiation of attainable scores in school.

Building Goal-setting skills in the Child

Furthermore, the parent can use 'pb's' to help build goal-setting skills in the child, in helping the latter understand how the future is affected by present actions.

PBs as the basis of rewards and incentives

Achievement can happen only through a blend of parental support and accountability. Through the use of 'pb's', the child's performance can also be linked to rewards and incentives. Where these rewards are yet to be made systematic, parents can use the child's 'pb's' as a start-point for this process.

Motivation for achievement

As the child attains appropriate scores, his progress is thus supported through extrinsic forms of motivations, while the parent should continue to guide him to see that the achievement of his goals and 'personal bests' is the best form of satisfaction in the long run.

Personal Experience

Ethan was in the top 30% of his whole cohort in Primary One this year, but Brenda and I have seen that introducing the concept of pb's to him takes the discussion of his performance to a different level altogether. The discourse is certainly more constructive as it does not focus on the rat-race aspects such as the competition with his classmates.

Noel Tan

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