Olney, MD, December 19, 2007--The Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) announces a new Position Paper titled Beyond Benchmarks and Scores: Reasserting the Role of Motivation and Interest in Children's Academic Achievement. Written by Mary Renck Jalongo, Professor of Education, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the paper is an extensive work on the complexity of the learning process. The document asserts that learning is an intricate process that needs to be redefined, and that educational practices require a more sophisticated understanding of both learning and motivation.

Beyond Benchmarks and Scores addresses the challenges that teachers encounter when students are disinterested, reluctant, or resistant to specific learning tasks. The author states that learning is more than imparting knowledge, and is dependent on the educator's ability to motivate. Learning relies on a range of motivational strategies that include both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that relate to the individual student, the domain, the sociocultural context, and are relevant to the particular task. Beyond Benchmarks and Scores is a response to the questions of how and why students learn, and provides research-based recommendations to help teachers achieve positive results.

ACEI publishes hundreds of resources for teachers and parents, including its award-winning Childhood Education, journals, books, Position Papers, pamphlets, audio, and videotapes. Many of these resources are available on the ACEI Web site at http://www.acei.org.

For further information on this topic or other childhood issues, visit http://www.acei.org.