Praise can be detrimental to children if it is used in certain ways. Praise can be harmful to students if a person praises on intelligence too often as opposed to praising effort. When a child is praised purely for intelligence, they get used to looking smart in front of the teacher and their peers. As a result, they will purposely choose to complete tasks and assignments in the classroom that require less work and less of a risk of failure. Students that are praised for effort rather than intelligence tend to try harder in school and not just do the minimum required amount of work to get a good grade. They tend to take risks and try new things and do a bit of extra work. They are not as afraid of looking stupid or wrong.
This becomes an issue for students who are constantly looking to prove they are intelligent. They will try their hardest not to look dumb in front of the class or the teacher. Because they will always be choosing assignments and options that are within their academic comfort zone in order to guarantee they will be able to get a good grade, they will never have the opportunity to try some of the more thought provoking and creative assignment options. This limits that amount of higher order thinking that they allow themselves to experience.
Dweck suggests that teachers can praise as much and as often as they want as long as they are taking caution to what they are praising. As long as the praise is more focused on effort, concentration, effective study strategies, or other such productive things, then the children will benefit from the praise.
Do you agree with that last point from Dweck?
ReplyDeleteI think praising on things students can control is definitely a much more beneficial strategy than praising other things, but I also think that praising TOO MUCH is possible. Praise is an extrinsic reward, like a prize or grade, so students might become dependent on the praise if it is used to often.