Praise is detrimental to students because when used correctly, it can help students become adults who delight in intellectual challenge, understand the value of effort, and are able to deal with setbacks. Praise can help students make the most of the abilities that they have. Praise needs to be given correctly because if not used correctly, students can view it as a negative force and it is important for teachers and parents to have a framework that enables them to use praise wisely and well. Giving students many opportunities to experience success and then praising them for their success will show them that they are intelligent and if they feel good about their intelligence, then they will achieve. However, praise should not always be given for intelligence, but for improvement and working hard as well which is a motivator for students to keep engaging in the process of working hard.
When a child is obsessed with proving their intelligence to others, many problems can arise. These include that children worried about how smart they looked and feared that failing at some task, even if it was a relatively unimportant one, meant that they were dumb. Intelligence was considered a label for these students, rather than a tool that with effort they could become more skillful in using .
According to Dweck, we should praise children for effort, concentration, the effectiveness of their study strategies, the interesting ideas they come up with, and the way they followed through with their studies. Instead of praising for intelligence and always doing well, it is more effective to praise for improvement and effort. Also, when students move to something that is more challenging and progress is made, then that is where there effort shows and praise should be given.
I agree with your thinking about the child proving their intelligence to others. Obsessing over how smart a child is by bragging to his friends can give him a false sense of intelligence, and when he does slip up at some point, then his friends may lack his creditibility and he may begin to lose faith in how smart he really is. THe student may begin to think they aren't as good as they thought they were and can actually lower their self esteem. I think in this situation it would be good to point out the good characterisitcs in the student and praise him for his efforts especially when he does fail so he doesn't seem as if he can't do/be "smart" anymore.
ReplyDeleteYou mention here that praise shouldn't always be used to intelligence, but I just wanted to quickly explain one reason that is--and this connects to attribution theory for next week. For most people, intelligence is something internal, stable, and uncontrollable. If you praise that (give it a positive reinforcement).... there's not really a change that can happen. The child cannot do anything to change their intelligence (or, they typically believe that) so they either continue as they have been, decrease effort (because, hey, they're intelligent and should do well either way), or feel helpless if they feel they AREN'T intelligent.
ReplyDeletePraising effort (something internal, unstable, and controllable) is very different because it gives the child power to change as a result of feedback.