One of the biggest problems with praise is when we praise students
on their intelligence. As teachers we
can praise students on their effort or work because it motivates them to
continue to work hard. When we praise
students on their intelligence it causes the students to get worried and
stressed when they are given topics that are hard or above their current
knowledge so they will refuse to do the work because they are not as smart as
they thought.
Students that are obsessed with proving their intelligence
they will not take failure very well.
Once they get to topics that they struggle with, they will not be as
motivated to work hard because they are not meeting their own standards and
therefore will not want to continue on that subject.
If we praise children on their work or effort than the
children will continue to try even if they are not getting every question correct
because they are being praised on working hard.
This will cause a child’s self-motivation to increase rather than
decrease when a student praised on his intelligence comes across hard material because
his self-motivation will decrease because he cannot be immediately intelligent,
but a student can work hard from the start of the new topic.
You contrast effort and intelligence a couple times here, but what's the big difference between these two things? Intelligence praise might make students worry, but intelligence is also (as most people think of it) stable and uncontrollable--so the student will feel helpless to change it. Effort is something very concrete and controllable, so praising should increase effort as a behavior.
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