In
the article, Caution- Praise Can Be Dangerous, Dweck warns that praise can be
detrimental students when teachers praise for behaviors that should be
expected. Student then rely on the praise to get the already expected behavior.
Students that rely on praise feel that they must prove their intelligence with
little effort. Sometimes it results in the students cheating. Students should
not be praised solely on intelligence but on their achievement and effort. When
students are given specific praises rather than a general “Your Smart,” they
can use this for feedback, along with other students, to do the behavior again.
Great post! Very informative post. I had a friend in elementary who would feed and live off of praise. Whether it was from the teacher or his friends he demanded that praise. He would do anything to get it, he would often copy our notes so he could be praised about how well structured his notes were
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult to pull apart the three prompts in here. You are sort of meshing them together, which is fine, but it's unclear how you're defending each point. Why is praising for expected behaviors bad? Becoming dependent on extrinsic motivators is bad because it decreases intrinsic motivation, but what are some other reasons?
ReplyDeleteWhy is it bad to praise intelligence? there's a very important idea here that's reemphasized in module 16 in attribution theory. Intelligence is usually thought of as something stable and uncontrollable, isn't it? Effort is something quite controllable. If you praise something the students can't control in the first place, they feel helpless. If you praise effort, the students have control over this, and can increase that behavior.