Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Motivation Post 2

1) Praise can be detrimental to students when teachers praise them for doing things that are behaviors that should already be understood and occurring in the classroom (for example, students raising their hand before answering a question, standing quietly in line before lunch, or staying seated during a class period).


2) A kid who is obsessed with proving his or her intelligence to others will lose interest in learning.  This student will begin to rely only on the praise of teachers instead of the joys he or she gets from learning.  This makes it much easier for students to think they have "failed" or performed poorly if they don't get a teacher's praise.


3) We should praise students for hard work and effort instead of achievement.  This helps the students realize that it is important to give your best efforts, even if the outcome isn't exactly what they were hoping for.  For the most effective praise, teachers need to praise their students in a genuine manner and avoid generic compliments like "good job" but say more personalized praises.

1 comment:

  1. Is your third point explaining why it's important to praise effort vs achievement/performance? I think it's really important to see the difference between these two things--effort is something very much under control of the student. Something like achievement level (or intelligence) is often considered something stable and uncontrollable. Attribution theory in Module 16 ties into this idea really well.

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