I have one question, after reading the chapter I had something that I was just wondering about, even though praising the student may be seen as a positive feedback for the student, is there anyway that this praising can affect the student's mentality by making them think that they're geniuses. Like making them believe they're really smart and if that would affect the way they would perform in school.
After reading the chapter I would agree that we can pretty much learn anything through paired associations. Personally I feel like I learn something better whenever I can connect it or relate it to something that I have already learned or something that has happened to me already. It's kind of when like a kid does something bad, he will be most likely to get punished and that's the way the kid is gonna learn not to do it again. In contrast if the kid does something right, the student will be more likely to get a reward. I guess what I'm trying to explain is the stick or carrot theory. I also feel as we learn better by making connections to earlier experiences.
In the video Jim is using a type of classical conditioning on Dwight. Every time Jim's computer would make him log off and make the logging off sound he would offer Dwight an altoid. Jim's experiment is pretty much the same thing that Pavlov performed in his experiment with the dogs and the ringing bell. In Pavlov's experiment he would ring a bell every time the dogs were to get food, he repeated the process until the dogs were comfortable with the ringing bell. The dogs started to salivate once the bell starting ringing rather than when the food was brought to them. This is exactly what happened to Dwight, he was used to getting an altoid every time he heard the computer sound that it just became a natural response to extend his arm whenever he heard that sound.
I remember that in my French class our teacher taught us some tricks to remember a lot of the most important verbs. There were two ways in which you could conjugate a verb by using a helping verb either etre (to be) or avoir (to have). Her method of explaining the difference of which verb to use to conjugate was the stadium of etre. Here she illustrated all of the verbs that were to be conjugated with etre like enter, exit, fall etc. This model not only made it easier for us to learn the difference between avoir and etre but it also made it fun. I think I'm going to do something similar to this whenever I have my own students in my classroom.
In looking for a response to your question, I came across many articles online about why parents should NOT praise their children. When it came to school work, one person believed that parents should not praise their children for doing well on an assignment, because it's evident that the child did well. They need to be told why they did well so they can repeat that behavior in the future (perhaps by saying, "see when you study and work hard, you'll get good grades..." or something like that) When it comes to praising a child for their intelligence, it can be bad because soon children become so focused on results. They begin to fear difficult assignments and tasks because their fear of failure and coming across as stupid. Too much praise can be unhealthy for kids. Parents shouldn't praise their children about areas over which the children have no control (such as physical attractiveness, athletic/artistic gifts, and even intelligence). Children don't need their praises pointed out to them (unless they have become so conditioned to have all of their successes shown off by their parents or something). It's good to simply highlight the accomplishment of a child (by saying "you climbed the ladder by yourself" then the child will tell him/herself "i did it!"). I think we've become too focused on boosting children's self esteem that we can sometimes harm them by praising them too much. I haven't even touched on the concept of the pressure it puts on children to preform well when a parent is overly praising. I do think that praising could also cause a child to think they can do anything (which isn't a bad thing necessarily). I think it's better to encourage and point out successes more than it's helpful to constantly praise children (if that makes sense?)
ReplyDeleteI am taking EDUC-G203, Communication in the Classroom and we JUST read an article about the power of praise. I'll sum up the article in a few sentences. Basically, praise should be labeled, meaning it should be specific praise like "I like how you took the time to go over your answers" instead of unlabeled praise like "Good job on the test!" Too much praise can make children have a big head and think they are geniuses. In a study, they gave elementary school students a test, and then half the students they told them "Good job, you must be really smart!" and then the other half told them "You must have put a lot off effort into this." That was the only difference in the study between the two groups of students. The group which was told they were smart, on the next test they could choose an easier test or a harder, but they would learn a lot from it. They chose the easy test. The group who was praised for effort mostly chose the hard test because they knew they would learn from it. Then on the third test, which was automatically the hard test, the students who were told they were smart, when they got the test results back and were told they did not do good, they started to undermine their intelligence, versus the other group of students who were not upset with their scores. The second time they took the hard test, the students praised for their effort got double the score of the students praised for their intelligence. In essence, the kids praised for their intelligence started to undermine their intelligence as soon as they were given a harder test, and it affected how they did when given the test again. I hope this helps answer your question about praise. If you would like the article that I read for my G203 class, just let me know! This website is close to the article I read: http://lynn-brogan.suite101.com/nurtureshock-and-the-inverse-power-of-praise-a149139. It was a very interesting article, and made me second-think everything I thought about praise.
ReplyDeleteThe article you read is by Dweck, and is one article that some of the other edpsych sections do read during this module. I decided to keep it simple and jsut go from the book. Here is one link to the article on Perils of Praise:
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.glnd.k12.va.us/teachers/lkassner/files/2008/10/perilspromisesofpraise.pdf
Actually.... I think you have further convinced me that we should read that in the Motivation section (where it belongs anyway). Behaviorism can be considered a theory of learning OR a theory of motivation, so we will be thinking about it again as a type of extrinsic (from outside sources) kind of motivation.
ReplyDeletehttps://oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/group/FA11-BL-EDUC-P254-2539/Motivation/Extrinsic%20Motivation/Dweck-1999-Caution%2BPraise%2BCan%2BBe%2BDangerous.pdf
ReplyDeleteNot sure if you can see that, but it is in the Motivation resources folder, and a different version from the one above. I'm sure Dweck has written about this many times, but we'll likely read this one.
Actually the overpraising thing happened to a girl who was in my county's 4-H program. She thought she was super smart because she went to private school and parents kept praising her, but during the horticulture contest, she didn't even know what a tomato was.
ReplyDeleteThe answer to your question is YES. That kind of thing will come up during Motivation. Students who believe that they are naturally more intelligent or wonderful won't try as hard because they believe their talents are already somewhere within them. Students who believe that they are only talented or intelligent because of the effort that they put in tend to work much harder and are easier to motivate.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I completely understand your example. You're saying she listed each under the appropriate helping verb (pairing them)? That can be helpful. Imagine another scenario of learning language, just jumping into a new country or location, being surrounded by the language (in its complexity) every day, and learning in that way (rather than learning little bits at a time and building up to fluency).