• After reading the chapter and the Dweck article, discuss one question or confusion that you had about the material.
Why is it that students perform a task less frequently after a withdrawal of a reward than they did before the reward was first introduced?
• When are extrinsic forms of motivation most beneficial or appropriate, compared to other forms? What do they offer?
Extrinsic forms of motivations tend to have a positive consequence or reinforcement for a behavior. This encourages students to keep on trying with the positive behavior so that they keep on getting the same reinforcement. It is more common to see extrinsic motivation is middle and high school classrooms because the settings encourage competition among peers. Some of these examples include Honor Roll, Class Rankings and standardized test scores. The main two examples of extrinsic motivation are praise and rewards. These methods are mainly used to stimulate the students learning but can sometimes hurt the student learning more than it can actually help it.
• When do you think that extrinsic forms MIGHT be the wrong choice? (Look to
the Dweck article where she discusses how praise can be dangerous) Discuss some form of extrinsic motivation and why IT might also be 'dangerous'.
I think that the only time when extrinsic forms might be wrong is when we make our kids believe that they are always going to be rewarded if they show positive behavior. In the classroom when a student gets good grades their parents usually reward him or her. This is good and bad at the same time; it could be helpful to the students because they have an extra motivation factor that can encourage them to perform better academically. If the parents don’t keep on giving the reward then the student might think that they shouldn’t get good grades anymore because there is not going to be an award anymore. This is problematic because in the real world one doesn’t get rewarded every time something good is done, and sometimes thinking that can set us up to failure.
I thought that the Terry video was pretty funny and I can say that it could go either way, it can be effective and it can also be not effective at all. I think that at some point it can be effective because in the video the negative behavior is being punished, so if the students see that then they will be less likely to be engaged in the negative behavior. If the punishment wasn’t so harsh I think it could be a really effective approach. I don’t think it could be effective however though because I feel like it would create a hostile environment and my students would be in fear all class period.
Before the reward was introduced, the student may be motivated by intrinsic factors (interest). Once the association is strong between the task and reward, it's difficult to go back to the original state. By that point, the person's goal has become getting the reward rather than experiencing the task. So, they might feel like 'hey, my reward is gone. so, why am I doing this?' Their original intrinsic interest may have faded or may still be around, but is no longer the emphasis once the task is so closely tied to the reward.
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