I think praise is most beneficial when you know that student overcame a struggle to do the assignment. This way the student knows they have to work hard to achieve success. I think at some point in our education, we have all put in about 50% effort and came out with a compliment and that really does change the way the student approaches future assignments. A little prize or compliment offers the student motivation to work hard again.
Extrinsic motivation would be the wrong choice when the assignment was very easy and everyone did well on it. Too much extrinsic motivation also become like a label for some kids and they will not want to leave their comfort zone and work harder because they know they will get a compliment or something positive anyway.
You CAN make the choice to never say the word intelligent in your classroom, but other students and cultural sources or media will always emphasize it. Also, in school, there are always labels of 'right' or 'wrong' answers, grades, etc, which create that idea of intelligence.
ReplyDeleteI think you have a good way of looking at things, which is to reward intense effort (this gets around the idea of intelligence/unintelligence). Remember that struggles are of different difficulty to different people. Some students may have an EXTREMELY difficult time in writing their ideas clearly, while the activity comes naturally to others. It will require less effort.
Also, you may want to think about whether you want to reward students spontaneously (without warning) after they put forth a lot of effort, or if you want them to know a reward is coming if they put in effort. It gets at a different kind of motivation.... If a student knows a reward is coming if they work hard (or appear to work hard), they are accomplishing the task FOR the reward. Sometimes if you do the alternative, and surprise them with a reward for particularly effortful work, it can increase more intrinsic forms of motivation, like confidence they can improve or do well again (we will talk about that next week).
I don't think that when the text mentioned teachers complimenting a student's "intelligence" actually involved them using that particular term. It would include phrases such as "that assignment was very difficult, but you had the ability to accomplish it from the start". the differences between the different phrases of motivating the students seem very similar to each other, but make a huge difference in the subconscious mind of the student. I agree that extrinsic motivation should be avoided as much as possible, because it's almost like an addictive drug, the student is worse off than before once they aren't getting the extrinsic rewards.
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