Rewarding Students

Unequal Rewards.
One of the traps that I fall into every now and then is that I reward students/classes with a treat.  I have found that this is a trap for us as educators.  We create expectations, we programme that education extrinsically rather than intrinsically and we brake consistency between classes/teachers. 

Two interesting research materials that are worth looking at are...

Dan Pink (author of Drive) discusses a study of preschool students - ones interested in drawing/painting.  The researchers simply divided the students into three groups... 

• Ones shown fancy certificates they'd get if they did a drawing,
• Ones who didn't know about the certificate but got one when they finished, and
• The final group who drew and never got any certificate.

Two weeks later the researchers returned to the same pre-schoolers and asked for drawings.  Those that had been shown the certificates were the least likely to want to do another if there was no certificate. 

Here is another...

   
This post relates to RTC #1. establish and maintain effective professional relationships focused on the learning and well-being of ākonga and RTC # 5. show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning