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On Tuesday February 18th 2014, my classmates and I sat down to discuss the topic of praise and how it affects students within the classrooms. Many of us including myself came to class confused and not sure if the praise that we have been giving was beneficial to our students to keep going or if we have created an environment where students felt unmotivated to continue on. Praising statements such as “Good Job!” and “You finished that very quickly, you must be very smart!” can have negative consequences for some children. Yet we all find ourselves praising with similar statements. I know what you are thinking, “How can praise negatively affect a person?”
According to Mueller and Dweck (1998), “praise can have a direct effect on children’s goals and on their interpretation of achievement. “ There are two different forms of praise. The first form is praising for effort or hard work while the second form is praising for ability or intelligence. Mueller and Dweck (1998) say that praising intelligence measures how “smart” they are. In another article Mueller (2007) writes states that, “children with a fixed mind set only care about being judged if they are smart or not and fear trying new things because they are afraid to not succeed.” Many students are so content with not learning anything new so that they can continually be praised over and over again. This continuous praise is expected in order for students to move on. They aren't motivated to improve or learn something new for the fear of not being able to hear that “You are so smart” praise or seeing that good job on their papers.
Let me present an example of what this may look like. There is a boy who all throughout middle school has done well in math, receiving A’s all throughout the three years he has attended. Every time his teachers praise him for getting all his homework problems right, acing the test, and in front of the class saying that he is their math super star, offering him to be a tutor for help. One day he opens up his high school geometry book to do the first problem, gets stuck, tries his best, and receives a C on it. He then thinks he should try harder and maybe asks for help but instead decides that it is not worth it and nobody uses geometry anymore. Ultimately, he decides to quit geometry and math all together. Because he has always received praise for good he was, he never got any praise for effort that he put into it achieving math. I bet most of you right about now are saying so what are we not supposed to make students feel good about the good things they do, doesn't that build up their confidence to move on. Maybe so but it isn't what Mueller and Dweck recommend. They encourage teachers to use praise for effort.
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. As future teachers how can we teach and enforce praise for effort when parents at home praise intelligence?
· We have all heard the saying that parents only want their children to have a better life than they did. There is such a push for excellence, high achievements, and becoming the best that I believe parents sometimes forget that it is not all about that. Parents push for the best grades and put too much pressure on it. Telling kids they are smarter than that. So that when they do get there, there isn't any gratitude or appreciation for the hard work and effort it took. It’s now just expected because they proved they were “smart”. As teachers we can praise and acknowledge the progress each student is making and motivate them to do better. Best of all when you praise effort be as detailed and specific as possible.
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. Because so many students are afraid to fail or just don’t want to fail how can we set up a classroom environment so that the students can learn and be praised correctly?
· There so much anxiety to succeed and pass from parents, teachers, and peers that in order to create this environment we need to get rid of the high expectations. Show the children that it is certainly okay to make mistakes because how else do we learn. Most children tend to forget that the only way to learn is to first fail and try again harder. It’s not natural that we learn things the first time around. We also need to address the needs of all students. It might be possible that our students might learn in all different kinds of ways. A suggestion our class came up with was creating different learning centers in the classroom to acknowledge the different learning styles. You could do this by adding video clips and pictures to show your students. Again don’t forget to praise praise praise the process they are taking to complete the task at hand. Mueller (2007) says, “When students believe that they can develop their intelligence, they focus on doing just that.”
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. So what does praise for effort look like exactly?
· Some examples of this could be:
- You really studied for your English test, and your improvement shows it. You read the material over several times, outlined it, and tested yourself on it. That really worked!
- I like the way you tried all kinds of strategies on that math problem until you finally got it.
- It was a long, hard assignment, but you stuck to it and got it done. You stayed at your desk, kept up your concentration, and kept working. That's great!
- I like that you took on that challenging project for your science class. It will take a lot of work — doing the research, designing the machine, buying the parts, and building it. You're going to learn a lot of great things.
Some things to remember about this kind of praise is to be as specific as possible about what you are praising, focus on the process not their ability, say it with meaning and act like you care, and encourage to keep on trying.
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Before my classmates and I gathered for our discussion our professor left us with this video that might help illustrate what I have been saying. The author I have been mentioning, Carol Dweck talks about the value of praise. Check it out!
By: Ashley Aquila
References:
Dweck, Carol S. "The Perils and Promises of Praise." Educational Leadership 65.2 (2007): 34-39. Education Research Complete. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.< http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/menuitem.459dee008f99653fb85516f762108a0c>.
Mueller, Claudia M., and Carol S. Dweck. "Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation and Performance." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75.1 (1998): 33-52. Print.
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