Want to Sink Your Students’ Mathematics Motivation? Tell Them, “Good Job!”
As painful as this is for a school teacher to hear, if you give your students stickers, “smiley” faces, more time for recess or candy for work, or yes, even the innocuous positive reinforcement of “Good Job,” you may be damaging the learning environment for your student. Now before you decide I’m trying to tear down the pinnacle of learning principles exemplified by Pavlov’s slobbering pups, hear me out. The following is a story that will forever change your teaching and help your students become powerful, lifelong learners: Kate, Ebon, Jake and Shirley are all ten year old musicians.
Kate beats the drums, Ebon sings, Jake plays an electric guitar, and Shirley shakes the shakers. Every now and then they make a bit of racket in the garage next to the “rewards evolved” school-teacher. Wanting the noise to stop, the teacher begins going over and paying the children a quarter each time they play. “WE ARE PLAYING FOR MONEY!” the kids shout excitedly.
After a number of times, the teacher shows up with a dime, citing painful state government cut-backs. Dismayed the children play, but with less zeal. A couple weeks later, the teacher returns to the garage and says, “Hey kids, sorry. More cut-backs. I have only a nickel.” The kids revolt, stating, “We’re not going to play for a lousy nickel.”
The point of this story isn’t the lack of value of the nickel here in the American culture. Heavy-hitting research (take a look at the book by Alfie Kohn’s Punished By Rewards) says that if you tell a child “Good Job!” or give them other extraneous, non-relevant rewards, students will hurry through their work to receive that praise to the extent that their work is of lower quality than peers who receive only feedback.
Young children who were told “Good Job” for playing with their best friends- “Good job for playing with Johnny”- stopped playing with their friends because they realized if they were being praised it obviously wasn’t worth doing on its own. Students given stickers for coloring quit after a period of days when the stickers were taken away, compared to a peer group who didn’t receive the stickers and kept coloring.
Scores, depending on how they are used, can be similar to stickers and praise. If a paper or homework sheet is graded, students ignore any narrative feedback thereafter. Give them a candy bar for completing their math homework – well, you get the point.
Can you give feedback? Yes, absolutely. You have to. The hundred or so studies on feedback let us know that if the feedback is immediate, relevant to the task, non-comparative, and points the way to next steps it’s good feedback. Sharing your excitement about a student’s learning is fine. But it’s different to say, “I’m so happy you are understanding the such and such concept,” in contrast to “Good Job.”
And it’s perfectly fine to use negative reinforcement despite advocates who say the opposite. When you step on a cactus without shoes, the feedback is: 1. Immediate! 2. Relevant (it hurts your foot, not your ego) 3. Non-comparative (every person that does has some pain!) 4. Lead the way to next steps (the cactus is almost telling you to wear shoes!).
