The third addition to our Motivational Climate Setting series looks at the Reward Systems which are used in your classroom and asks you to questions whether they serve the purpose they are intended for.
A lot of what follows expands on an earlier post we wrote entitled Punished by Rewards - please read this if you haven't done already. Having written about the use of rewards in schools and asked the questions about why we have to bribe our young people into conforming to learn, we thought we should at least begin to look at alternative ways of setting a climate where the young people learn because they want to, because they have their own reasons and not ones which we have forced onto them.
Before we move on to looking at solutions, I just want to give another example of the mindset which widely exists in educational circles and to throw out some further questions. I was in a conversation the other day surrounding Year 10 and 11 students and how they always become less and less interested in commendations for their work. The fact that this came up excited me as it allows for all sorts of exploratory questions as to why. Instead, however, the questions being asked were ......... how can we get them to like commendations? ..... there must be a way we can get them to like receiving commendations...... can we get a competition going? ......... should we have a prize draw? ...... is it because they are not cool? etc. Have we got so entrenched into this mindset that we now have to incentivise the incentives!!!! The bottom line is that receiving commendations through Years 7, 8 and 9 hasn't served any purpose to these young people and as a result they do not value them. We need to take the hint.
Once again the findings on the ground are supported by what the research is telling us; incentives generally only work when the task is repetitive and mundane as it can act as a light at the end of a dark tunnel. It has also found that even with incentives, through time, the thought of not doing the mundane task becomes more appealing then any incentive on offer and a person may opt to not do the task. Learning should never be repetitive or mundane and therefore it should not require incentives in order to make it happen.
To move forward on this do we simply remove the brown envelopes containing any strategy which acts as a bribe from our schools and watch what happens? Or do we need to consider further what is left once such systems are removed? Does it create a void which will do further damage? Will our young people feel undervalued? Will they switch off further? Will behaviour get worse?
Maybe ask yourself these questions and think about your classroom or school depending on your current position of influence and can you start to trial examples and comment on any of the above? Have you already got examples to put forward? Simply is there a better way?
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