Hello Again!
To start with a quick reminder: School is a social experience – as students learn through interaction with their teachers and with their peers (Terry, 1927). As I have mentioned in previous blogs, social experiences are moving away from face-to-face interaction and becoming more frequent in online environments (Weinberg, 2012). Because of this shift in socialisation, education should be prepared to incorporate social media when necessary; one way of doing this may be through using the principles of social reward and the notion of social perception.
So what is social reward?
Dwer et al (1983) suggested students that are encouraged demonstrate more confidence in their academic abilities, thus leading to an increase in student resilience. This means that students who face hardship in their studies, such as not understanding certain information, will “bounce back” without hindering their learning process. Research such as this has led some educational psychologists to research the effect of social rewards such as praise and encouragement. Grille argues that social rewards such as praise can be used as a tool to improve student motivation; however, Grille does see praise as a manipulative technique and suggests a more positive self evaluation alternative. Others have argued that praise is a positive reward method in schools, Barnett (2002) suggested praise increases the positivity of a learning environment, which is associated with increasing student motivation.
But once again we find ourselves asking that same question… does this increase in motivation actually aid learning?
According to recent “Dance Investigation” by Sugawara and Tanka (2012), praise can be used to increase motor learning. Not only did participants who were praised spend longer practising and performing with better accuracy, they also showed a deeper understanding in regards to the meaning of the choreography. In addition, the research found that participants who observed praise did not receive the same learning benefits. This suggests that in educational settings it may not be sufficient to praise just certain students, but to praise each student on their individual merits (Sorry!). Moving away from dancing, Haring (1978) outlined four key stages of learning (The Instructional Hierarchy), the stages wherein consist of Acquisition, Fluency, Generalisation & Adaptation. These final stages are what we traditionally view as learning, and the view of understanding. However, to reach these stages, Haring argued we must pass through the stages of accuracy and fluency. Haring suggests praise can be used to highlight students’ improvements and encourage this progression further. In the acquisition stage, where accuracy is a goal, students could be praised for the amount of correct answers given. Once in the fluency stage, where efficiency is key, praise is directed towards the quantity and speed of correct answers. Although praise may not help students in the generalisation and adaptation of knowledge, it can build the foundations that lead to this deeper understanding.
It is not only praise that can motivate students academically, smiling has been shown to an influential social reward. Research here at Bangor University, conducted by Erin Heerey & Danielle Shore, has described smiling as a form of social currency that can encourage desired behaviour. This suggests if teachers reward students with a smile and friendly attitude, students may work harder to receive elicit this response in the future. Social reward goes beyond the teacher and extends to fellow pupils. In accordance with the theory of social perception, Richardson and Swan (2003) found that in online learning environments, audience size was perceived to be high. Students with this perception appeared to more motivated in their assignments and demonstrated better understanding. As a result, students received higher grades than when perceived audience size was low. These findings suggest that students can increase their own motivation by increasing their audience size, and this can be achieved by sharing assignments through the medium of social networks.
So, we are all familiar with Wordpress, but have you thought about how we can use it more effectively? Imagine receiving an email that you have another follower on your blog, your perceived audience size is automatically increasing, and therefore increasing your motivation. Blogs can be ‘liked’, and this could be used as a form of an ‘online-smile’ to either highlight our improvements or motivate us to gain more likes. In addition, WordPress blogs can be linked with other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to further and increase our audience/social perception, which should reflect in our academic performance.
To conclude, schools can motivate students with praise and a simple smile, and this would improve motivation and performance. Also, as students, we can take out motivation into our own hands by increasing our perceived audience size through the use of social networks, thus increasing our chances of social reward.
Thanks For Reading 🙂
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This week’s video:
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Jesse asked following this talk if I had my word pressed synced with my Facebook. In the name of hypocrisy and self motivation I have decided to link my social media sites to my academic work …EEEK
Sorry for such along blog! If you are interested in this area there is much more I couldn’t include!
References
Terry (1927): http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1078758?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21101878049197
Weinberg (2012): http://www.pluggedin.co.uk/article/do-you-socialise-more-online-than-for-real
Dwer (1983) (Via Warren): http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/4/287.full
Grille: http://www.naturalchild.org/robin_grille/rewards_praise.html
Barnett (2002): http://epsl.asu.edu/epru/documents/EPRU%202002-101/epru-2002-101.pdf
Harring (1978): http://www.interventioncentral.org/academic-interventions/general-academic/instructional-hierarchy-linking-stages-learning-effective-in
Heery & Shore: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/10/economic-value-smile-research
The Science of Education 
Your blog raises some interesting questions about reinforcement and how it is applied. I think that teachers often employ reinforcement through praise without fully understanding the benefits, or indeed problems, that it has. You mentioned that praise in an educational setting should focus on individual merits. I think this is very important, and highlights the intricate, personal nature of praise and reinforcement. An interestingly named paper by Curwin (1980), ‘Are your students addicted to praise?’ outlines one problem with misusing reinforcement; Students may become so focused on receiving praise they stop being creative. Students learn that certain behaviours will receive rewards, so by mindlessly doing these, they ensure they get rewards, but with minimal effort. Stringer and Hurt (1981) also mention how students are initially motivated to learn and engage in certain behaviours, purely because those behaviours are rewarding. When you introduce an external reward doesn’t make the child more interested, instead it shifts focus away from the task and on to the reward. I think Henderlong and Lepper (2002) sum up accurately how best to use rewards and praise. In order to be effective they first need to be perceived as sincere. This suggests that giving out lots of rewards is not the best idea, as you will lose some sincerity. They also emphasise how vitally important it is to reward the right behaviours. In order to avoid the pitfalls discussed in the previous two papers, rewards should be for performance related to controllable actions, encourage autonomy and enhance competence. If you reward like this, children will stay motivated to work, and will see the rewards as a bonus, not the only goal. I think it is also important to consider the individuality here. Where rewards might be constructive for one child, they may not be in another child who exhibits the same behaviour. For example a more intelligent child scoring well on a test they find very easy won’t benefit them, but a child who perhaps struggles more will benefit from rewards for receiving a good grade on the same test.
Curwin (1980) http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ231349&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ231349
Stringer and Hurt (1981) http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED202054&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED202054
Henderlong and Lepper (2002) http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/128/5/774/
A really interesting blog topic and one I touched briefly upon myself during the first few weeks of ‘free topics’. I agree that blogging can be a positive thing to have in education and can encourage motivation and self-learning. But what about the negatives? As a personal insight, I love blogging, however, when I first started the process I found the idea of other people being able to view my work, and comment on it a little overwhelming. In second year stats, some of the comments I received were derogatory and focused on my language and grammar use. This then made me so paranoid about blogging that the process became less enjoyable. My opinion is also supported by research. Johnson (2005) carried out research into The Use of Blogs as a Knowledge Management Tool, his studies involved students completing blogs using different methods and then commenting on how they found the process. The main disadvantage was that students felt uncomfortable commenting on other people’s blogs. However, to argue against this viewpoint, Hulburt (2008) did state that the feelings of insecurity are often temporary. (http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/cho4462z9.htm)
Hi ‘lilbex23’ , thanks for your comment. I felt the same way and to some extent still do and always worry when i get a comment notification. But as both you and Hulburt (2008) suggest this insecurity occers in the first few weeks of blogging. This is overcome by an increase in positive social interaction (through comments). Deng and Yuen found that salient values of educational blogging increase over time as students place more emotion and social orientation on to their blogs. These salient properties have been seen to increase confidence in ability reducing insecurity. In addition over time students will more accurately demonstrate self-reflection wich improves learning and performance. Finally Jean Kenix argues teacher moderation of blog comments reduces negative comments and enhances student self esteem. (My blog is on this next week if your interested 🙂 )
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131510002575
Great blog. I would like to address the point you made about rewards strengthening student motivation because, as intelligencepluscharacter has pointed out, research indicates this is not always the case. One of my earlier blogs discussed how rewarding students (using grades) can actually diminish an interest in learning and creativity. As mentioned in the first comment, students may become so focused on obtaining the rewards for tasks that they stop being creative (Curwin, 1980). It has been theorised that when an individual is given rewards for learning tasks, such as in the form of praise (mentioned in your blog), this can increase the chances of them losing interest in the associated learning tasks (Kohn, 1993). It is thought that rewarding students for learning tasks can decrease intrinsic motivation, which is the drive that is defined by feelings of competence and self-determination (Ryan & Deci, 2000); basically what motivates us because we find it enjoyable and fulfilling. These researchers argue that by giving students rewards, the potential for them to lose interest in the learning task increases as they see it as more of means to an end to get the reward, thus reduce their creative input and perform only the necessary requirements to obtain rewards in the form of praise.
References
Curwin, R. (1980). Are your students addicted to praise? Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ231349&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ231349
Kohn, A. (1993). Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology 25, 54–67. Retrieved from http://mmrg.pbworks.com/f/Ryan,+Deci+00.pdf
Logically, praise sounds like a beneficial thing. However, research by Bartholomew (1993) four ways, in which praise can be used ineffectively. It could cause embarrassment to any student not wanting to stick out, it could be perceived as a manipulative control device to get the student to do what you want, it can cause feelings of inferiority as some students inevitably get left out of appraisal, and can be habitual and overused, resulting in diminishing effects. Here he has highlighting the need to use it praise strategically. It seems like a bit of a juggling act to me, however I really like the idea of praising to lay the foundations of knowledge. That sounds like the sort of genius manipulation I would not mind!
Hi 🙂
Loved the blog and I thought you raised some very interesting points this week with regards to social media and praise
Praise is thought to be a good thing but it is thought to affect children who have special needs differently compared to those children who do not have special needs (Bayat 2011). Because of this, teachers and others who are handing out praise need to understand the effect that this praise is going to have on the children and the extent to which it will motivate them to do better.
http://tec.sagepub.com/content/31/2/121.short
This is a great blog with lots of interesting ideas and very fun and inspiring to read!! In terms of motivation when social perception was under investigation, findings also suggest that students whose work received more feedback on their work through the collaborative learning experience were more satisfied with the distance learning tool of the online course (So & Brush, 2008) compared to those who received less. The importance of receiving positive feedback was found to be a predictor of adolescence’s social self-esteem, in particular when communicating on sites built upon friendship networking (Valkenburg et al., 2006). Moreover, it was also found that for individuals with low self-esteem see the social rewards of online self-disclosure networks such as Facebook as little rewarding (Forest & Wood, 2012). So maybe we should exchange more of the social currency (smiles) during our talks to encourage one another and built up people’s self-esteem, and motivate each other to perform well independently what audience size we are facing.
Forrest & Wood, 2012. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/3/295.short
SO & Brush, 2008 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131507000565
Valkenburg et al., 2006 http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2006.9.584
I thought you raised some very interesting points this week with regards to social media and praise. I am also enrolled in the Applied Behaviour Analysis module this semester so topics such as this one interest me because we study the influences of motivation, antecedent, the participation of a behaviour and the consequence (which would in this case be praise) can have on an individual’s actions.
Praise is thought to be a good thing in some circumstances. For example Bayat (2011) argued that praise affected children with special needs differently compared to those children who do not have special needs. He stated that teachers and guardians should consider the effects that praise could have on a particular child before participating in doing so. Furthermore it is important to understand the extent that praise can have on a child’s motivation to perform better.
Great blog Tom! I touched on (well, more wrote all about, but there we go) reward in my blog this week. It seems clear that a simple well done, a positive comment or a more physical reward (not to give spoilers away on next weeks blog) go a long, long way in motivating students to perform well. As Cameron, Banko and Pierce (2001) found, there were no negative effects to giving a positive comment to students and that it increased performance in both high and low interest activities as well as engagement.
It seems like a positive blog comment can go a long way towards encouraging us to do more and do better, and even encourage us to become more engaged with the comments on our blog, Eisenberger and Armeli (1997) found exactly that, and also suggests that it increases our creativity. A possible negative is that if the work is good, but not right, it would reinforce the negative behaviour and send us in the wrong direction. Still, the more people commenting on our blogs and giving us great feedback is a positive, rewarding thing.
Cameron, J., Banko, K. M., & Pierce, W. D. (2001). Pervasive negative effects of rewards on intrinsic motivation: The myth continues. The Behavior Analyst,24(1), 1.
Eisenberger, R., & Armeli, S. (1997). Can salient reward increase creative performance without reducing intrinsic creative interest?. Journal of personality and social psychology, 72(3), 652.
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