After reading the introduction containing Harlow and Deci's studies, I
was shocked. It seems strange in this day and age for a person to
complete a task without any type of reward or compensation. When it comes
to tying these studies into teaching, I would hope I have given my students the
self assurance and motivation to want to complete tasks efficiently just
because they know they can, not because I may give them a sticker or a piece of
candy. There will be times as a teacher that the students may need an
extra incentive to complete a task or behave appropriately and I think that is
ok too. I want my students to understand that their reward for good
behavior and hard studying goes beyond any material gift or prize that I could
give them. I want them to know that they
are building on their future and it is their job as a citizen to perform these
tasks and projects out of respect and motivation for themselves to become successful.
I found the studies of Deci and Harlow to be very interesting. They both conducted the same sorts of studies on humans and monkeys and got the same results with twenty years in between. I feel to motivate students we need to explain the intrinsic rewards and not the money rewards. The education we will provide them will lead to further expanding their own personal learning and will later learn to their own lifestyles. I once had a teacher who gave a lazy student a pop every time he did well on a spelling test, but once he no longer received pops for doing well, he went back to not trying. This kind of reminds me of this study. Students need to know the intrinsic rewards and not the pop rewards. As future educators we can reward them with more reading or more challenging work so we can spark their involvement with school and learning. I realize for a lot of teachers this could be hard to do because they don’t want to provide extra work or push their students, but if we want to be the best we can be, this is something that we will have to take into our own hands.
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