Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition – Research-based Strategies
I am a firm believer in people taking responsibility for their own actions and that most can find success if they establish the right mindset and put in the effort. Too often children are not taught early on about their ability to make the choices that control the direction of their lives. It is easier to expect others to do it for them and then to blame others for the consequences of their situation when they become unhappy. But, as the saying “you don’t get something for nothing” goes, the easy route doesn’t always take you where you want to go.
I want to take advantage of my role in the lives of children to not only have them learn my subject area, but to help them become more successful in life. I have chosen Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition as the strategy for this assignment. As stated in Classroom Instruction That Works, if you believe that effort is the most important factor in achievement, then you have a motivational tool that can apply to any situation. Marzano et al. note that research has shown that many children are unaware of the connection between effort and achievement. However, it has also shown that they can learn to change this belief. Studies have found that “simply demonstrating that added effort will pay off in terms of enhanced achievement actually increases student achievement”.
Once children make this connection, they look for the adults in their lives to help them implement it. The students in Fires in the Bathroom say that they want their teachers to care about them and their progress and to push them to do their best. Even when things are going well, they want a teacher who will stick by them and help them to believe that they can succeed. The teacher should set high expectations and be clear and consistent regarding the attainment of them – pushing students to do their best, but doing so fairly. (Cushman)
In order to make sure that all of my students are able to make this connection, I need to teach and exemplify the association between effort and achievement. One way to do this is to use real-life examples. I can start out by sharing examples from my own life where I found success when it seemed unlikely, through continued effort. Next, I can point out some examples of well-known athletes and business, political or social leaders who didn’t give up despite great odds. I might then assign the students the task of searching for, and sharing with the class, an individual who persevered to find success. Lastly, I can ask students to give personal examples of a time when they or a family member succeeded because they didn’t give up. (Marzano)
Since simply making the connection may not motivate all students, another strategy is to use effort and achievement charts. This is done by creating two rubrics – one for effort and one for achievement. The students are then asked to track their effort and achievement for some period of time. In addition to plotting the results, there can be a comment section for them to verbalize their insight and reflection of their experiences, thus heightening their awareness of the link between effort and achievement. (Marzano)
Once students understand the power of effort, recognition of their hard work provides a continuing motivator. The students in Fires in the Bathroom said that they wanted teachers to acknowledge and reward their hard work, not just the results. If teachers showed pride in the students’ work, it helped them develop the pride in themselves. However, they also cautioned about how recognition is delivered. Public recognition can be tricky – some students crave it, while others do not want to be singled out. To them, praise and criticism feel the same (Cushman).The key is getting to know your students and learning how to provide recognition so that it is received positively.
Some findings listed in Classroom Instruction That Works show that rewarding students simply for performing a task does not enhance intrinsic motivation and might actually decrease it. However, studies found strong support that rewards work fairly well when based on the attainment of some performance standard. An interesting finding was that abstract, symbolic recognition was more effective than tangible rewards. Verbal rewards seemed to work no matter how the study measured motivation. Cameron and Pierce found that “verbal praise is an extrinsic motivator that positively alters attitude and behaviors (Marzano).
One way to provide recognition is to personalize it by setting ambitious, but achievable, goals and then providing recognition when students achieve a goal. An example I liked was the “Personal Best” honor roll. This acknowledgement was based on effort rather than grades – the thinking being that once students understand (and get reinforcement for putting forth) effort, an improvement in grades will follow.
From Jones’s Tools for Teaching, his strategy of praise, prompt and leave uses verbal recognition of the effort put forth to that point in order to motivate the student to continue on their own after a prompt to point them in the right direction. A similar strategy discussed in Classroom Instruction That Works is pause, prompt and praise. The teacher reaches a student while working the crowd and asks them to pause. They discuss any difficulty the student is having and the teacher provides a helpful prompt. If the student’s performance improves as a result of the prompt, the teacher follows up with praise.
As long as they are tied to a specific performance goal, many teachers find that connecting verbal praise with concrete, symbolic tokens of recognition is effective. The type of token depends on the age of the child and can be in the form of stickers, coupons or treats. I once had a teacher that kept a bowl of small candies at his desk. While working the crowd, he would carry a handful with him. When students did something correctly, he would toss a candy across the room to them. While one must take care in this approach – he had the respect of the class, so that mimicking of his throwing objects did not become a problem – he did it regularly and fairly, such that no one felt singled out or left out.
I like the strategy of Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition because it can be used for any age group and any subject. Reinforcing effort helps to teach children that the harder they try, the more successful they can be – a valuable lesson that will benefit them long after they leave my classroom. Providing recognition for obtaining specific goals enhances achievement and stimulates motivation (Marzano). With this mindset in place, the educational strategies I then utilize will have greater impact on students’ success.
References
Marzano, Robert J., Pickering, Debra J., Pollock, Jane E. (2001); Classroom Instruction That Works
Cushman, Kathleen. Fires in the Bathroom, 2003.
Jones, Fred (2007); Tools for Teaching, Second Edition.