Is There a Place for Reinforcement in Education?
When reading these two authors’ philosophies of behavior applied to our everyday lives I saw incongruences and some overlap. Clearly Pryor takes the more traditional behavioral approach of operant and classical conditioning. She takes the view that if positive reinforcement is applied correctly (timely and with an actually reinforcing stimulus) most behaviors can be modified (excluding severe problems in humans and animals). Kohn on the other hand takes the view that reinforcement (praise) is over used and harmful. Motivation should not be something manipulated from a parent/teacher but fostered and encouraged to come from within the child. One overlap I found interesting is Kohn’s point of manipulating children and one of Pryor’s last points that rewarding “someone else in hope of gain to oneself doesn’t work; it backfires on the simplest level” (Pryor, 2002, p. 163). This statement does appear to agree with Kohn.
When reading these two authors’ philosophies of behavior applied to our everyday lives I saw incongruences and some overlap. Clearly Pryor takes the more traditional behavioral approach of operant and classical conditioning. She takes the view that if positive reinforcement is applied correctly (timely and with an actually reinforcing stimulus) most behaviors can be modified (excluding severe problems in humans and animals). Kohn on the other hand takes the view that reinforcement (praise) is over used and harmful. Motivation should not be something manipulated from a parent/teacher but fostered and encouraged to come from within the child. One overlap I found interesting is Kohn’s point of manipulating children and one of Pryor’s last points that rewarding “someone else in hope of gain to oneself doesn’t work; it backfires on the simplest level” (Pryor, 2002, p. 163). This statement does appear to agree with Kohn.
Though I
find my own philosophy aligning more closely with Pryor I have seen children
who suffer from some of the effects of praise that Kohn points out. For
example, I worked with a student to improve his mathematics skills and in
particular his counting. We did many activities together but to take data I
always had my student count as far as he could at the end of our sessions. When
we first started working on a new concept he would take a very long time to
begin and once he started would frequently look up at me with a look of
apprehension, hesitant to answer. However, I have also seen the benefits of
positive reinforcement for a student who rarely receives it from anyone. Like
Pryor with this student, I have learned that “training can provide a lot of
illumination-not only to the subject but about the subject” (Pryor, 2002, p.
157). Most importantly, for this student implementing some type of positive
reinforcement (in his case a token economy) demonstrated both to the student
and his teacher that the student was able to modify his behavior and that behavioral
strategies were effective, something that was really good for the teacher to
learn.
Ultimately,
I believe that positive reinforcement and verbal praise have a place within
schools and parenting. However, I also agree that it is largely administered
incorrectly. Over and over again we have learned that praise should be specific
to the individual. Also, though Kohn feels that Dweck’s research is support for
his argument I still personally believe it supports the type of praise we
should give students helping to encourage motivation within the student to
persevere.
As a side
note: Did anybody else wonder what an “Education expert” was?
Nice connection between Kohn and Pryor here. You are wise to point out that schools often misuse reinforcement. I see some great potential connections to James here.
ReplyDelete