Throughout my teacher education program, I have been challenged to think about several classroom management issues in terms of discipline and punishment. One thing which I have pondered over and over again is the rewards versus punishments aspect of classroom management. Lately, with the extensive amount of information we, as student teachers, have received about classroom management strategies, I am most confused about whether the use of rewards to reinforce positive behaviour in a classroom is a positive or negative method to manage a class. I am trying to establish my own beliefs about the ideal methods to use in a classroom environment, and the function of rewards in this setting.
What has confused me over and over again about whether the use of rewards in a classroom is positive or not, is the conflicting educational literature and expert opinions. For example, Harry Wong supports the use of rewards to encourage good behaviour, but Alfie Kohn believes that rewards are not necessarily the best thing for managing a class and can, in fact, have negative consequences in some cases. Kohn certainly supports the idea that students should behave in certain ways, not because they gain rewards, but because they simply understand and believe they ought to act that way. In addition, in my module’s classroom management workshop, we discussed how rewards are not necessarily a positive method of managing classroom behaviour. In my opinion, all these education professionals are respected in their field and make valid points. But I wonder, who really is correct? Is it okay to reward students or groups for a job well done? Or are rewards merely a tool for manipulatively getting the behaviour we want from our students?
I struggle with which side fits my beliefs about teaching, and I continue to go back and forth between these two ideas. While this may seem like a rather small issue in the greater scheme of things in classroom management, I think it is very important. I think the presence or absence of a reward system in a classroom certainly affects the dynamic of a classroom and student motivation. Yet, I cannot conclude where I stand. On one hand, I think it is perfectly acceptable to reward good behaviour- not merely to encourage that same behaviour again, but simply to reward that student for their positive behaviour. However, I understand that rewards can end up being the only thing that motivates that student, rather than having the intrinsic motivation to do good acts.
Overall, I am beginning to think that the reward system can be positive in a classroom only when this system is used to reward students (after the fact) and is not used as bribery. Similarly, I think rewards should be a special, unexpected gift, not a treat that students know for certain they will receive when doing particular behaviours. I love to see students’ faces when they are unexpectedly rewarded for something they did or achieved; they feel proud of themselves. They are proud of something they did as a result of their own intrinsic motivation (and not because of something they were promised), yet still get to experience the pride of a job well done emphasized through an unexpected treat.
I know that this discussion on classroom rewards is slightly off the topic of discipline and punishments, however I do feel that rewards systems can also play a major role in promoting desirable behaviours from students and thus making situations where discipliner or punishment is needed as less likely (or not, depending on where you stand on reward systems).
1 comment:
The way I look at reward systems is that if you give a reward and then you take it away due to misbehaviour, then that is punishment. I have seen teachers use reward systems/ token systems and take away the points (or whatever it is they are collecting to reach their ultimate goal)for misbehaviour. This does nothing for correcting the misbehaviour because it is not related to the misbehaviour in any way. However, I believe that reward systems can work, but you have to be careful in how you use it as a teacher. If one child is acting out do all the students in his group get punished for his behaviour? And what does that do to the child who is singled out in the group? One interesting form of reward system that I experienced in grade 4 was earning fake money. Each student was given tasks each week to complete and if they were completed, we got money, kind of like an allowance. We then recorded all of our money in a banking ledger (like balancing a cheque book). We would also be fined if we did things like forget homework or library books. We would then have to pay the teacher our fine, and record in red the withdraw from our "bank account." At the end of the year, with the money we saved, we got to "buy" what we wanted from the "teacher's store" (the teacher had a huge supply of stuff to choose from and each item had a price tag). I remember really enjoying this class and everyone in the class was engaged in this form of reward system. Whether anyone personally likes this idea or not (it does take rewards away and fines students which seems negative ... it also emphasizes commercialism)it was an extremely memorable system that worked for me. I had fun and I didn't even notice that I was learning how to save money, balance cheque books without the use of calculators, stay on task, be socially responsible, shop frugally, and so much more! And, incidentally, I probably couldn't tell you anything else I learned in Grade 4.
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