It can be detrimental to their self-worth if they’re used to constant person praise. Constant superficial or “person praise“ can also put burden on them and make them feel like they have too high standards to live up to. Sue has a fantastic article discussing how the phrase “Good Job” can be harmful.
From these, we classified positive peer reporting in the mixed evidence category and tootling in the evidence-based practice category. We discuss benefits of various components in each type of peer praise intervention, limitations of the literature review, and make recommendations for future researchers. In the current study, we aimed to examine the effects of person praise on students’ motivation and performance in a new learning task when students expect different manners of feedback.
This highlights a boundary condition for the potentially detrimental effects of self-affirmation. They show that the established positive effects of a mastery-goal environment (task-involving feedback) can be significantly undermined by introducing a micro-level person-focused intervention like praise. This suggests that the motivational environment is not solely determined by its overall structural characteristics but is also highly sensitive to subtle interventions that shift the student’s focus from task mastery to self-evaluation. Tootling is a classwide application of PPR where students observe all peers instead of one or a few stars and privately report specific prosocial behaviors on index cards to the teacher. Each appropriate tootle with required components (e.g., name of both students giving and receiving praise, praise statement is specific) earns points toward a class reward (group contingency). The name tootling comes from merging ‘toot your own horn’ and tattling and is intended to be the opposite of tattling (Skinner et al., 1998).
Next, we hypothesized that the interaction effect on motivation will extend to task performance (operationalized as the total score; Hypothesis 2). Specifically, under the task-involving feedback condition, person praise will indirectly decrease students’ performance through reducing their motivation (the number of trials attempted). However, under the ego-involving feedback condition, person praise will indirectly increase their performance through improving their motivation.
After receiving hyped-up praise, children with low self-esteem feel pressured to master work above their perceived abilities and subsequently withdraw from challenges, according to a 2014 study. For maximum rhetorical effect, combine good will with sincerity. Giving effective praise to children involves using the three steps—showing approval, describing positive behavior, and describing how using the good behavior they displayed will help them and others. Praising their effort will encourage them to continue trying and learning in all areas of their lives.
Focus On Effort, Not Ability
For withdrawal/reversal and multiple baseline designs, we utilized a web-based calculator (Pustejovsky et al., 2023) to calculate between-case standard mean difference (BC-SMD) effect size estimates. For the one eligible alternating treatment design study (Thoele, 2024), we utilized a web-based calculator (Manolov and Onghena, 2018) to calculate an average difference between successive observations (ADISO) value. ADISO values can be standardized for comparison across studies by dividing by the standard deviation.
Why I Believe Special Ed Teachers Have Superpowers
One way to achieve this is using a recognition platform like Lattice Praise. This allows appreciation and praise to be delivered in several different ways, from within the platform to an individual email, or shout-outs on collective Slack channels. Taking the time to celebrate high performance and show appreciation in this way also creates a culture of continuous feedback, where employees aren’t waiting until their annual review to discover how they’re doing. The goal of effective praise is not only to make the recipient feel good but to teach through success. When someone does a great job, it might seem like there’s nothing more to teach. However, many factors can contribute to success, including luck.
- No matter what our role is, teacher, principal, or superintendent, we want everything to be the best it can be, so naturally, with the best of intentions, we want to point out room for improvement.
- Our innovative tools and expert services, such as the StudentWatch and EmployeeSafe programs, support the mission to foster a healthy culture of positive recognition in schools.
- From billing and parent communication to curriculum and admissions, it combines everything you need in one easy-to-use platform.
- More analyses are therefore needed to determine how PPR compares to tootling and how effective peer-delivered praise is, generally.
The instinct to heap on the praise (especially for students who struggle) is well-intentioned. Overpraising for small things can make students doubt they can do big things. For example, praising students for minor reasons can feel insincere.
Social-emotional learning is a https://www.facebook.com/meetheage/ critical element of Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS), which is also an optimal addition to professional development and learning more ways in which to support student development. Courses can also be customized to your state or district’s individual needs. Frame student feedback as an opportunity to refine and build on their skill set.
Each example follows the three-step structure while addressing different types of positive behavior. Notice how each praise statement is specific, genuine, and connects the behavior to a positive outcome. Implementing effective praise becomes easier when you follow a consistent structure. These three steps can be adapted to any situation while maintaining their impact.
Avoid praise that reinforces cultural stereotypes, such as complimenting a child on a quality that is often assumed for their ethnic group, as this can reveal low expectations. Give specific feedback about what you observed to show you were paying attention. Offering praise to young children is so simple its impact is often underestimated and underused. Actively listen to students when they share ideas and validate their feelings; these strategies boost self-esteem.
In one classic study (Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett, 1973), preschool children were either rewarded for drawing with markers (with an attractive “Good Player” certificate) or not rewarded. Of the children who were rewarded, some were told in advance that playing with markers would earn them the reward, whereas others received the reward as a surprise. (Naturally, the three groups of children were studied separately.) One week later, all of the children were given the opportunity to play with markers, among other activities. On average, the children who expected the reward spent less time playing with markers than they had before the experiment started, and less than the non-rewarded children. Crucially, the children who received the reward as a surprise behaved like the non-rewarded children. These results have been replicated in other studies with other tasks and children of other ages (Deci et al., 1999).
Teachers in schools where PBIS or Ci3T is implemented might consider implementing one of the versions of student-delivered BSP. The whole school might even try it as a Tier 1 prevention effort that extends PBIS to the student level as peer praisers, where teachers get help from students implementing the low-intensity strategy of BSP as a positive reinforcement for meeting schoolwide behavior expectations. If just one or two students are socially isolated and not being included by peers, in addition to reteaching appropriate social skills lessons for all students, teachers could implement PPR and make those students the ‘star’ at a higher rate than peers. Teachers could then reinforce direct and immediate student praise with teacher-delivered BSP (e.g., “Jayson, I love how you thanked Robyn for cleaning up the whole group table”) to encourage student BSP to occur more regularly.
Remind students that they are writers and help them navigate the process. Balancing praise with constructive feedback encourages students to face obstacles and reframe failures as an opportunity for growth. Praise should also be appropriate for the individual student. Some students may thrive on being praised in front of the whole class. Other students may be uncomfortable being singled out, even if it’s for a good reason.
In most of these studies, the praise focused on students’ particular learning experience (i.e., the praise was provided to students according to their learning outcome in a task). Practically, however, educators face the dilemma of determining whether praise is an appropriate strategy to stimulate the motivation and performance of students who lack prior experience with a specific task, such as encouraging them to accept the challenge of a new learning assignment. On the basis of the literature review mentioned above, we proposed that person praise may have different effects on students’ motivation and performance when different manners of feedback are employed. Specifically, when task-involving feedback is provided, the learning environment fosters a mastery-goal orientation, leading students to focus on learning gains and self-improvement rather than competition. This context inherently establishes a less anxious and low-threat learning environment (Butler, 1987, 1988; Butler & Nisan, 1986; Hogue, 2024; Pekrun et al., 2014). In this circumstance, the positive effect of person praise (as an attribute affirmation) is less likely to be realized.
But articles periodically appear that warn teachers of potentially dire effects of praise; praise is alleged to reduce motivation, to manipulate children, or to make them less able to make decisions (Kohn, 2001; Mangin, 1998). Most of the research examining praise has focused on how it affects student motivation. In a typical study, the child first performs a task, then receives some praise (or not). Either immediately thereafter or perhaps following a delay, some measure is taken of how interesting the children found the task or how motivated the children are to perform it again. For example, in one study (Koestner, Zuckerman and Koestner, 1989) the experimenters explained to fifth-graders that the illustrator Al Hirschfeld hid his daughter’s name, Nina, in his drawings. They were then shown several of his illustrations with the task of finding as many “Ninas” as they could.
Focusing on the process rather than the outcome and reframing praise with specific language can encourage curiosity and a willingness to learn. In a study looking at practices that reduce behavior problems in elementary classrooms, the Institute of Education Sciences identified teacher praise as one of the top five most effective practices. Many students who learn and think differently get more negative feedback than positive.
Praising a trait (intelligence, appearances, and abilities) can cause a child to believe there is something innate, something she has no control over, that enables her to be successful. That being said, I also believe that there are some exceptions. There are some children who just naturally require Words of Affirmation to feel loved. Understandably, we want to tell our children how wonderful they are and build up their self-esteem. However, as the studies I listed above demonstrate, constantly telling them they are smart/special/beautiful, etc. can do the opposite of what we want it to.
