During my observation in the school environment I saw first hand the result of proper and improper praise. The class I was observing was a regular American History class. The attribute of the classroom was that some students were motivated to do well, where as most were not. My observation teacher did not give out much praise on the work that they did so I made sure that whatever I graded had some kind of encouragement on it. It ranged from simply putting "Good Job" to "Excellent". If they did not do very well on an assignment I put remarks of how to do a better job next time. Unknown to me, I was using the "incremental theory of ability" (p. 389). I was encouraging them to try harder, thus they would secure a good grade.
The students appeared to get some satisfaction from the feed back they got. As time went on, their skills progressed.
On one of my observation days I visited an advanced placement (AP) history class. This class and the regular history class were night and day. They were different not so much because of the work load (which was obviously more), but rather, the entitlement felt by these students. The teacher was having them finish a project that was due the next day. Instead of listening to the teacher give instructions, the class was up walking around and talking to their friends. It felt as if they knew that they belonged there, so they could act how they felt. This feeling of entitlement, in my view, results from incorrectly praising them for their intelligence rather than their effort. Except for a few, they were only going through the motions of the assignment because their goal was on performance rather than learning. If they did bad on the assignment I could see them excusing it away as the fault of the teacher and not theirs. Thus, learned helplessness was most likely prevalent in the class.
Using what I learned from this section and my observations I believe that my teaching experience will be a good one for my students and me.
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It's interesting to observe the way that we praise children and students. I feel that I am always telling a child "good job" for everything that they do. While I am at the preschool where I teach I make a conscience effort not the praise every little action. This way I can without the praise for meaningful actions rather than things they should already being doing on a routine basis.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Chris, I agree with him that proper encouragement and feedback is a must when it comes to your students assignments. If a student isn't recieving any positive feedback for a job well done, then the motivation to keep up the hard work starts to disappear in the classroom. On the other hand, if a student is just seeing bad grades, but no reason or helpful hints on how to improve are given then their once again is no motivation to do better on the next assignment. I liked how in your observation class, that you took it upon yourself to give feedback to the students since you realized that the teacher was not.
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