Using Rewards to Motivate Your Students

Motivation is an important trait in our students. Motivated students are orientated toward their goals and have the drive to do the work to achieve the goal. Learners come into our classrooms with varying levels of both of these two facets of motivation.

The goal of educators is to influence students to develop long-lasting internal or intrinsic motivation. The best way to motivate kids is through years of good parenting and teaching.

Absent these factors, teachers often resort to the use of rewards to motivate. But do rewards really work with kids?

According to Eric Jensen, author of the book "Teaching with the Brain in Mind", the human brain is designed to take full advantage of the positive aspects of rewards, including inducing pleasure, increasing goal seeking behavior, maintaining learned behaviors, increasing social behaviors, reinforcing existing learning and increasing new learning.

Research supports the targeted use of rewards for short-term tasks, but complex behaviors are often hindered by rewards.

The performance of learners initially improves when they're rewarded but over time performance drops off even though the rewards continue.

Researchers believe dopamine (a "feel good" chemical) in the brain is triggered as much by prediction of pleasure as by the reward/pleasure. The brain is dynamic and changes quickly in response to rewards. A small reward produces the desired results but as time goes on, students are no longer happy with a modest reward. And since we are all individuals, a reward that is coveted by one student isn't motivating to another. For instance, one child might be willing to jump through a metaphorical series of hoops for a sticker while another child couldn't be less interested in working at a task to receive a sticker when finished. In addition, even the child who initially worked willingly for a sticker expects bigger rewards as time goes by.

Rewards work best if they are given for short-term goals. For example, offering a reward to a child for receiving a good grade on a weekly spelling test will be more effective than giving a reward for a good spelling grade at the end of the semester.

I, personally, don't often use rewards in my classes mainly because children so quickly habituate to the reward expect bigger and bigger rewards. Instead, I try to motivate children through their natural curiosity and by modeling a positive attitude toward learning to try to encourage intrinsic motivation in my students.

Teachers who decide to use a reward system should keep it simple. They should make the reward meaningful to the students. Giving students choice is very motivating. Reward students often at first. As time goes on, rewards should be reduced but expectations should remain high.

Positive attention and feedback should be given in addition to rewards to reinforce desired behavior. The object of rewards is to establish a pattern of behavior for which a child finds that the result is its own reward.

Jensen says that educators should look at rewards as neither "good" nor "bad" but useful in certain cases if used correctly. Rewards should be used for limited periods of time, for certain populations and for specific reasons.

Sources:
"Teaching with the Brain in Mind" by Eric Jensen, 2005, ASCD, Alexandria, VA
http://k6educators.about.com/cs/classroommanageme3/a/rewardsprizes.htm
http://www.pta.org/2616.htm
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr300.shtml