Alfie Kohn

Hang on in there: could encouragement be more useful than praise?

2013-09-27T21:59:27+01:00September 27th, 2013|learning|

Last week I expanded on some of my doubts about the concept of praise, particularly the current consensus that we should be going out of our way to praise effort. I concluded by saying, "no one would disagree with the power of a sincere compliment – the difficulty is in knowing the difference. Maybe we should start thinking about how best to encourage pupils to learn." I intended to spend the week considering the question of what to do instead, and then Tim Taylor wrote this summarising Alfie Kohn's advice on how to make sure praise is sincere and useful: A: Don’t praise people, only [...]

Is praise counter productive?

2013-09-22T22:15:13+01:00September 22nd, 2013|behaviour, learning, myths|

I had an interesting discussion with Tim Taylor this morning. He said,  "At best, praising effort has a neutral or no effect when students are successful, but is likely to be negative when students are not successful." But what could possibly be wrong with praise? Surely praise is one of the most fundamental way to motivate pupils? Teachers are, generally, keen to praise pupils, and pupils , generally, welcome and expect it. We use praise to reward or change pupils' behaviour, and to that extent it may well be effective. But could this praise also be diluting learning and effort? Various research seems [...]

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