I'm disgusted by what the fur farms in China are doing. I'm not a fan of fur itself in the first place so i've never worn fur or bought things that are related to it. This feeling is heightened further after I watched a video from Peta that really, really makes me sick. Just a warning that what you are about to see can be thoroughly disturbing with animals skinned ALIVE so don't watch it if you can't stomach the sight. If you're a person that likes fur, perhaps its time you change your mind. For good. 

Click below for video.

Pledge to go fur-free at PETA.org.

For the fun of it today, and so that you know what I've been toiling over, I present to you my Educational Psychology Essay. I have no idea what I was writing about though, ahahahahaha! You would be after sweating over it till the wee hours of the morning.... i hate writing essays!!! grrr....

Q3. Should rewards and punishments be used to motivate students’ learning?


In this paper, I shall take the position of supporting the statement that rewards and punishments should be used to motivate students learning. Before I begin, I shall discuss what motivation is about, the theories surrounding it, and finally what we can learn from it to facilitate student learning.

Motivation is a tendency or disposition to act in a particular way, and a motive is a particular need or want that causes such a tendency. It arouses or energizes that individual, directs him or her towards some sort of goal, and sustains the movement towards that goal over a period of time (Ames and Ames, 1984). In our case, we shall reference it to studies for students. There are a few theories related to motivation namely through, behavioral theory and intrinsic & extrinsic motivation.

In behavioral theory, we learn that it was Burrhus Frederic Skinner that was a pioneer in this field. Behavioral theories generally regard our actions to be instinctive, and are governed by a stimulus-response. All motivation is believed to arise from our emotions, instincts and basic drives. Skinner in that regard developed operant conditioning whereby it examines the relationships between deliberate behavior and the conditions that precede and follow it (Wikipedia Radical Behaviorism, 2008). These preceding conditions are called Antecedents while the ones following it are called Consequences. In this theory, we learn that both Antecedents or Consequences can increase, decrease or modify specific behaviors of humans.

This idea is developed from the fact that any action taken by a person has consequences that will occur naturally in the environment. For example, a disruptive student may always be telling silly jokes in class and the laughter of the student’s classmates may serve to reinforce this form of behavior as the disruptive student is ‘encouraged’ by the positive reinforcement that the classmates give. However, should the teacher discipline the student immediately for the disruption, the student may not repeat such behavior again. It must be said, however, that the consequence does not guarantee a definite positive change in the disruptive students behavior, rather it just increases the chances of it happening in the future. Therefore we can call operant conditioning a process whereby deliberate behavior influences the consequences of that particular behavior (good or bad) being repeated.

Moving on from operant condition theory leads us to negative and positive reinforcement. As cited in the example above, we can tell that the example of a disruptive student might work well through negative reinforcement whereby the negative aspect of the student disrupting the class is removed through the teachers response of discipline. In positive reinforcement, a reward or praise from the teacher is given to a student to encourage and strengthen them to repeat a certain behavior but it must be noted that this must be done in an appropriate timing for full effect. For example, if a teacher does not praise a student consistently and gives him credit for improving his work after a test, it will be effective. However, should the teacher give him praise for every single thing he does, this would have little effect on him then.

In negative reinforcement, the behavior of the student is strengthened because of the removal of an unpleasant event or something is prevented from occurring. For example, if a student hands in his work after much nagging and scolding from his teacher, he is being negatively reinforced. In both positive and negative reinforcements, the chance of the desired behavior from the student repeats itself because of the end consequences and can be said to cause improvement in the student’s behavior.

Moving on from positive and negative reinforcement behavior, Skinner continues to discuss about the differences between the concepts of Reinforcements versus Punishment. We now know that both positive and negative reinforcement strengthen behavior. Compared to this however, punishments are said to weaken behavior as it makes it less likely to happen in the future. Simply put, punishment suppresses behavior instead of encouraging it (Brophy, 1987). For example, if a student refuses to hand in assignments on time, the immediate punishment given from the teacher will make sure that the student will be less likely to repeat his indifferent behavior again. It must be said here that we must be careful that in order to determine what punishments are, teachers need to understand the effects of its consequences on the particular student. This is important as for some students, the teachers rebuke might not stop the defiant behavior from happening again as the student does not care what they do. Based on what was discussed before on operant condition theory, these results would therefore not be considered as punishments

Punishments can be said to cause continual problems to teachers because sometimes it can happen unintentionally when a teacher’s behavior itself may be interpreted as punishment even though it might be necessary so or when the situation in the classrooms demand it. For example, when a reserved student struggles to do his homework and finally hands it in to his teacher, the teacher enthusiastically praises him in front of the class. Based on what we have learnt through operant conditioning, we could say that that the student might not have been rewarded, but rather punished.
Consider classroom situations whereby students have major issues like throwing tables and chair around the class with the potential of causing harm to fellow classmates, this might not happen in usual circumstance but teachers are supposed to react immediately through punishment of that particular student although the idea is not to punish the student in the disciplinary sense but more to make sure the unacceptable behavior is not repeated again. As such, punishment can be said to be less effective compared to reinforcement.

The theory of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is different from behavioral theory as behavioral examines the external environment that influences student’s motivation (Ames, 1984). Intrinsic motivation is focused on the students internal desire to engage in an activity, be it studying or learning something new. It is where their energy and direction comes from. Intrinsically motivated students find their sense of reward from the activity itself. A student can read a story book from cover to cover for his English Reading program because he finds it a joy to do so. In regards to extrinsic motivation, it is the rewards or incentives that a student receives or direction that is given from the outside to impress others that moves the student to participate in any given activity. A student can be extrinsically motivated to read his book because the teacher praises him in front of all his classmates but it must be noted that extrinsic motivation means little if the student is already intrinsically motivated. For both theories, it can be summed up as the energy or direction from within versus from without.

It must be said that external incentives, like rewards, can interfere with intrinsic motivation (Brophy, 1987). We are able to test this out through a research conducted on three groups of students that were told to solve a simple problem like building a block tower. One group was told that they would be paid for this task, another was told nothing, and the last group was only told about the monetary rewards at a later stage after completing their task and unannounced. Each group was allowed to work further on building more blocks after the exercise and doing so would portray the kind of intrinsic motivation they had. The paid group behaved as expected as once payment was stopped, they didn’t feel motivated to continue with the blocks anymore. However, when it came to the group that was not paid or not expected to be paid, they were more inclined to continue with the project as they felt they were more in control of what they wanted to do and therefore saw the task more enjoyable than just another job they had to complete. Another explanation is that there was no obvious reason (monetary rewards) for students to continue building the blocks but because they realize that it was they themselves who had already determined that it was meaningful to do it, they would voluntarily continue to do so in order to be consistent throughout. (Ames, 1984)

From this experiment, extrinsic rewards seem to reduce intrinsic motivation but there is another perspective whereby they do serve other useful purposes for teachers like providing information on how the students are coping, like in their assignments when they hand it in as teachers can use their grades as in indication of how well they understand their work and not because they are the top in class. Done to a relatively poor student, it might actually help him to also improve as we are using external rewards to stimulate and reinforce such behaviors. We do need to point out that teachers need to be flexible and observant in trying to determine when it is appropriate for them to give them out to maximize it’s use.

Motivation is also said to be “the drive to take part in the process of learning and the later driver to perform the skills and knowledge acquired in that learning”. (Brophy, 1987). As teachers, it is not only our job to teach and discipline students, but also to assist our students in gaining the desire to learn and participate in the learning process. In order to gain this desire to learn, the teacher has to play a central role in motivating students by modeling appropriate learning behaviors. The following discussion will be to briefly summarize on top of what has been mentioned on the strategies that we need to put in place or remove to facilitate students motivation to learn in regards to rewards and punishments.

The proper use of both rewards and punishment is important in classroom management, both as a means to maintain discipline as well as to enhance learning. There is however, from personal experience, the problem that teachers tend to focus too much on punishment and negative reinforcement. This attitude does not help to motivate student behavior or learning effectively as it merely suppresses the unwanted behavior temporarily without fully addressing its source (Nicholas, 1960). The unwanted behavior will simply return when the punishment disappears.

I believe that the manner we can increase motivation is not to rely on one method, either punishment or rewards alone. It must be balanced out by both in order to strengthen the desired behavior and motivate the student in working towards what is expected of them. Punishment alone does not treat the cause as mentioned above and the danger as teachers is that we tend to be ‘reactive’ and address the student’s symptoms instead of the deeper root of the problem. Rewards itself, in the form of bribery, is also not effective alone. When punishments fail to elicit any change in the students behavior, teachers often resort to bribery to regain control over them but this method is hardly useful for a long period of time.

Application of punishments and rewards by the teachers in class must be in view of understanding the theories and techniques being mentioned in behavioral theories and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. For example, when a student continues to misbehave after being repeatedly punished by the teacher in class calls for deeper analysis into the reason. One idea is that while the teacher has punished him, his disruptive behavior might be actually reinforced or ‘rewarded’ with laughter or admiration by his fellow classmates. Thus he feels accepted by everyone for providing comic relief, challenging the authority of the teacher, and will continue to persist in what he does unless the significance of his punishment from his teacher exceeds the ‘rewards’ from his peers.

It can be said that student’s respond to the various stimuli of positive or negative feedback conditions certain desired behaviors. Understanding the educational aspect of behaviorisms is key in developing the proper skills in building motivation through the use of punishments and rewards in our classrooms.





REFERENCES


Books
Brophy, J. (1987). Synthesis of research on strategies for motivating students to learn, Educational Leadership, 45, 40-8

Ruch, Floyd L. (1953). Psychology and Life. (4th ed,) Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Co.

Ames, R. and Ames, C. (1984). Research on motivation in education. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.


Journal
Nicholas M. P. Vincent & Helen L. Merrill. (1960). Effective Classroom Motivation. Peabody Journal of Education, Vol. 38, No. 1. pp. 10-13.


Internet Reference
Wikipedia (2008). Motivation Theory [On-line] Available http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation_theory#Reward_and_reinforcement

Wikipedia (2008). Radical Behaviorism [On-line] Available http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Behaviorism