Praise In Education

To what extent does positive praise affect behaviour, performance and confidence in the classroom, as shown in theory, policy and practice?

The vast majority of teachers believe classroom management skills to be of major importance to them professionally (Merrett and Wheldall, 1993). In many classrooms, behaviour management is considered to be a large part of the teaching process, going so far as to be a significant part of some teacher training programs. According to research conducted by Ofsted in 2012, 92.3% of schools in England are considered to have either Good or Outstanding behaviour presented by the pupils, although an earlier survey showed 69% of teachers saying they faced disruptive behaviour on a regular basis (Neill, 2001), and Ofsted (2014) suggesting that up to an hour of learning is lost by pupils in each school day due to low level disruption. This conflict of opinion stems from the notion that there is no simple definition for poor behaviour, given the subjective nature of teaching (Beaman et al, 2007), and the opinion also given by Ofsted (2014), that low level disruption now seems to be accepted by teachers as part of life in the classroom. However, there are many strategies available to teachers in order to combat what they may consider to be poor behaviour, to combat the loss of learning time. One such strategy is that of positive praise. This is used not only to assist in behaviour management but also to enhance both the performance and confidence of students in the classroom, occasionally offering up more praise than is particularly necessary to some pupils, in order to give examples of behaviour that should be replicated. This is occasionally used as an individual technique, but is more often seen alongside sanctioning, which then conversely informs the pupil of behaviours that should not be repeated by attaching consequences, using either positive or negative reinforcement. However, there are mixed opinions over the most effective strategy that of only using praise, only sanctioning, or the use of both methods together, and the efficacy of each of these strategies in enhancing performance, confidence and behaviour is widely debated.

The use of positive praise in addition to sanctioning is much talked about in the teaching community, as both a performance enhancer in quality of student work and also in behaviour management. The theory of this strategy is that students will become defensive and resistant to sanctioning in certain situations whereas will yearn for positive praise when seen given to others who are behaving and achieving appropriately and so will seek to emulate the same behaviour in order to gain the same positive attention. In 1995, Merrett and Tang conducted research into the efficacy of this approach as perceived by the students. The research, although conducted on students and therefore open to bias and not pertaining to data, concluded that not only was positive praise more likely to be effective on the younger years, such as year 7, but was also more likely to affect performance in lessons than the behaviour of pupils, although by pupil perception, students were more likely to resent their teacher for sanctioning them based on performance and knowledge, and more likely to experience confidence issues as a result, whereas praise was less likely to affect their behaviour but would build confidence in their knowledge. At School A, behaviour policy states. Within our school there is a widely noticed and appreciated lack of confidence, with many of our students having come from poor backgrounds, or with issues in their home life that must be carefully considered. As a result, the behaviour management in class must also be carefully considered so as not to dissuade pupils from answering questions and venturing guesses when they do not know the answers. Students are made aware not only of the behaviour expectations in class, but also of the expectations for participation through the use of posters and consistent reminders in lessons, with many teachers embedding these slides into their lesson plans. These slides and posters show students what behaviours will earn them bronze, silver and gold rewards in class, which will allow them to purchase desirable items such as footballs and stationery, and which behaviours will result in yellow, amber and red slips, which will result in the losing of their positive points, detentions and potentially IEU days. This follows the standard outlined by the department of education which states that behaviour policies must be publicised both to students and parents, which is achieved through the code of conduct in student planners and publishing on the school website. In this manner, the concepts of positive praise as a behaviour management and confidence builder as this may be a method to instil the growth mindset in my pupils, a technique being implemented widely across my A placement school. This is also an important concept to pupil perception, as if, in my practice, I use positive praise as a response to good behaviour, this may not be as effective as using sanctioning to manage behaviour.

The department of education s position on behaviour management is that there is vast improvement to the behaviour of students when a particular ethos is instilled in the classroom, an ethos in which the teacher understands that behaviour is learned, that behaviour is influenced by the situation in which it occurs, and lastly that misbehaviour serves a purpose for each student (Department of education, 2008). The department of education also suggests that the best schools maintain a delicate balance of sanctioning and praise, in which praise is used to encourage and motivate pupils but they are aware of the sanctions for negative behaviours (Steer, 2006). The behaviour for learning policy at this school is supplemented by the use of the Behaviour Watch software in order to record and incentivise behaviour and progress. In this manner it is made explicitly clear to the pupils which behaviours they will be rewarded for, through the use of points they can spend at a student shop, that will allow them to buy desirable items such as footballs, and eventually ipods etc. This also makes them aware of the result of negative behaviours (yellow, amber and red) which will result in removal to the IEU and losing some of their points. Therefore, placement school A follows the guidelines based on the students being aware of the sanctions, although in my own practice I have witnessed a lack of praise being given both by myself and others. In a critical incident that occurred in my own classroom, a pupil pointed out to me that although this particular child was often misbehaving in class, this had put a negative perspective of him into my mind which had then prevented me from offering him the praise he deserved for his work and behaviour. When I reviewed his book since the incident in question, it was apparent that there had been a slip in the standard and quality of work achieved in lessons. From this I could conclude that he felt that he would not receive the praise he wanted regardless of the level of commitment to his learning, and so why would he try? This incident drastically altered my classroom practice to include more positive praise in order to offer an incentive, not for positive behaviour management, but to improve the performance of my students and give them a reason to work.

The use of positive praise in the classroom is not a particularly modern concept, nor one pertaining only to schools in the UK. In 1967, Becker et al. conducted a study in which 5 classroom teachers in the USA which showed that pupil behaviour drastically improved when rules were made positive and the teacher praised the behaviour they wanted to be reinforced. However, this study did note that this tactic did not prove effective if the child was ill prepared for the work that was being covered, or if there was a strong peer influence. Although this study pertained to elementary school children, and studied only ten students overall, it is interesting to note that the use of positive praise to improve behaviour management is not only noted, conversely to the results of Merrett and Tang as aforementioned. but has been shown to occur even in times where perhaps parental influence was lacking due to the vietnam war occurring at this point in time. This suggests the strength of the technique as behaviour is often so strongly affected by circumstances outside of school. In addition, it is noted that positive praise has been used successfully in developing countries as well as western civilisation in order to improve pupil performance and confidence, with asian students who had been given positive praise and roles of responsibility responding positively in terms of their presentation skills and confidence (Richmond, 2007). This suggests that positive praise can work beneficially to improve pupil performance across cultures despite significant differences in the structure of learning, with the asian students involved in the aforementioned study being accustomed to a very passive role in the classroom and entirely teacher led learning, whereas at my placement A school and across the UK, teachers being encouraged more and more to include student led learning and active education.

However, the efficacy of positive praise as a tool for behaviour management and for performance enhancement is dependent on the teacher and the consistency and efficacy with which they apply the tactic. Where studies have shown teachers using positive praise as the only reinforcement in the classroom, using this technique with absolute consistency until it has become embedded into the minds of the student, great success has been shown, with students on an individualised reward system showing increased productivity and stable behaviour patterns. However, it was noted that without the physical reward system an all praise approach was not effective, and so this technique relies on extensive teacher time and effort as well as resources that may not be available to all schools (Pfiffner, Rosen and O Leary, 1985), as well as the establishment of positive behaviour previously using both positive and negative reinforcement, and so the tactic will not stand alone. In addition, the use of positive praise relies strongly on the impartial attitude of the teacher, as was shown by my own critical incident in which my own preconceptions of a student prevented me from offering appropriate positive reinforcement. Merrett and Wheldall found, in studies of the use of positive praise in the classroom in 2006, that female teachers were more likely to respond to social behaviour from boys in a negative way than the same behaviour by girls, and that male teachers were more likely to respond positively to boys academic behaviour than to the same behaviour by girls, although objectively there was little difference between the two classes observed in terms of either behaviour management or productivity. As such, positive praise can only be effectively employed or judged, if there is certainty of objectivity by the teacher. Should this not be the case, Merrett and Tang s study regarding behaviour management perceptions by pupils addressed that students were more likely to resent their teacher if they felt others were being praised over them despite their conscious efforts, and this was more likely, in the eyes of a student, to lead to negative behaviour. Perhaps it is with this in mind that pedagogy teaches us the value of positive praise in the classroom, and teaches us that this is not only valuable, but drastically underused in the modern classroom.

However, as with all tactics there are some clear flaws in the results that stem from the use of praise. Saeverot points these out in his book Indirect pedagogy: Some lessons in Existential Education. He notes that, despite education nowadays leaning in favor of pupils becoming self assessing and independent, that by utilising praise as a tool on the basis that pupils crave the positive attention from their teachers, we are indirectly teaching the pupils to rely on this feedback, and to struggle to meet the expectations of the teacher as opposed to their own. In that sense it seems that although positive praise may be beneficial to the students academic achievements, as it pushes them to meet the expectations the teacher holds, it may be detrimental to their confidence in their own abilities, in addition to their ability to reflect on their own work and be accountable by their own expectations (Saeverot, 2015). As such, this take on the pedagogy of praise suggests that, while it has a place in the classroom and can be used as an effective tool, if we wish to build the confidence of our students, then praise would be more effective if offered only for the extraordinary, particularly in terms of academic achievement, offering praise only to students who reach entirely new concepts of their own accord, to encourage the rest of the class to be forward thinkers but without the expectation of such, to offer praise without demanding or expecting a response in return. This poses the question however, that if we are to praise without expecting behaviours and progress to change, what would be the point? Additionally I am of the belief that this attitude towards praise in the classroom is a luxury dependent on the situation of the school in which a person teaches. At placement A school, the students are not only low ability, but immensely low self confidence, and many come from a background in which there has been very little praise from outside school. Therefore, it is considered vital not only to their in school progress but to their development as members of society, that the students are made aware that positive consequences stem from positive behaviour and negative consequences from negative behaviour. This is clearly not only considered vital by my own placement school given the OFSTED focus of british values, as advised by the department of education, with teachers being advised to guide students to enable students to develop their self-knowledge, self-esteem and self-confidence , in addition to the Teaching Standards by which teachers are evaluated dictating that teachers consider the social and intellectual well being of their students, and to motivate students to meet the expectations set by the educator. Though the Department for Education itself (Department of Education, 2008) outlines praise as being a beneficial motivation tool, in terms of pupil response and perceptions, Shreeve et al. (2002) found that students showed across all age groups in several secondary schools showed complete indecision regarding not only whether they found praise to be an effective motivator, but also which rewards offered that they would find motivational. Although the circumstances of the schools (Grammar or comprehensive, information about the general student populus) was not available to draw data from, this study would suggest, across a wide number of pupils, that the pupils themselves would not find praise motivational. However it was also pointed out that the schools that had the most success with this praising policy used in the study, were those that made their behaviour policy and the consequences of both positive and negative behaviours, explicitly clear to both students and parents, and consistently reinforced this.

So it seems in literature, the make or break of the policy of positive praise is the ability of the teacher to maintain consistency in not only the response given to certain behaviours but in the pupil being responded to also. Shreeve and Boddington (2002) highlighted this need in their findings that consistency of approach, with all teachers offering the same sanctions and rewards for the same behaviours to all students, was a vital factor in the students seeing the policies as both fair and purposeful, and that in these instances, a high level of praise and low level of sanctioning was seen as the most effective policy to hold, whereas when the policy was inconsistent it ceased to be valued by both pupils and teachers, given the poor effects that resulted from the system. It was also suggested by pupils and staff in this study that the praise system worked more effectively still if there was potential for the students to pay off any sanctions earned when they received praise. This would then give the pupils more motivation to work towards praise in order to avoid the consequences of sanctions. Conversely, without this potential to overcome the sanctions, students who are given sanctions may then feel the rest of the lesson is not worth trying to behave well as they will be punished regardless of their future behaviours. This was displayed within my own classroom in the case of my critical incident in which the child felt that once he had been sanctioned once, albeit even in a previous lesson, I had biased opinions of him now and so would not praise him as deserved.

To conclude I have found that investigation into the policy, philosophy and pedagogy of using positive praise in the classroom, and researching evidence of the ways in which this has been successful and unsuccessful in practice has been highly beneficial to my own practice, despite their being many arguments both for and against the use of this technique in the classroom. Although some have claimed that praise can be toxic if overused, I feel that the majority of evidence suggests that if used appropriately and in line with the school behaviour management policy, praise can be an effective tool for motivation of pupils both in behaviour management and behaviour for learning. As a response to this research I now need to adjust the manner in which I conduct myself in sanctioning and praise in the classroom. Due to the low self esteem of my students I need to use praise not only as a motivator but as a confidence builder, and improve my level of bias and consistency, allowing students to pay off their sanctions when they earn praise. My key actions will therefore involve the implementation of growth mindset techniques into my classroom so that students rely not only on my praise but on their own self worth and that of each other, to revert to a more visual system of behaviour management utilising whiteboard space to gives ticks and crosses so that students can see that they will lose sanctions when they gain praise, and to develop methods of my own to prevent bias towards more disruptive students in my classroom and improve my awareness of when I should be offering praise. It may also be useful to reduce sanctioning for homework tasks being incomplete and instead reward the students who complete homework on time. This critical analysis has allowed me to reflect on my current practice and to improve the approaches I use in my own classroom, altering behaviours and attitudes of my own in order to better address issues in the classroom such as that of my critical incident.

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Bibliography

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