Extrinsic Rewards in the Classroom

By: Sara

I am currently placed in a 5th grade classroom which has been lamented by teachers as the worst in terms of behavior. Over the course of the school year, the three 5th grade teachers at the school have implemented a number of management strategies. As a student teacher, I was immediately struck by the fact that there are six management systems in place which are regularly enforced. Four use forms of positive reinforcement, one uses negative reinforcement, while the other is a form of punishment. In this brief post, I will describe the management strategies which use reinforcements and their effects in the classroom.

These reinforcement systems are as follows: Party points, Pioneer points, Caught in the Act, and 5-minute recess tickets. Party points are basically for all classes, homeroom, reading, and math. Students are awarded points (around 4) for good behavior and once they reach 50 points, they can have a party which is an hour of using personal electronics (iPods, game consoles, movies from home) and eating. Pioneer points and Caught in the Act are essentially the same idea as party points with students placing tickets that are given for good behavior in a jar to be randomly drawn at the end of the week with rewards ranging from a homework pass to ten minutes of free time. The problem with these intrinsic rewards is that students can easily choose not to perform the wanted behavior without any repercussions on their part. However, perhaps I have put this issue of extrinsic reward into the narrow context of my placement.

Research conflicts on whether or not extrinsic motivators are detrimental to a student's overall performance. One thing slightly more certain than this is that the extrinsic does not mean a transition into the intrinsic. The students in my class have had these rewards in place since the beginning of the school year and today, if praise is given for their good behavior, the question "Do we get party points?" soon follows. Teachers can create these elaborate systems, but they should do so with the end in mind: What happens when the system is gone? What happens when these students are placed under another teacher? Do we want these children to leave our classroom begging for rewards by enacting behaviors which are expected of them or do we want them to take up this responsibility as their own regardless of the outcome?