Sean's Spot
This week I want to explain some thinking around why we don’t have awards and rewards at Lemonwood Grove School.
Back in 2016 when we developed our unique school based curriculum, Nick, Jen and I had numerous discussions around the place of awards and rewards for example cups, trophies, certificates and stickers.
In schools we had previously worked in, awards such as certificates had been given out at school assemblies often without learners really understanding the purpose or WHY. Sometimes learners would be chosen for certificates to ensure they received some form of recognition before the end of the term or year. This seemed meaningless.
These examples made us really question the impact of extrinsic rewards on motivation and improvement. We carried out some research around this area and discovered that awards, rewards and other external incentives can undermine intrinsic motivation.
“This is one of the most robust findings in social science—and also one of the most ignored,” writes Daniel Pink author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, says Pink. He asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction at work, at school, and at home, is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
This is where our vision and curriculum principles come in allowing our learners to be personally rewarded by the learning they are doing every day.
One approach we are using to replace awards and rewards to increase motivation is giving our learners ongoing feedback about their learning. Here are two examples: Every week learners are invited to come down and share their learning with me and are provided with instant and personalised feedback. This is so much more powerful than waiting for two weeks to receive a certificate in an assembly.
Last week when I was teaching fractions with a group from Lisa’s whanau, I was able to provide each learner with instant feedback about what they had learnt. POWERFUL.
See you at our school Working Bee on Saturday. Fingers crossed for a great day.
Regards
Sean | Tumuaki