The Carrot Wins!
What do high school students and Israeli Air Force pilots have in common? Both groups achieve learning goals better and faster when praised for achievement rather than criticized for failure. If you want your students to learn deeply and be fully engaged, throw out the sticks and bring out the carrots. This is the conclusion of world renowned Nobel Prize winner and expert statistician, Daniel Kahneman. His most recent book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that praise is much more effective impetus for learning than criticism.
The first response of many teachers have to this revelation is, “How can this be? Praise is nice, but I get best results when I push students; when I make them keep at it until they get it right.” Or maybe, “She got a D+ on the last assignment. She brought up the next one to a B-. That first low grade made her work harder.” These short term results may be true in some cases. They are memorable because they reinforce our belief that the stick works. But how many students just gave up? How many continued to get D+’s? And did this negative reinforcement help the students become more engaged in the learning process? Hundreds of experiments conducted by Daniel Kahneman provide statistical evidence that the long term results of negative feedback does not reinforce engaged long term learning. Praise for achievement always comes out on top.
It is time to look at our teaching to see how well we are employing the carrots. How are we using formative and summative assessment? Are assessments being used to praise progress or are they being used to criticize shortcomings? Think of video games. Failure to meet a goal simply means that you need to keep trying. Success is met with bells and whistles, a feeling of accomplishment, and it opens doors to more difficult challenges ahead. Moving forward is not motivated through fear of failure, but through the desire to succeed. The stick is replaced with the carrot. Learning must be seen as worthwhile, interesting, and even fun. This is the challenge. Instead of forcing students to learn, we must entice them to want to learn.
More to read:
For a lighter version of Thinking, Fast and Slow read The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis.
About the relationship of emotions to learning: “Emotions Are the Rudder That Steers Thinking”