From TIME we read:
"A Harvard economist named Roland Fryer Jr. did
something education researchers almost never do: he ran a randomized experiment
in hundreds of classrooms in multiple cities. He used mostly private money to
pay 18,000 kids a total of $6.3 million and brought in a team of researchers to
help him analyze the effects....."
Although the results of that experiment were
inconclusive, the article also cites a Stanford University research: "There,
researchers divided 51 toddlers into groups. All the kids were asked to draw a
picture with markers. But one group was told in advance that they would get a
special reward - a certificate with a gold star and a red ribbon - in exchange
for their work.The kids did the drawings, and the ones in the treatment group
got their certificates.
A few weeks later, the researchers observed the
children through a one-way mirror on a normal school day. They found that the
kids who had received the award spent half as much time drawing for fun as
those who had not been rewarded.
The reward, it seemed, diminished the act of
drawing.
So instead of giving kids gold stars, Deci says, we should teach them
to derive intrinsic pleasure from the task itself. "What we really want is
for people to value the activity of learning," he says. People of all ages
perform better and work harder if they are actually enjoying the work - not
just the reward that comes later."
To Read more:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978589,00.html
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