THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYthat encouraged teachers to focus on praising pupils. Before the training,
nineteen participating teachers spent, on average, 54 percent of class time
praising pupils, compared with 46 percent of the time scolding them.
After the training, a shift occurred, with the result that they averaged
85 percent of the time praising versus 15 percent scolding. Most impor-
tantly, 94 percent of the pupils were deemed obedient after the training,
compared with 78 percent before.
Swinson built on these findings with colleague Brian Apter in 2008.
In the largest study of its kind, Swinson and Apter’s team observed pupil
behaviour in 141 schools located across the UK, and found that they spent
an average of 85 percent of the time on task – a higher rate than found
in related studies published in 1987, 1992 and 2005. Importantly for the
issue of praise, teachers’ verbal behaviours were also analysed, and it was
found that they were providing positive verbal feedback three times as
often as in earlier studies. Moreover, amounts of positive and neutral
verbal feedback – the latter is another sign of pupil engagement – were
positively linked with pupils’ spending more time on task.
However, it’s important to realize that not all praise is equal. The
Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has published numerous
studies showing that pupils fare better if they have a mindset that sees
success as related to effort rather than innate ability. Those who tie
success to intelligence and who see intelligence as fixed are demoral-
ized by failure, whereas those who recognize the importance of effort
and the power to learn are often galvanized by failure to try even harder.
This has implications for how we praise children. Teachers and parents
who respond to a child’s success by telling them how clever they are
risk fostering a fixed mindset in that child. By contrast, praising a child
for their effort and for the strategies they use to succeed helps to foster
a malleable, effort-based mindset. Importantly, Dweck’s research has
shown that pupils who view success as tied to effort subsequently outper-
form their “intelligence as fixed” peers, even when they are matched for
academic achievement at the start of the study.
More controversial than verbal praise is the use of bribes to moti-
vate pupils. Although there’s evidence that cash and other rewards can
boost student performance, there’s also a downside. For example, a
meta-analysis of 128 studies published in 1999 by Edward Deci at the
University of Rochester concluded that external rewards undermine
intrinsic motivation and that this is particularly the case for children.
What typically happens is that the positive effects of external rewards
diminishes over time, and then, when the rewards are stopped, pupil