How can teachers reward performance, effort, and improvement?
SELF-CHECK ITEM: Explain how rewards, praise, grades, individualized goal structures, and cooperative goal structures can be used appropriately as incentives to enhance individual and group motivation to learn. POSSIBLE ANSWER: Rewards enhance motivation to learn, particularly when they indicate competence. Therefore, rewards should be meaningfully related to competency. Praise can be useful if made contingent to performance. Sometimes, teachers praise students when praise is unjustified. This non-contingent feedback backfires by placing an artificial ceiling over student performance, indicating to the student that higher performance is not attainable. For praise to benefit students, it must be made contingent on performance and be educational, teaching students what they did right and what they need to do if performance is not to teachers standards. Individualized goal structures enhance individual motivation because rewards are not considered a limited resource, such as in competitiv
