Incentives & Grades
In a couple of my classes, we’ve been surveying different learning theories and one we’ve been focusing on recently is Behaviorism and its predilection for measuring only that which can be observed (e.g., stimuli and response). In an interesting coincidence, I came across one of Daniel Pink’s recent TED talks where he argues against what amounts to a kind of behaviorist (i.e., Carrot & Stick) approach to managing the workplace. More specifically, he references some studies by well-known economists who found that when managers assigned workers to projects that involved “even rudimentary cognitive skill” that rewarding them (read: Behaviorism) with more money didn’t improve performance, and in fact even lowered it. The emphasis, he argues, should be more focused on intrinsic motivators such as autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In terms of educational contexts, an easy analog to this would be an undue focus on grades as an incentive. What can we educators learn here? I think this talk by Daniel Pink would be a good one to use in ed-psych classes.
[Credit: Presentation Zen]