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100 sats \ 4 replies \ @398ja 18 Apr \ on: Aligning Incentives: Using 'Trust Scores' in Higher-Level Ed. mostly_harmless
A book that I have read a long time ago, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes by the educator Alfie Kohn, explains very well why this approach is self-defeating and doesn't work in education. It perverses the incentives, children don't learn for the sake of learning and acquiring knowledge, but rather, for earning rewards and recognition! This is the main problem you find in the current one-size-fits-all teacher-led education.
The best motivator for learning is interest. When a child develops an interest for a particular subject, he doesn't need rewards, only guidance, he doesn't need a teacher, but only a facilitator/guide.
Maria Montessori understood this very well.
There's lots to be said for gamefied learning that garners the interest of the child-student; much of it is critical.
While the adult pupils might have felt infantilized at first, the sats system emboldened some of them to try where they hadn't been otherwise encouraged since they then clearly perceived themselves to be earning something tied indirectly to class benchmarks and expectations, which they are all there to fulfill anyway. Just as transgressions come with real, and now a clearly seen consequence, so is desired class conduct rewarded in kind.
You might be surprised as I was to find that, place enough adults in the same room to discuss a topic and many of them forget tenets of basic courtesy. The benefit to the facilitator using a rewards-based system is that, the enforcement of the class ethics becomes a game and not a pedantic truism.
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What I think you're describing is a teacher-led education system, and your observations are correct within that framework.
Flip your model, and notice how this changes. Alfie Kohn's Point is precisely that, in a student-led education, a genuine interest is sufficient for learning and cooperation to happen spontaneously.
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The system is not expressly teacher-led, but it does assume there being a set of ethics expected of participants, which are in place irrespective of whether they are observed or not. I would call the class being studied neither teacher nor student centred, but I'd sooner call it rule centered. Read my post and you'll understand.
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