Rewarding each student’s achievement encourages better learning

THE problem with only ever rewarding first across the line or the highest mark is that it’s simplistic. What about hard work and personal best?

It’s great to celebrate winners, but not everyone can come first.

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The  moment an athlete crosses the finish line first or a team wins the grand final is a time of excitement and jubilation­.

Celebrating achievement is a recognition of an individual or team striving for excellence­. Trophies, medals, certificates and awards are acknowledgments of success. They are also used as incentives to work harder.

In schools, there can be merit in using awards to recognise achievement. However there are times when awards can be counter-productive if they do not have a purpose. At the same time, parents tell me just how disheartening it is for the child who always does his or her best but is never rewarded with a traditional acknowledgment because they will never be the straight A student or champion swimmer.

Only rewarding those who come first is a simplistic measure of success.

The problem with only ever rewarding first across the line or the highest mark is that it’s a simplistic and blunt measure of success.

Just as we need new ways of measuring student learning beyond the HSC and NAPLAN, we also need new measures of student effort and achievement.

Every student has talent and the best way to acknowledge that is to look at his or her personal best. We know that students are more motivated when we acknowledge meaningful improvement or effort, however small those achievements might be.

Rewarding effort and achievement motivates children to learn more.

We don’t always need trophies or certificates, sometimes it requires little more than a kind word or a brief comment in a school diary.

Research tells us that using an incentive to reward people for tasks that require creative, conceptual and challenging thinking doesn’t work. When students are self-motivated, they have greater control over their learning and are likely to master skills more quickly.

So let’s reward student success wherever, and whenever it occurs. While a first place in anything should be celebrated, sometimes the things most worthy of reward are hard-earned but not easily seen.

In the end, can there be a more satisfying reward for a parent than knowing that their child is happy, learning and thriving at school?

*Greg Whitby is the executive director of schools for the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta.