Timeline for Is praising students' aptitude harmful?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:49 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| May 22, 2015 at 12:01 | comment | added | user10765 | Praise can also feed a student's imposter syndrome. Concrete, evidence-based praise helps. Also, aptitude=value (and even productivity=value) praise can feed fear about losing one's abilities (productivity) and so losing one's value. Encouraging people to be glorious is hard work, especially given the "batch" nature and psychological brokenness. A teacher can only do so much (but it can be so much). | |
| May 20, 2015 at 22:26 | vote | accept | Ellen Spertus | ||
| May 21, 2015 at 17:39 | |||||
| May 20, 2015 at 18:30 | comment | added | cphlewis | I like this, especially the point that the students aren't all the same and you can have repeated, considered interactions with them! I have found, TA-ing first generation or shy students, that reassurance of their capability seems more helpful than not. I often add something like "There's tons of work in this course, but once you've done it you'll have these skills [...] which are useful in these jobs and academic fields [...]; what were you thinking of going into?" | |
| May 20, 2015 at 17:24 | comment | added | Davidmh | My comment was along the same lines as your argument. We are in full agreement. | |
| May 20, 2015 at 15:09 | comment | added | Chris Cirefice | As the first in my family to attend college, I've never had any problem not getting praise from professors. Granted, it would be really nice if I did, but I'm going to university because I love to learn and I love to teach. Hell, I wouldn't even consider myself anything more than moderately-motivated, and praise (or lack thereof) has never had any effect on that. Your assessment is good though; I've seen each of these 4 reactions from my various classmates over the years, though the usual case is that, praise or not, people just try to pass the class and don't care about anything else. | |
| May 20, 2015 at 10:08 | history | answered | 299792458 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |