Rewarding ?

Rewarding: Analyzing Paul Chance and Alfie Kohn’ s Articles
Paul Chance in his article argues for the necessity of rewards in student learning as a way to facilitate it He believes that rewards are the way to let the students know about the quality of their performance. Rewards are the way to create a responsive environment that is according to Skinner is more conductive to students learning. According to Chance not only some reinforcement is needed in instruction, but a lot of it.  While recognizing that the abundance of extrinsic rewards may reduce future motivation to do the same task, Chance however accepts the argument of Alice Dickinson about the reward contingency. He seems to consider the “success-contingent” rewards as the most effective of the three. Chance brings about a good point about the importance of learning being fun and interesting. Rewards playing, in his opinion, an important role in making learning fun and expected. In addition, in the culture where punishment is more prevalent than rewards, positive reinforcements can be instrumental in building a positive atmosphere for learning.  Chance presents a plan of introducing reward system in classroom by using the weakest reward to make the desired behavior stronger, by avoiding rewards when possible, allowing more rewards during the early stages of learning and then reducing their quantity. He mentions that it is also important to know what motivates students and it is important to reward success.
Alfie Kohn argues that teachers should not reward students for doing things they want them to enjoy doing for their own sake. Kohn attacks the main source of Chance, Alice Dickinson, showing some of the inconsistencies in her presentation. He points out that rewards can be controlling and reduce interest for an activity. Kohn assumes that to make students think about learning as a way to get a prize, can transform learning from an end into a means. This idea repeats throughout the paper, that rewards can get students to do what teacher wants for a while, but the effect is short-lived and actually detrimental over time to those being rewarded. Kohn critiques the idea of rewarding, showing that rewards are controlling, are ineffective, they make learning less attractive, and ignore curricular questions. As an alternative, Kohn offers the paradigm of mutual problem solving. It was also interesting to read about the token system, that is an important behavior modification tool, being discredited because people go back to their old pattern once rewards were withdrawn. This is another strong argument Kohn uses to refute the reward system.
In my opinion, there is a point where both authors come to an agreement and the difference between them is not as big as it seems. Chance talks about “informational” rewards and it very much reminds of the Kohn’s idea of talking to students about their work and encouraging them to find pleasure in it. Both authors are against the idea of using rewards as incentives, in order to avoid creating competition between students. They both intend to find ways for students to get in touch with their own inner reasons for wanting to learn. I appreciate the openness of Chance in recognizing the importance of long-term results. He has a strong point about the necessity of making learning fun, however his example to bring the point across was not relevant. He talks about students who already enjoyed an activity, were given a prize if they completed it. Weeks later the prize was no longer given and they still continued to do the task. What would happen if students would do something that they didn’t like? I think Kohn’s article was very succinct and to the point. Even though I agree with Kohn on the idea that teachers should do everything they can to get students to forget about grades and concentrate on working relationships, I think there should be some room left for rewards. I think, in general, Kohn bring his point across in a very clear, confident and knowledgeable manner. Even though it might be impossible to completely avoid reward-punishment system, there should be some ways to limit it and instead to implement student-focused learning and collaborative activities.