Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Plume D'ella Plumeria]

[northway]

[YTMND]

[madoka]

A brand new study by Steven D. Levitt (of Freakonomics fame), John A. List, Susanne Neckermann, and Sally Sadoff finds that Chicago students in low-performing schools did better on tests when they were promised money or trophies for their good grades. But it wasn't as simple as writing a bunch of checks and and waiting for the A's to pour in. How much money and how you present the rewards makes all the differences.

Without instant money and rewards, many students in these Chicago schools had put forth "low effort on the standardized tests that we study," the authors write. Why didn't the students care about good grades? A light thought experiment might help you understand.

Let's imagine a man bursts through your nearest door in five seconds and says: "Quick, do 20 push-ups and I'll send you a check for $20." Do you wonder how long it takes for the money to arrive?

Classical economics would suggest you shouldn't. All things equal, $20 today is worth $20 in a week or so. But in fact, we're much more likely to do things -- large and small, easy and difficult -- when we can see the immediate benefits. If I hold a $20 bill in front your face, you're more likely to finish a push-up set than if I promise you'll get the money in a month.

Behavioral economists call this sort of thing "hyperbolic discounting," an ungainly phrase that's more commonly known as the problem of delayed gratification, or procrastination, or inattention. The theory says that we don't value rewards properly. We excessively (or hyperbolically) low-ball (or discount) the value of rewards in the distant future, which means we put too much weight on short-term satisfaction.

Now back to the tests. When an adult tells a child "stay in school," he can point to his big salary and home as evidence that education pays off. But education doesn't literally pay off for a very long time. Its rewards are delayed; therefore, from the perspective of a student, they are easily ignored. The economic rationale for paying students for good grades isn't (just) bribery. It's also about bringing the reward of good grades closer to the event of the test, when the student is more likely to act on it -- and less likely to "discount" it.

In this study, economists offered students of different ages money or trophies just before they took a test. Sometimes, the students got the reward first with the possibility that it could be revoked for bad performance. Sometimes, the students were only shown the reward after. So what did the economists find? Four really cool things.

First, they found that money works, and the amount of money really matters. Students were reportedly willing to exert significantly more energy at $80-an-hour, but not at $40-an-hour. (Authors: "As far as we know, ours is the first study to demonstrate that student responsiveness to incentives is sensitive to the size of the reward."). Second, they learned that the rewards were most powerful when they were framed as losses (i.e.: "Here is $20. If you fail, I'm taking it away."). Third, they learned that "non-financial incentives," like trophies, worked best with young people. Fourth, they learned that rewards provided with a delay -- we'll get you that check in a month -- did very little to improve performance. The power of hyperbolic discounting is strong with these ones.

We don't always think of our attention as a budget, but it is. When we pay attention, we pay, literally. We allocate time out of a relatively finite portfolio of focus to concentrate on something.

The trouble for many schools is that the incentive structure is set up to ask teachers to focus more than their students on standardized tests. These tests are super-high-stakes for instructors and principals, where they can determine who keeps a job and where state resources are spent. But they are relatively low-stakes for individual students in the short-term, especially if those students aren't looking to go to college and don't care very much about a weak grade. This paper's clever conclusion is that we can manipulate lessons from economics and psychology to trick/bribe/nudge students toward spending more from their attention budget.

We talk about the "attention economy" as if it's confined to the word of social media and advertising. But in fact, it's here, in under-served school districts, where the lessons of attention might be the most lucrative for the country. If we can buy their attention today, we'll all be richer for it.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/freakonomics-economist-discovered-way-bribe-183215497.html

[northway]

[YTMND]

[madoka]

[YTMND]

[3DR]

My god who cares if you play games or give out candy. We all know that people do it because IT MAKES THEIR JOB EASIER.

If I play a game or give out a little candy every now and then to get little Susie to shut her trap and do her homework, then by all means I'm gonna do it (within reason...not ALL THE TIME).

I was at a public school my first year. Played too many games and gave out too much candy. Inexperienced teacher I was.

Second year, a hagwon. Our boss wanted us to have a "Happy Review" to review the lessons everyday. Every now and then I would give out treats to my best classes.

I'm back in public school and I give out candy sparingly, BUT I always play some type of game. Why? Because I only see one class per week (some every other week) and half of them or more can't speak decent English. I'm not gonna be doing them any favors by trying to be all serious and teaching them grammar and complicated crap when they can't even say how old they are in English. So I do the book work, have them do dialogs in the book (pass an angry bid plushie around makes it fun for them to speak), then we do a game based on something in that chapter.

Games are never for the whole class (15-20 min) and even the lower level students get involved. If the higher level students want more one on one, then they can sign up for my after school classes where the lessons are a little more advanced.

But you will always have people like the OP who believe that everyone must suffer and be serious all the time in order to achieve progress in anything.

I'm not saying good things in life should come easy, but damn it have some fun while doing it!!

[luckylady]

and then there was this class of just a few boys and 1 girl; very exclusive hakwon. one of the boys, maybe 11 or 12, very low English and always sulking, talking in Korean to the other boys, never smiling and made it clear he was unhappy in the classroom. never ever spoke to me in English unless called on and urged to respond.

one day I got fed up trying to reach him with orthodox methods. I found an old Monopoly game somewhere, took it out and opened it on the table. at first he was reluctant to join in but the others helped explain the rules and by the end of that class he was laughing and smiling and having a great time - and starting to speak in English.

the rest of that summer we continued to just play Monopoly and chat informally. He became an expert player and actually started conversing in English spontaneously.

saying games don't have a place in teaching is just plain ignorant. look at the animal kingdom. what in the world do you think all those young carnivores are doing but playing games getting ready for the real world?

jees

[JustinC]

[hogwonguy1979]

come on steve we know you are the op, it sounds just like this

http://www.ajarn.com/blogs/steve-schertzer/culture-of-insouciance/

do search of his name here and you will find out what a self-rightous pompus jerk you are.

what happened in cambodia steve? you couldnt own the classroom?

[northway]

[some waygug-in]

I find the title to this thread offensive.

[sojusucks]

But at orientation they taught us how to play games as the only way to teach. Oh, and "80-20"- whatever that means.