It can be a powerful tool to encourage and motivate your students, foster positive learning environments, and improve student outcomes. Incorporating these steps into praise enhances its effectiveness and fosters a supportive learning environment. Additionally, exceptional behavior may warrant a fourth step—rewarding the student with privileges or acknowledgments, whether tangible or intangible, to further reinforce positive behavior. For withdrawal/reversal and multiple baseline designs, we utilized a web-based calculator (Pustejovsky et al., 2023) to calculate between-case standard mean difference (BC-SMD) effect size estimates. For the one eligible alternating treatment design study (Thoele, 2024), we utilized a web-based calculator (Manolov and Onghena, 2018) to calculate an average difference between successive observations (ADISO) value. ADISO values can be standardized for comparison across studies by dividing by the standard deviation.

Learn how to give constructive feedback and use AI to check your tone. Learn how to give more meaningful feedback to your coworkers with these examples and AI prompts. I can remember so many times when, during praise & worship, the manifest Presence of God fills the room. It’s a rare situation where you can’t identify something that you honestly find praiseworthy. This got me thinking about the importance of praise, and how to praise effectively. The right words of praise can be so encouraging, but bland, empty praise is meaningless.

Use phrases like “I noticed when you…” or “I saw how you…” This shows children exactly what they did right and makes the praise more meaningful. Saying “You’re a natural artist” doesn’t explain what the child did well. This can make children believe their abilities are fixed, which may cause them to shy away from challenges in areas where they don’t feel “naturally” talented. Understand that children from different backgrounds may respond to praise differently. Avoid praise that reinforces cultural stereotypes, such as complimenting a child on a quality that is often assumed for their ethnic group, as this can reveal low expectations.

Maybe, like me, you’ve experienced how praise alters the consciousness of both the giver and receiver. Implementing positive praise into classroom activities can be as simple as restructuring a writer’s workshop, which gives students an opportunity to develop as a writer. Remind students that they are writers and help them navigate the process. Balancing praise with constructive feedback encourages students to face obstacles and reframe failures as an opportunity for growth. Negative reactions to praise can sometimes occur in the classroom. Remember that these reactions are often rooted in feelings of insecurity or embarrassment and should not be taken personally by the teacher.

In this regular American Educator column, we consider findings from this field that are strong and clear enough to merit classroom application. Think back to the explanation of why praise works in the first place—it makes the student think, “I’m the kind of kid who enjoys puzzles and does them well.” When “keep it up” is added, the student is less likely to make that attribution to himself or herself. The student is more likely to think, “I’m doing these puzzles because the teacher wants me to, not because I enjoy them.” Many studies on praise fit the general framework described above.

Plus, the teacher typically praised the appropriate behavior mentioned in the tootle, and both students who wrote and received each tootle drawn, so it could be that teacher attention/praise is the most responsible for changes in student outcomes. Additionally, observed changes in student behavior may be partially attributed to the interdependent group contingency in each tootling study, and we cannot know to what degree. We do know group contingency interventions, especially in general education classrooms, are an evidence-based practice when What Works Clearinghouse standards were applied (Maggin et al., 2017). The group contingency component of tootling interventions, for some students, might be the strongest motivator for good behavior, more so than peer praise or teacher attention, and receiving the group reward may be the most reinforcing aspect for some students. We believe changes in student behavior during tootling studies are most likely a combination of teacher attention, peer attention, group contingency/reward, and knowing your peers are watching you to write a tootle that might be read later.

• This approach is underpinned by the idea that abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.
• Praise can be effective and meaningful or ineffective, leading to fear of failure or dependency on external validation.
• Leaders who understand the power of positive reinforcement can create a culture of continuous improvement and professional development within their teams.
• Actively listen to students when they share ideas and validate their feelings; these strategies boost self-esteem.
• It is easy to understand that a teacher would want to encourage this student, but whether or not praise will backfire in this situation depends on whether or not the student is sophisticated enough to understand the unspoken message behind praise for poor work.

While praise does have the ability to raise self-esteem and increase confidence, when solely based on the quality of the performance, it can be a fast route to failure. Although praise is a fundamental tool for one’s emotional and behavioral development, it is important to keep in mind that most effective forms of praise tend to focus on the effort made instead of the result acquired. Praise can be a powerful motivator when you balance it with constructive feedback. Specific feedback related to a student’s efforts and the process they undertook has been shown to reinforce resilience and encourage a growth mindset.

Then use praise to bolster a student’s good conduct by actively recognizing moments of excellence. The 36 included studies represented 13 dissertations, four theses, and 19 journal articles, spanning from 1976 to 2024. The journal articles were published in 13 unique journals, with the Journal of Behavioral Education and the Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions containing three articles each.

However, every child should be praised effectively and if we are mindful of how we phrase things, it can make a huge difference in their happiness. Understandably, we want to tell our children how wonderful they are and build up their self-esteem. However, as the studies I listed above demonstrate, constantly telling them they are smart/special/beautiful, etc. can do the opposite of what we want it to. You can also see intrinsic motivation being encouraged through the control of error in Montessori materials and the environment.

From these, we classified positive peer reporting in the mixed evidence category and tootling in the evidence-based practice category. We discuss benefits of various components in each type of peer praise intervention, limitations of the literature review, and make recommendations for future researchers. Something to consider regarding the EBP of tootling, is how do we know what the effective component(s) of the intervention are? It could be that dosage is not important because the key component might be knowing peers are watching for good behavior even if they do not fill out a tootle of even if your tootle is not read aloud. Future studies should report the dosage of tootles written and received (read aloud or posted for reading) for each target student and the average per day per student in the classroom.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Build Strong Social-emotional Foundations

As an early childhood educator, you play a vital role in a child’s development. But to be truly impactful, praise needs to be more than just a simple https://www.lovesmoments.org “good job.” Effective praise involves giving specific, genuine, and intentional feedback to reinforce positive behavior and encourage growth. “Having a growth mindset means that you believe your intelligence is malleable.” This mindset encourages teachers to support students who will embrace setbacks as stepping stones to success, as well as foster resilience and perseverance in challenging tasks. Additionally, praise has been shown to reduce misbehavior in the classroom, as students may be more likely to engage in positive behaviors when they know they will receive recognition for it. In addition to praising individual students, you should also encourage them to give one another praise as well.

How To Give Effective Praise In Three Steps

If, on the other hand, praise is an honest expression meant to congratulate the student, it will likely be at least neutral or even helpful to the student; even under these circumstances, however, care must be taken in what is praised. When a parent provides encouragement like, “Ellie, I love how you are walking while we are inside.” Then, Ellie knows she will please her mother if she continues to walk while she is inside. This kind of praise also provides a model for any other children to follow causing a ripple effect of good behavior.

Student-delivered Behavior-specific Praise: A Systematic Literature Review And Meta-analysis

Using software like brightwheel’s daily activity report encourages communication with families. You can use it to share photos and videos of fun activities or just let them know about something positive that happened during the day. Either way, brightwheel makes it easy to keep families informed and strengthens the home-to-school connection. When used correctly, it can build a child’s self-esteem, improve classroom behavior, and create a positive learning environment. This article will explore why effective praise is so important and provide practical strategies for using it in your classroom. PublicSchoolWORKS helps educators create healthy learning environments through the implementation of effective praise, social-emotional learning, and other risk management techniques.

Behavior is communication, and what if this individual needs your praise more than you can imagine? What if this is someone who really needs to feel seen, heard, and genuinely appreciated? Often, the kids (and adults) who challenge us the most are the ones who need us the most. The praised person usually hears about the praise, and behind-the-back praise seems more sincere than face-to-face praise.