Effective Strategies for Praising Students

Abstract

We've all probably given comments like nice singing or you've never played better and noticed the effect our positive comments had on the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of students in our classes. We typically classify these positive comments as and it may be surprising to read that praise is not always positive. Peggy Bennett describes four ways in which praise can be negative: It can cause feelings of embarrassment when a compliment focuses attention on someone not wanting to stick out. It can cause feelings of manipulation when used as a control device to get students to do something or behave in a particular way. It can cause feelings of inferiority if one doesn't receive any praise, or feelings of undue superiority if the praise makes one feel as if one has done it all. Finally, praise can be habitual or overused and lose its meaning.1 These claims are problematic if we personally have seen how well positive comments can work. Maybe we should consider the situations when praise can be empty, overused, thoughtless, or motivated by the wrong reasons. We

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