Carrots and Sticks and Autonomy...Oh my!

Discuss a time when you’ve seen one of the seven deadly flaws of carrots and sticks in action. What lessons might you or others learn from the experience? Have you seen instances when carrots and sticks have been effective. 

We have created a system at our school designed to encourage and reward students for doing “good deeds”. Actions such as helping other students or teachers, being kind and considerate, setting a good example for others, and exhibiting patience in the face of adversity are examples of behaviors that may acknowledged with 'Caught Being Good' awards. A simple green certificate indicating a student’s name, what they did, and who is acknowledging it is given out during morning assembly. Similar to Lepper et. al.'s experiment with pre-school children highlighted in Drive (Pink, 2011), I found that when students were not expecting to get 'Caught being Good', and also when they are not rewarded for it, benevolent behaviors persist because they seem to be intrinsically motivated.

On the contrary, when students who have received a referral for misbehaving are given the option of removing it by performing ‘good deeds’, they rarely repeat such deeds unsolicited. This type of if-then scenario has proven to be ineffective just as experiments in Pink’s book Drive (2011) indicated. 

Another interesting point that Pink makes is that praise is good when done in the appropriate way. He suggests:

1.     Praise the effort and the strategy, not the intelligence. With our ‘Caught being Good’ plan, we should take the same advice and make sure that we are praising the effort and the deed, not the ‘goodness’ of the child.

2.     Make Praise Specific. This is what is currently being done.

3.     Praise in private. This is a recommendation that we should consider implementing. Instead of publicly praising students during morning assemblies, doing so privately would increase intrinsic motivation according to Pink.

4.     Offer praise only when there is good reason for it. I have found this to be especially true for middle school students, especially those who have had behavioral problems. Praising them without good reason actually seems to cause more resentment than encouragement.

As you think about your own best work, what aspect of autonomy has been most important to you? Autonomy over what you do (task), when you do it (time), how you do it (technique), or with whom you do it (team)?...

My best work is done when I have autonomy over what I do. I don’t appreciate constant micromanaging because it indicates a lack of confidence and trust in one’s ability to carry out projects, tasks, or responsibilities. I also find that continual lack of autonomy over what I do tends to diminish my sense of moral, self-efficacy, and creativity. On the other hand, I do appreciate having some structure. As such, working with a timeline and also some guidance about techniques or expectations helps me to prioritize when things need to get done and gives me ideas of how to best go about the job at hand. Overall, I think that flexibility and balance on both the part of the “principal” and the “agent” (Drive, 2011) is key. There are occasions when we need to do what is asked or expected and may not have as much autonomy as we prefer in one area or another. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, we need to be flexible in such situations and able to adapt accordingly. On the other hand, whenever possible we should try and understand what best motivates others and be willing to give them the autonomy they need to thrive.

Reflections on 'Learning in New Media Environments'

?? Everyone is an Authority => Media is an Authority => No one is an Authority ??


Michael Wesch’s presentation Learning in New Media Environments“ is a thought provoking look at the future of education. He begins with a visual narrative of how media can mediate relationships and proceeds to outline the dichotomy of the technologically enhanced world in which we live. He describes our world as being "on the razor's edge between hopeful possibilities and ominous futures". The vast opportunities for openness and freedom come with a price of equal opportunities for surveillance and control. Along with tendencies for transparency come tendencies for deception. As Welsch points out, opportunities for mass participation also create opportunities for mass distraction (and more ominously from my point of view, mass destruction). Therefore, before we jump head first into embracing all of the benefits of the technological revolution, we must also consider the costs.


The vision that students need to be creative, caring, collaborative, daring, open individuals is one that many, if not most parents, teachers, and leaders share. Wesch ‘s presentation suggests that the walls of a classroom are not conducive to developing such an individual. He denounces the assumptions and messages conveyed by traditional classroom environments:


To learn means to acquire information
Traditional learning involves listening to the authority for good information
Authorized information is not open for discussion
Obey the authority and follow along

Although Wesch’s argument is compelling, we must carefully examine it from different angles. When students in his class became ‘authorities’ by producing a video that millions of people worldwide saw and assumed to be true and accurate information, where does ‘the question of truth’ and ‘reality’ come into play? The constructivist view that reality is created by individuals is a philosophy not everyone agrees with wholeheartedly. The video, A Vision of Students Today is certainly true for a portion of students in this society but can we assume that this is necessarily reflective of most or even many students in America or globally? The problem with sending such knowledge out into the world is that over 4 million people worldwide will watch it and make assumptions and generalizations that are not in fact reflective of everyone's reality. My college-aged son watched the video and was really impressed by the ‘facts’ it presented that he acknowledged as being true and others that he ‘learned’ by watching the video. However, a follow-up discussion with him uncovered his assumption that the profile portrayed in this video was not only ‘true’ it was ‘normal’. Although the students interviewed expressed a reality of what is common for some American students, does this really mean it is ‘normal’ for students to feel this way about their education? In actuality, these findings about students today cannot be generalized to all American students or to students worldwide. This point is illustrated by A Vision of Japanese University Students Today, a version of Wesch's original video that is notably different. Wesch must be given credit for providing the springboard for capturing students' perspectives with this type of digital ethnography.



Nevertheless, some take issues with Wesch’s class video supported the notion that our current educational system is at fault for students not showing up to class, not reading their books, or not being engaged. This is taken a step further is a similar video entitled A Vision of K-12 Students Today. The overriding message of that video was that students want to be ENGAGED and it is up to educators to engage them! The very notion of “Engage Me” implies that learning is a passive process on the part of students, and an active responsibility of teachers. This attitude reflects the impact of our current digital climate on today’s students who are constantly expecting someone or something to engage or entertain them.



A further concern is that an overemphasis on learning in new media environments and the ‘whatever, whenever, wherever’ attitude being promoted may be mediating relationships between children, their parents, and teachers in ways that are not good for society, just as Wesch witnessed in New Guinea. Never in the history of our planet has the sense of respect for authority and authoritative knowledge been challenged as it is being done today. This by no means that we should not embrace technology, collaboration, or engaging curriculum that is relevant to students’ life in the 21st century. Wesch’s class video and research schedule for his Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class is are excellent examples of how technology and media can be used to acquire, document, and implement knowledge for beneficial purposes. His idea of designing creative and culturally relevant lessons so that students are asking questions that are relevant to their world is undoubtedly on point. However, as leaders we need to be cautious about assuming that knowledge (especially that in Wikis) is relative. We also need to be cautious about the impact of failing to distinguish (and hold accountable) those whose responsibility it is to be engaging teachers and those whose responsibility it is to be engaged learners.






Ultimately, whether information is coming from an authority in the front of a traditional classroom with walls, from traditional texts, or from a barrage of tweets, messages, videos, simulations or other forms of media - perhaps the key is to teach students, teachers, and leaders how to be critical thinkers and analytical seekers of knowledge with the ability to recognize, synthesize, and share knowledge authoritatively. Technology and media have definite benefits but we would be wise to also consider the long-term costs and repercussions of overreliance upon them.