Should We Pay Students to Learn?
Monday, March 9th, 2009
I was talking with a group of educators the other day and they were explaining how pay-for-performance (P4P) programs are becoming popular in their field. The idea is that we give students money, prizes or tokens to engage in and perform well in the learning process.
As a cognitive designer this caught my attention – How do extrinsic rewards support or enhance the cognition of learning?
There is literature on the issue but it is mixed. A recent article in the New York Times, Rewards for Students Under A Microscope, offers a brief review and confirms what I heard – the question stirs a lot of emotion and programs that pay for performance are growing at a rapid rate. According to the article,
“Reward programs that pay students are under way in many cities. In some places, students can bring home hundreds of dollars for, say, taking an Advanced Placement course and scoring well on the exam.”
And some are showing some interesting results.
But others are failing….
