Our Homeschool Diary: Eyes on the Prize!

I tried something new yesterday. Pasted on the wall facing our study table is a piece of paper with AED 100 ($27.17) on it. Get it when all tasks/assignments are up to date by 31/01/2022. At the bottom of the page are the "contracting party's* signatures -- Teacher Mommy and Kuya.

Monetary rewards is something I have never tried with my homeschoolers when trying to motivate them in their studies. I didn't feel I had to so this one is a bit of on the experimental side...

All in all, the husband and I don't really do this "rewards as motivation" kind of thing in our parenting. Although, we do reward them for their accomplishments and good deeds, but it's not something set-on-stone that the kids always have their eyes on the rewards for just about anything.

Not a psychology expert...

I am definitely not one, so I've done some readings here and there (still, not an expert!). So far I have learned about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and this experiment I am now conducting in our little homeschool, of course, is an extrinsic motivation.

In education, researchers have found that intrinsic motivation is related to what they have called learning goals, or motivation to learn for the sake of learning, whereas extrinsic motivation is associated with performance goals, or learning in the pursuit of evaluation, or a good grade; in essence, a reward (Heyman & Dweck, 1992).^[1]

A bit more reading leads me to see that this kind of motivation could have (is most likely) short-term effects. Nonetheless, since I have already engaged on it so... besides, if this could jumpstart our otherwise lazy start of the year, then we have to make this work.

That Contract.

Over the holidays, we had a few backlog, especially my eldest. Since his modules are online and really time-constrained, his tasks had already piled up. If he does not pick up on these now then he will have way more problems in the coming weeks.

To help him, I thought why not poke the interest more with a reward. I even asked him if he prefers some Splinterlands packs instead (yup, he plays!) but he said since he can actually grow and manage his own Splinterlands account, he prefers the money since "I can save the money for something else, like bills, and food, and other stuff". Well boy, bills and food are not your concern, but thank you very much! <3

I recognize that he might just whip off the assignments just for the sake of crossing them out of the timeline, so I also had to be clear that he has to get good marks for them too (another extrinsic motivation!).

_{Contract signed.}

Let's see how it goes.

Mini-contract.

There's also a mini-challenge going on with Little Miss. She's the more competitive one so she asked me, "What's my challenge?".

She now has a 5-day challenge to memorize the multiplication table from (1 - 12) until this Friday. Plus, she must be able to work these out on her division problems.

_{Challenge accepted!}

She has most of the times table memorized already, so she is confident she can do it.

Her prize? AED 20 ($5.43).

My Eyes on the Prize

I have also my eyes on the prize and hoping that this will work out for the better. Hopefully, no more huge backlogs next time.

I guess it will be a matter of finding out what drives them to their goals and assisting them with it!

Are you trying to gain an incentive or are you trying to avoid a negative consequence?

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^[1] Motivating Children Without Rewards [PsychologyToday.com]
_{Heyman, G. D., & Dweck, C. S. (1992). Achievement goals and intrinsic motivation: Their relation and their role in adaptive motivation. Motivation and Emotion, 16, 231-247.}