Positive And Negative Feedback

Sawa Kurotani, of the Yomiuri's Behind The Paper Screen, looks at the cultural applications of positive and negative feedback in Japanese and American feedback. And it seems constructive criticism is lacking in  Japan:

When I look back, I am struck by how overwhelmingly negative most of the feedback was--not just in terms of athletics, but also in academic, artistic and social realms--that I received in my childhood and teenage years in Japan. From kindergarten to high school, all I remember is the criticisms on everything I didn't do right: "Miss Kurotani, you are terrible at writing kanji." (Forget the fact that I could read all of them.) "You didn't paint within the lines." (It looks fine to me.) "Why can't you work with other kids in the group?" (But I already finished my part.)

I do not believe that I happened to be an unusually poor student, or that these experiences are unique to me. Rather, I realize now that the Japanese educational institution is centered on finding and correcting shortcomings of students. Implicit in this notion is that there is a right answer or a correct way to do things, and any diversion from it must be corrected.

In the United States, I encountered a different educational philosophy that focused on what one could do, rather than what one couldn't. I have been fortunate that I have had the opportunity to recognize what was denied earlier in my life and revise my own understanding of what I was capable of doing. It took me a long time, and a lot of hard work, to realize that, yes, I am smart and artistic--and not such a bad tennis player.

Although personally painful and costly, I believe that my own experience of failure benefits me greatly as an educator. Criticism is a double-edged sword, and therefore must be used with great care. We cannot learn and improve unless we recognize our shortcomings; but when used carelessly, criticism puts people on the defensive, and when they feel defensive, they cannot take criticism in and use it constructively.

I have been teaching full-time for almost 10 years now, and the more I teach, the more strongly I am convinced of the power of positive reinforcement. I praise my students often and praise them shamelessly. When I am evaluating written assignments, I always point out first things they did well--even partially--and frame my criticism as a way of doing even better next time. When students do exceptionally well, they of course get good grades and good comments, but I also add little silly things as additional enticement, such as "WOW!" written big next to their grade, a little sushi sticker or a Pokemon stamp that says, "Good Going." I not only praise them individually, I also praise them collectively. I tell my class what a great group of students they were; how smart and articulate, yet civil and respectful of each other. I do not limit my praise to academic performance, either. I applaud a student whose athletic team won an important game, who finished knitting a sweater, or who stayed up all night to care for a sick friend. Call them childish gimmicks or whatever you want; I have seen their remarkable effects on student engagement.

When we are asked what we teach, we tend to first think of the subjects that we teach. But the truth is that, regardless of whatever subject we teach, we all teach human beings. As human beings, students crave recognition and appreciation of what they can do, and affirmation of this basic human need is essential for a truly effective learning process.

The shift from the emphasis on "can't-dos" to "can-dos" does not rest with individual educators, however. In an environment where all students are sorted by a single set of criteria, teachers have little choice but to focus on which student falls short of getting the "right" answer. The educational system has to redefine itself around a new mission of cultivating human potential in its awesome diversity--which is, like many other important things in life, easier said than done.

Comments

[Edward]

I believe the great American behaviourist BF Skinner confirmed experiemntally that reinforcement is better than punishment for affecting behaviour. He and his contemporaries had a lot of influence on Western teaching and parenting philosophy, and I suspect we could attribute some of the relative differences between Japanese and American methods down to this.

[MC]

I think it stems more from the senpai/kohai or sensei culture where the sensei is all-knowing, dispensing wisdom and correcting his charges be it kendo, English grammar, or hair cutting. And I think a lot fo this coems from the confucian tradition of teaching and throw inteh the over reliance on "yarikata": which suggests there is only "one" true way of doing something, where parents try to correct children who favor their left hand over their right or where teachers strictly teach kanji writing through tortuous repetition bent on perfection of traditional form. I think it goes beyond B.F. Skinner, but we did study him in graduate school alongside progressive thinkers/philosophers like John Dewey. I think it might have more to do with the west having Socrates as a model rather than Confucious in the end.