The Research On Preschool Teachers' Reward Behaviors

Reward is to give praise and encouragement to the proper ideas and behaviors of individuals or groups. It is also a common method of control. It takes advantage of the human need of affirmation and praise and it is used to stimulate and change people's behaviors. This is a children-oriented society and the notion of appreciation education enjoys great popularity. The adults tend to offer children more affirmation and praise. But the situation is normally misled by this kind of education with so many backwards of abused praise, which is likely to bring negative influences on children's all-round development.。The principle of this study is to get the know-how of the situation in kindergarten of teachers'praise, and to explore the mechanism underlying teachers'reward and explain the improper praise of teachers so as to give children proper praise.This study takes non-participant observation as the main research method and observes two kindergartens in Kaifeng for two months, and records all praises and their background in one day by using event sampling. From interviewing teachers, this study tries to investigate the behaviors and their motivation of teachers'reward, thus get a series of information and details.On the base of initiative analysis of the raw data and by using SPSS11.5 as the analyzer, this study summarizes the basic types and methods of teachers'reward. By analyzing the influence of teachers'reward, the study tries to display the findings in a gradual way.It is shown in the study teachers'reward has the following characteristics: informal reward is the main method going with teaching activities; girls get more reward than boys; the reward mainly targets groups rather than individuals; the content of reward to third-year children is mainly about knowledge achievement and daily regulation; each child gets less reward on average in larger class; the reward frequency does not vary with children's age.It is also found that the commonly used reward methods are: token economy, competition, hundred-mark system, reward with punishment, fuzzy reward. Teachers will take different reward in different situations. The major influences are teachers' outlook on education, professional qualities and gender. They are the normal ground of teachers'automatic response.This study tries to put forward the following suggestions: 1. Teachers should respect and satisfy children's need for praise and give children proper reward in daily life.2.Teachers should sincerely praise children.3.Teachers should pay close attention to individual differences. From this study, it can be seen that girls generally get more reward than boys .4. In order to avoid improper reward, teachers should be equipped with professional qualities and make reasonable introspect on daily reward and teacher-children interaction.