Reward-Related Metaphors And Their Expressions In Classroom Teaching Of Primary Schools

Rewarding plays an important role in the classroom teaching of primary schools. In recent years, the voice of "appreciating education" and "happy education" has made classrooms full of praises, applauses and medals. To what kinds of classroom contexts is rewarding applied? What contributions can rewarding make? What influences does rewarding exert on students? All these questions have received increasing attention in educational world. The existing studies mainly focus on connotations and usage strategies of rewarding, paying little attention to value orientations and working mechanisms of classroom rewarding. In view of this, the thesis, through the cognitive function of metaphors, investigates value orientations, working mechanisms of rewarding in concrete classroom rewarding practices and their possible impacts on teaching and students.Literature analysis and classroom observation are main research methods employed in this study. During literature analysis stage, this thesis, with "rewarding","metaphors" and "classroom rewarding cases" as three main themes, collected and analyzed relative materials. The observation of classroom teaching (grade1to grade5) of a primary school in Shanghai was conducted, attaching special attentions to classroom rewarding practices. The time span of observation is one month.Based on literature analysis, the thesis selects three representative metaphors regarding reward which are "rewards are drugs","rewards are sugar-coating" and "rewards are catalysts". It analyzes value orientations of reward-related metaphors from perspectives of "behavior control","needs satisfaction" and "motivation stimulation". Next, it explores working mechanisms of "drug","sugar-coating","catalyst" in real classroom contexts and their impacts on teaching and students.Through addressing value orientations of different reward-related metaphors and rewarding behaviors in classroom teaching of primary schools, this thesis draws following conclusions:(1) rewarding behaviors have different value orientations,(2) rewarding plays multiple roles in the classroom,(3) the actual effects of classroom rewarding are affected by many factors. Therefore, this thesis finally argues that classroom rewarding is a behavior involving value judgment as well as value selection, it is a"conditional" education method and should be used with caution.