Why Praise Can Undermine Real Learning and What to Do Instead

Telling someone, especially students and our children, starts almost immediately. We praise them as babies for smiles, claps, holding their bottle, crawling, walking, dressing themselves.... It's endless, and it feels good. Parents are the ambassadors of praise and good positive reinforcement. Then we have encouraging teachers, coaches, and hopefully employers. But there's a twist.

Sometimes, praise undermines the lesson.

Instead of asking “How does this work?” students begin asking, “Did I get it right?” It's a small shift in focus with huge ramifications.

In a previous post, I discussed Mary Budd Rowe's research into the immense power of Wait Time. She observed that the time teachers allotted for student responses had a tremendous impact on the students' ability to process and use the information they were learning. As a byproduct of her observations, she also made an interesting discovery. There’s a fascinating psychological trap hiding inside praise. Praise feels good to give and receive. It's encouraging, kind, and supportive. Yet the mind is a strange little laboratory.

Rowe found that students weren't answering questions to check for understanding; many students were solving problems to earn the teacher's approval. When teachers responded to answers with what she called sanctioning behavior (praise or correction), the quality of student thinking dropped. Even positive feedback nudged students toward a new objective: figuring out whether the teacher approved.

That's very counter-intuitive, isn't it?

When a teacher asked a question, even a simple one like 2 + 3, instead of saying “The answer is five,” students began responding tentatively. Their answers were in the shape of a question: “The answer is five…?” The student's goal had changed from mastering the subject to gaining the apoval of the authority figure.

This kind of behavior leads to a cascade. When students' responses are aimed at approval, the students become less confident. Instead of trusting their reasoning, students begin waiting for signals. They begin seeking permission instead of exhibiting their knowledge. They begin to doubt themselves and their own thoughts and default their decision-making to the head figure. When praise becomes the reward, the brain redirects effort toward detecting approval rather than problem-solving. Learning becomes shallow, and answering questions becomes a guessing game.

Humans are extremely sensitive to social approval. Our brains evolved to care deeply about whether others accept or reject our actions. That's an important factor. However, praise, over time, creates small habits that are contradictory to student well-being.

Students become cautious instead of curious. They stop taking risks.

They believe what others say is more reliable than their own ideas.

The classroom or homeschool slowly fills with children who want to be right more than they want to learn.

This does not mean encouragement is harmful. We need that positive connection. It's one of the greatest ways to create a strong bond between people. Therefore, we need to be more selective about what we praise. (instead of praising the answer. We need to shift the focus back to the process of learning, reasoning, and thinking. Instead of saying, "Good job," we should say, "Walk me through your thought process." Instead of "That's right," we should say, "What made you think that would work?"

The goal is to focus on the lesson, not the outcome, and when students have a chance to share their thinking... that's approval hidden in interaction. The ultimate goal of education isn’t producing students who guess correctly. It’s producing thinkers who trust their ability to wrestle with difficult ideas andwho feel that they have control over outcomes.

Are you teaching people who look at a confusing situation and think: “I don’t know the answer yet… but I know how to start figuring it out?”