Incentivar (subornar?) els alumnes per a què s'esforcin més en els exàmens

He escrit en el passat sobre experiments que consistien en incentivar alumnes (aquí) i directors d'escola (aquí) per a millorar els resultats escolars, extrets sempre del gran blog Freakonomics.

Un nou experiment, com no, via Freakonomics: "Bribing Kids to Try on Tests".

Explica un nou estudi on, a diferència dels anteriors experiments, s'ofereix una recompensa econòmica als alumnes just abans dels exàmens, i es dóna la recompensa (si els resultats són positius) de forma bastant immediata.  L'objectiu és incentivar l'esforç durant l'examen.  I sembla que funciona:

Unlike most previous studies involving kids, schools, and payments, in this research we aren’t trying to get kids to study hard or learn more; we were going after something even more simple: just get the student to try hard on the test itself. So we don’t tell the kids about the financial reward ahead of time — we just surprise them right before they sit down to take the test by offering them up to $20 for improvements.

To see any gains from the financial incentives, the students need to know that they will be paid right away. If instead we tell them we will pay them one month later, they don’t do any better than with no incentives at all. This is bad news for those who argue that payoffs that come years or decades in the future are sufficient to motivate students. 

The very best results come when we give the students the money before the test, and then we take the money back if they don’t meet the standards. This result is consistent with what psychologists call “loss aversion.” 

With young kids, it is a lot cheaper to bribe them with trinkets like trophies and whoopee cushions, but cash is the only thing that works for the older students.

Dilema que aviat tindré com a pare: he de recompensar als meus fills si treuen bones notes? Com?

Per cert, si us interessa aquest tema d'incentius als alumnes, la referència mundial és el Roland Fryer.