Proponents and opponents for rewarding children

This paper is a review of the literature concerning the types and uses of rewards. The primary focus of this paper was to look at opposing sides of whether rewarding children has benefits or whether there are problems with using rewards. Also, I looked at how children can be given credit for their efforts to accomplish their goals with using encouragement and natural and logical consequences. As stated by Alfie Kohn, A reward .. .is a desired object or event made conditional on having fulfilled some criterion (Kohn, 1993, p. 53). There is a controversy today concerning the use of rewards. Those professionals who are Behaviorists support the use of rewards, while Adlerians and other educators do not support the use of rewards. The conclusion of this study dealt with the following recommendations: additional research needs to be done on the influences that rewards are having on children; research that shows why teachers are continuing to use rewards even after reviewing the negative effects; research that would compare the role of encouragement to rewards in classrooms settings; and finding a way that teachers can move from using rewards and punishments to using alternatives