From Science Daily (via ASCD Smart Brief) comes a study that states that 8 year-old respond well to positive feedback (”Good job!”) and hardly at all to negative feedback (”That’s wrong.”) according to a study done by the Leiden Brain and Cognition Lab:

Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback (’Well done!’), whereas negative feedback (’Got it wrong this time’) scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring.  Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes.  Adults do the same, but more efficiently.  

How does this impact how we introduce the research process and its natural ups-and-downs to kids? How do we move primary learners forward when they have gaps in understanding or comprehension errors? Do we point out what we like and then suggest a positive scenario for change? (”I like your opening sentence — what if you tried making your second research fact a bit more specific?”) Or does that “lead the student on”?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Research, Kids/Students 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.