ABSTRACT
How do children view the academic work procedures and behavioural structures in school? Most school children have to function within systems of reward and punishment designed to elicit good academic work and conduct. Research suggests that children generally understand the purpose of such systems and acknowledge their effectiveness in school life. Studies of British school children have found that they generally approve of teachers' use of praise and reward for good work and behaviour and that they value teachers' assessments over those of their peers (primary school children, aged 8±11, Merrett & Tang, 1994; secondary school children, Houghton, Merrett, & Wheldall, 1988). The children also reported that they viewed a letter to their parents, whether detailing a child's good effort or reporting on bad behaviour, as an important and effective method of obtaining good conduct, thus indicating that the children also valued or feared the assessments of their parents. In general, for the older children, private praise (i.e., by the teacher) was valued above public praise (i.e., awards and prizes), as perhaps further indication of the importance children place on the quality of pupil±teacher relationships (Beishuizen et al., 2001; Entwistle et al., 1989)
Emler et al. (1987), in their investigation of the thinking of Scottish and French children about their schools, examined children's perceptions of the criteria used by teachers to assess academic work. The children were asked whether the teacher should reward effort (i.e., hard work but incorrect answers) or success (correct answers despite minimal effort). Most of the French children (78%), regardless of socioeconomic status (SES), reported that the teacher would reward success. However, although a majority (54%) of the Scottish children also predicted that success would be the more likely, there was an important difference between the working-class and middleclass children. The middle-class Scottish children were more likely than the working-class Scottish children to predict that the teacher would reward effort over success, and this tendency increased with age. Furthermore, when the children were then asked to assess the fairness of their predicted decision, whether success or effort, they were signi®cantly more likely to regard as unfair a decision to reward success than a decision to reward effort, with no differences associated with nationality or class. Therefore, while a majority of the children tended to accept that the norm was for the teacher to evaluate their work according to its content, they were not totally happy with a strictly academic approach. Even at this young age, the children were evidently concerned with the fairness of academic procedures.
