The punishment is the reward – why elite Chinese students take supplementary Chinese literacy tutoring despite viewing it as ineffective

Yuting Zhang; (小颖 许)

doi:10.1515/glochi-2023-0012

Article

The punishment is the reward – why elite Chinese students take supplementary Chinese literacy tutoring despite viewing it as ineffective

Yuting Zhang and (小颖许)

Published/Copyright: July 5, 2023

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From the journal Global Chinese Volume 9 Issue 1

Abstract

Reward and punishment are basic concepts in psychology. To survive better, humans and animals often need to maximize rewards and minimize punishments and threats. The human brain makes judgments about rewards and punishments based on distinguishing among complex environmental factors and makes decisions about future actions accordingly. Chinese students have spent more than a decade of primary and secondary school education with purposeful, fine-grained time management learning with the goal of success on the college entrance exam (Gaokao). The relationship between rewards and punishments for literacy tutoring at the primary and secondary school levels and the decision-making behavior of students and parents is therefore a question worth exploring. The purpose of this paper is to explore the decision-making mechanisms of elite Chinese students’ participation in or withdrawal from literacy tutoring in Chinese and the factors behind the reward and punishment mechanisms through grounded method analysis. The results show that most elite students and their parents do not believe that language literacy tutoring will significantly improve their chances for better college entrance exam scores, but there is a complex relationship between their decision-making behavior in tutoring and the reward and punishment mechanisms. Literacy improvement, emotional values, parent-child support obligations and even face-saving culture all contribute to students’ and parents’ decision-making behaviors. Choosing tutoring that is not seen as likely to improve test scores is a common phenomenon, which suggests that the punishment itself provides the reward that drives decisions to pursue literacy tutoring.

摘要 (Abstract)

奖赏和惩罚是心理学上的基本概念。为了更好地生存, 人和动物往往需要把奖赏最大化,把惩罚和威胁最小化。人类大脑会在分辨复杂的环境因素时对奖惩做出判断,并对未来行动做相应的决策。中国学生在长达十余年的中小学教育过程中无不以高考成功为目标进行目的明确、精细化时间管理的学习。语文课程的学习有其高投入低产出长期性积累等特点, 其中的阅读和写作学习更是如此, 因此, 中小学阶段的语文补习的奖惩和学生、家长的决策行为之间的关系是一个值得探讨的问题。本文旨在探究中国精英学生参与或退出语文课程中读写能力的补习课程的决策机制, 通过对家长和学生本人的具体表述的扎根方法分析, 探讨奖赏和惩罚机制背后的考量因素。结果表明: 多数精英学生及其家长认为语文读写补习对提升高考成绩意义不大,但她们的辅导班决策行为与奖励和惩罚机制之间存在复杂交互关系, 奖励和惩罚不再有如红绿灯一般的信号效应, 读写能力提升, 情绪价值, 父母与子女之间的抚养义务甚至面子文化都共同作于学生和家长的决策行为, 选择无奖赏的补习是普遍存在的现象, 这让惩罚本身也成为读写补习的意义。

Keywords: decision-making; literacy; punishments; rewards; supplementary tutoring

关键词: 决策行为; 奖赏; 惩罚; 读写实践; 课后补习班

Corresponding author: Xiaoying Xu (小颖许), School of Chinese Language and Literature, Research Center for Collation and Standardization of Chinese Characters, Beijing Normal University (北京师范大学文学院, 中国文字整理与规范研究中心), Haidian District, 19 Xinjiekou Wai Street, Beijing, 100875, China (中国北京市海淀区新街口外大街 19 号, 100875), E-mail: xuxiaoying2000@bnu.edu.cn

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Received: 2023-04-11

Accepted: 2023-04-11

Published Online: 2023-07-05

Published in Print: 2023-04-25

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2023-0012

Keywords for this article

decision-making; literacy; punishments; rewards; supplementary tutoring