How many times a day do you tell pupils their work is brilliant? Or fantastic? Or awesome?

According to world-renowned behaviour expert, Dr Bill Rogers, the answer should be zero.

“Very little of anything anyone does is awesome. You don’t look at a child’s work and say this brings awe to me,” he says. “Praise and over-praise of children doesn’t help them to progress.”

Bill Rogers on behaviour management

Speaking at the World Education Summit today, Rogers said that when teachers over-praise pupils, especially when little effort has been applied, their work is devalued.

In practice, praise is something that comes naturally to many teachers. Stripping it out of teaching and learning completely is not something that will come easily, acknowledges Rogers.

But there is, he says, an alternative: descriptive feedback.

“Descriptive feedback gives the child information about their progress, learning and behaviour,” he explains. “It needs to be done quietly and respectfully, so it doesn’t embarrass the child.”

There are some key components that are needed to do this effectively, says Rogers: it should be done during classroom activities and should include acknowledgement of the work that has been completed, as well as pointers about the next steps.

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Teachers may think that they are already delivering this kind of feedback, but the key part that sometimes gets missed is the need to always make it “descriptive”: giving pupils a clear idea of exactly what they need to do to improve.

Rogers gives an example from a lesson he taught about adjectives, in which children were given the task of describing a box.

“One boy wrote: ‘I got a box’. Some teachers would say he’s really made an effort there, and let’s assume he did really make an effort. But you don’t then say that’s ‘awesome’ or that’s ‘great’. It’s not great. It is what it is, but it’s not great,” says Rogers.

He explains that, instead of offering empty praise, he acknowledged what the child had written and then asked him to think about the colour and size of the box, with the promise that he’d come back later to see how he got on.

“That gives a little bit of feedback, acknowledgement and assurance, all in that tiny exchange,” Rogers says. “[But] that exchange doesn’t need words like ‘brilliant’, ‘great’, ‘wonderful’, ‘marvellous’.”

All feedback, he adds, needs to be specific, rather than generic.

“Children know the difference between genuine feedback and where a teacher is simply going through the motions,” he says. “On a busy day, it’s not always easy to affirm and acknowledge the best efforts of your pupils, or to get around a whole class. But I’m very conscious about the language of encouragement, rather than the concept of rewards or praise.”

There can be celebrations of learning, he adds: as a class, you can celebrate aspects of the learning journey together, but when it comes to individual progress, “assurance, affirmation and acknowledgement” are far more meaningful than praise.

He accepts that shifting away from praise will be tough for many teachers, but stresses that it is an important shift to make.

“This is a very strong view that my colleagues and I hold, and it’s sometimes challenging for teachers who’ve been brought up with the idea of giving a stamp every time a child does a tiny bit of writing,” he says. “But if that’s the way the child constantly perceives that everything he does is great, where will he have a sense of value in the effort expended?”