A Narrative Report Discussing If Grades Are Motivators As Well As Rewards

Having a motivation in our life is very important as this simply clarifies our goals

that leads to many aspects that can change our lives into something that we want to

attain, or it causes progress in our lives. Motivation comes from the latin word “movere”

which means to cause movement. In other words, motivation push you to move to do

something.

In the context of rewards, all the organizations depend their success on their

employees. Behind the success is the main task of its management to secure constant

improvements in performance of every employee to achieve their goals and objectives.

For the sake of it, their Human Resource Department together with other managers do

some detailed analysis of their employee’s behavior and character in able for them to

come up with the best ideas on how to motivate their employees to perform excellently

in every task assigned to them. And rewards are the most common motivator to an

employee to perform well in his job that is being practiced from ancient times up to this

day. Why rewards are the most common motivator? According to the study by Cornell

researchers Woolley and Fishbach published in the Journal of Personality and

Psychology, people who received immediate, frequent rewards for completing small

tasks reported more interest and more enjoyment in their work. They also found out that

those same people, when they started receiving frequent rewards are remained

interested and engaged in their tasks even after their rewards were removed,

suggesting a lasting positive effect reinforcement and performance or job satisfaction.

And those people are intrinsically motivated to perform well and continue completing
tasks. Therefore, it is true that rewards motivate employees to perform well in their job.

Although those employees are already getting paid by performing their task alone, but

the rewards increase and contributes to their willingness or interest to do better and

continue completing their tasks. Those rewards can be in form of bonuses, incentives,

promotion, etc. Rewards are also form of recognition as the employee get a reward

because he did well in his job. For example, I have a friend who is now working in

Business Process Outsourcing Industry or BPO. At first, he does his job normally, but

suddenly, he rewarded as the employee of the month recognizing the performance he

did for the company. That incident made him motivated to do his best in his job and now

he is promoted as the Team Leader.

In the context of grades, grades are the most common example of an external or

extrinsic motivation that can influence learning. Many believe that grades can act as an

incentive to make students work harder and learn more. Grades serves as an essential

function to evaluate student learning and performance but sometimes, this can have

negative effects on students’ motivation as students’ can easily miss the point of

education because they pursue their desired grades. This causes grade anxiety

disorders and high academic stress that can cause them to even tempt to cheat. But

according to Klein (2020), the long-standing belief that grades are important because

they motivate students to do the work is widely held and accepted as a fact, yet there is

little to no evidence or research that proves that grades make students learn more or

work harder in school. In fact, there is ample of evidence that grades actually do the

opposite like they hurt academic motivation and inhibit learning. Therefore, grades are

not a motivator for the students to strive hard in their studies as there is no evidence to
support it and the belief that it motivates is just coming from the people who believe that

it is. As for me, my grades motivate me to strive hard or do my best in my studies. It is

because my satisfaction is fulfilled whenever I see that my grades are within my desired

grades. But I am not the type of student that works hard only because I want to see my

desired grades. I work hard in my studies to learn more for me to be able to be ready to

enter the world of professionals once I graduated at the same time to have my desired

grades. I also strive hard in my studies even though I got a grade that is not within my

desired grades. Because for me, that indicates that I should learn more to that subject

where I got an undesired grade so that, it won’t be a problem for me in the future if ever

I encounter a job regarding to that subject. Therefore, in my perspective, grades do

motivate me that drives me to achieve my desired grades.

In conclusion, rewards and grades are the things that in majority of peoples’

perception is a motivation that causes them to strive hard in their field of work or in any

course where the student belongs because the reward and the grade is the main goal

that drives them to achieve it. Therefore, rewards and grades are motivators. No matter

what the type is or in any form the motivation is, the important thing here is motivation

makes you push towards your goal, and it clarifies your goal that makes you know

exactly what you are working towards. At the same time this causes us to develop

competencies, creativity, grow interests, and boost engagement.