Max. Classroom Capacity: Let’s Recognize Our Students

Dear readers,

Thanks for reading Max. Classroom Capacity! A few days ago, I watched the 1984 movie Supergirl with my kids. On occasions, when my wife is away, my three boys and I have made a habit of watching old movies that I remember as a child, most of which turn out to be much worse than I remember them. The list, so far, includes the four Christopher Reeve Superman movies—they are shockingly bad—as well as Disney’s 1979 Star Wars ripoff “The Black Hole,” which was enjoyable because it was hilariously bad. Anyway, Supergirl fell somewhere in the middle, and it failed to keep anyone’s attention for very long.¹

However, one scene did stand out: One of the villains, a teacher of a class on computers (yes, this existed in the 1980s when computers were harder to use and most people didn’t know how to use them) at Supergirl’s adopted private girls’ school, says to his students: “Now then, focus your tiny minds on the kind of problems that used to take weeks of thought before the computer. Even now, it can take a long time without certain algorithms, which, if you behave for two seconds, I might reveal to you.” I thought to myself, that’s just bad teaching! Rather than insult and belittle students, we should praise and, uh, bebiggle them.²

OK, maybe it’s unreasonable to expect a depiction of good teaching from a villain in a comic book movie. Still, it made me think, in most contexts, expressing appreciation will create better and more sustainable outcomes than not doing that and is certainly better than being rude and abusive! It’s remarkable how few supervillains recognize or express appreciation for the invaluable work of their lackeys, henchmen, sidekicks, and cronies! Perhaps the power dynamics at play (in both supervillainy and teaching) make the individual with more social power less likely to consider recognizing those with less social power. Let’s not let this happen to us as teachers! As a simple example of student recognition, at the end of every class, I thank my students for attending and engaging in the class. More on this later.

At this point, I expect that your training in I-O psychology is making you ask, “Does expressing appreciation actually lead to better outcomes? What evidence exists concerning this claim?” These are great questions!

From a theoretical standpoint, there are many reasons to expect that students who are recognized by their teachers will experience psychological benefits. Here are three primary ones:

1. In line with behaviorist theories of reinforcement, recognition can act as a social incentive (Luthans & Stajkovic, 2000) that encourages desirable behaviors.
2. Recognition that concerns specific actions may act as performance feedback that shapes behaviors to improve performance (Peterson & Luthans, 2006).
3. Recognition can be a form of social support (James et al., 2011) and, from a self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) standpoint, can improve motivation by helping to satisfy individuals’ fundamental needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

On their part, organizations have substantially invested in systems to formalize and facilitate the delivery of recognition to employees (WorldatWork, 2019), presumably because decision-makers appreciate the value of recognition. There is evidence to support the beneficial effects of employee recognition on work engagement (James et al., 2011), health (Renger et al., 2020), contextual performance (Yang et al., 2022), and task performance (Scherbaum et al., 2022). But this literature is messy because recognition as a construct remains inconsistently defined. Recognition can contain many features: It can be formal or informal, financial or symbolic, public or private, specific or general, rare or frequent, and so forth. These different features may have complex or contradictory relationships with outcomes. I define employee recognition as an expression of appreciation or gratitude for work-relevant behaviors or accomplishments; in the classroom, substitute “education” for “work” in this definition.

Some research in higher education contexts shows that instructors’ appreciative behaviors can have positive effects on student outcomes, though this literature is small and the quality of the research is variable.

• Harder and Abuhamdieh (2015) surveyed students and found that their self-reported ratings of the quality of faculty–student interactions were positively related to their self-reported ratings of how much they learned and how much effort they exerted toward learning in the class.
• Using a retrospective longitudinal mixed methods design, Bliven and Jungbauer (2021) found that students who received a formal excellence award felt more motivated to persist in their studies and were less likely to withdraw from them.
• Li and Singh (2023) interviewed female students in STEM fields and, using qualitative analysis, found that the students rarely reported receiving recognition from their instructors and, in contrast, often reported being belittled, not believed in, and marginalized by them. Those few who did perceive that they were recognized expressed higher self-efficacy, interest, and persistence in their studies and choice of field.
• Using a within-subjects experimental design with a sample of undergraduate intro psych students, Weinstein et al. (2009) found that performance on a post-test pop quiz on “brain and behavior” that followed the instructor greeting students with “Hello, I’m glad you’re in class today” was significantly higher than performance on a pre-test pop quiz on “research methods” 4 days earlier. The authors concluded that the results supported the notion that greeting students increased their academic performance. Speaking (ironically) of research methods, no mention was made in the article of any potential confounds or limitations of the methodology!³

In sum, the evidence suggests that recognition has beneficial motivational and health effects on employees and may have similar positive motivational effects on students. In part, this is because recognition can be a form of performance feedback, and we have known for decades that well-designed performance feedback can be beneficial (e.g., Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). Consistent with best practices in performance feedback, recognition should be specific to the behaviors/outcomes that merit the recognition and delivered in a timely manner so that the receiver has the best chance of associating the recognition with the relevant behaviors/outcomes.

However, recognition can also provide social/motivational benefits that go beyond those of performance feedback. One necessary feature for recognition to provide these social benefits is that it must be authentic. If you don’t feel appreciation for your students, then don’t try to thank them—unless you’re a great actor, it may backfire! Recognition that is perceived as inauthentic may inadvertently convey many undesirable, damaging messages to students: that you are fake, don’t mean what you say, don’t really care about them, are manipulative, are trying to control them, are self-serving, and so on. Recognition that becomes rote or routine, never varies in its form, or is not conveyed with appropriate emotions, also risks backfiring. For example, when praising or thanking a student in class, make sure that you use their preferred name.⁴ Failing to do so may convey the message that you don’t care about them enough to learn their name, rather than conveying the intended recognition. In the table below, I provide a few examples of recognition that target the different theoretical bases for recognition effects.

Theoretical basis	Examples of instructor recognition
Incentives	·   When a student participates in class by answering a difficult question, express your appreciation of the student for his/her willingness to answer. ·   At the beginning of class, thank students for arriving on time. ·   Publicly acknowledge classroom-level improvements in behavior (e.g., more students contributing to class discussions).
Performance feedback	·   In written assignment feedback, highlight specific strengths or instances where the student has demonstrated a desired competency. ·   During class discussions, reinforce students’ high-quality analytical thinking; identify specific behaviors that were performed well. ·   Acknowledge when students have demonstrated specific, effective presentation skills.
Social/ motivational	·   Recognize and celebrate persistence after students experience setbacks. ·   In private, thank a student who supported a classmate during group work or who provided useful feedback to you as an instructor. ·   Validate students’ efforts during challenging circumstances (e.g., high workload around midterms).

There are many classroom contexts that provide opportunities to deliver recognition to students: During transition points like at the beginning and ending of class, in formal written feedback on assessments of learning, during classroom discussions where you want to encourage more students to participate, in email exchanges with students, and so on. On the last day of class in my MBA course, I bring in treats from a popular local Cuban bakery. At the end of that class, I host a mock awards show, awarding student teams with funny trophies based on their semester-long performance on a business simulation, including the Warren Buffett award for financial wizardry and the Ricky Bobby award for 2^nd highest overall score. It’s a nice way for us all to celebrate our hard work together and put a cap on the semester.

Planning recognition is the easy part—but it matters. Indiscriminate recognition can dilute its impact, and poorly considered recognition can create perceptions of favoritism. Again, recognizing students authentically is the key. As you progress in your career, it’s easy to let small irritants accumulate over the years, and I can understand how some folks end up like (hopefully watered-down versions of!) the villain from Supergirl. I try to remember that even though there may be university policies around attendance and appropriate student behavior and whatnot, fundamentally, students are choosing to show up for class, choosing to participate in class discussions, choosing not to distract other students, not to be on their phone, and so on. So, let’s recognize our students.

As always, please email me with your thoughts, critiques, ideas, or to just say hi: Loren.Naidoo@csun.edu

Notes

¹ I will say that it was mildly interesting to consider some of its feminist and antifeminist themes. The hero is, obviously, a girl, and the main villain is a witch. However, I didn’t think the movie really engaged in feminist ideas. Also, this movie is not to be confused with the new Supergirl movie coming out this summer (2026).

² At first, I thought I had coined a cool new word, but the Urban Dictionary tells me I’m not the first to climb this mountain. Not only is bebiggle in the Urban Dictionary, the Urban Dictionary has a store (who knew?), and they sell a bebiggle mug! However, I am using bebiggle to mean “to make people feel good about themselves,” whereas the Urban Dictionary definition includes a more negative connotation of making something bigger than it is or deserves to be.

³ I don’t mean to be overly critical because I appreciate that it’s much harder to publish research than to critique it. However, I think it’s scandalous that a study with such an obvious confound—the content of the quiz—could be published with no discussion of methodological limitations! I’m guessing that the author understood the issue, but space constraints or reviewer feedback resulted in text concerning the confound being cut or not being added.

⁴ For more on the importance of learning students’ names, please read Naidoo, L. J. (2019). Max. Classroom Capacity: Say my name, say my name… The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 56(4).

References

Bliven, A., & Jungbauer, M. (2021). The impact of student recognition of excellence to student outcome in a competency-based educational model. Journal of Competency-Based Education, 6(4), 195–205. https://doi.org/10.1002/cbe2.1264

Harder, J. T., & Abuhamdieh, A. H. (2015). The role of positive regard in self-regulated learning: An analysis of student evaluation data. Journal of College Teaching & Learning (TLC), 12(2), 109–120. https://doi.org/10.19030/tlc.v12i2.9183

Kluger, A. N., & Denisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 9(2), 254–284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.2.254

Li, Y., & Singh, C. (2023). Impact of perceived recognition by physics instructors on women’s self-efficacy and interest. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 19(2), 020125. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.19.020125

Luthans, F., & Stajkovic, A. D. (2000). Provide recognition for performance improvement. In E. A. Locke (Ed.), Handbook of principles of organizational behavior: Indispensable knowledge for evidence-based management (pp. 239–253). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119206422.CH13

Peterson, S. J., & Luthans, F. (2006). The impact of financial and nonfinancial incentives on business-unit outcomes over time. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(1), 156–165. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.91.1.156

Scherbaum, C. A., Naidoo, L. J., & Saunderson, R. (2022). The impact of manager recognition training on performance: A quasi-experimental field study. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 43(1), 57–70. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-04-2021-0144

Weinstein, L., Laverghetta, A., Alexander, R., & Stewart, M. (2009). Teacher greetings increase college students’ test scores. College Student Journal, 43(2), 452–453. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ872259

WorldatWork. (2019). Trends in employee recognition (Report, underwritten by Maritz Motivation). WorldatWork. https://worldatwork.org/media/CDN/dist/CDN2/documents/pdf/resources/research/Employee-Recognition-2019.pdf