Extrinsic Rewards
Last Updated: 8/15/26
By Amy Schlueter
If You Missed Part 1…
I tackled the surprisingly controversial topic of extrinsic rewards—yes, even the tiny but mighty Jolly Rancher—and why rewards aren’t just “good” or “bad.” While researchers like Alfie Kohn, Edward Deci, and Richard Ryan have raised legitimate concerns about rewards undermining intrinsic motivation, much of that research focuses on students who are already motivated and experiencing success. Reading specialists often work with a very different population: students who have experienced so much failure that they’ve stopped believing their effort will make a difference. I shared Dalton’s story to illustrate how an extrinsic reward can sometimes serve as a bridge, helping a discouraged student experience enough success to begin rebuilding confidence and motivation. The research, it turns out, is far more nuanced than the often-repeated claim that “rewards destroy intrinsic motivation”—context, the type of reward, and how it is delivered all matter. My argument isn’t that every student needs a Jolly Rancher; it’s that we shouldn’t dismiss a tool simply because it doesn’t fit neatly into a one-size-fits-all theory of motivation. Sometimes, before we can expect students to love learning, we have to help them believe they can succeed at it.
If you’d like to go back and read the full article, click here
What Bandura Taught Me About Jolly Ranchers
At first glance, Albert Bandura probably doesn’t seem like someone who has much to say about a bowl of candy sitting on my intervention table. But I think he does.
His research on self-efficacy fundamentally changed the way I operate and think about motivation. Simply put, self-efficacy is a person’s belief that they can successfully accomplish a task. And according to Bandura, the single most powerful way to build that belief isn’t praise, encouragement, or positive thinking.
It’s mastery experiences which mean success. Real success. Repeated success. Not perfection. Not empty compliments. Not participation trophies. Success that students can point to and say, “I did that.”
That’s exactly what I want for every struggling reader who walks through my door. Because here’s what years of intervention have taught me…Most of my students don’t suffer from a lack of motivation. They suffer from a lack of hope.
They’ve spent years sitting in classrooms where reading came easily for everyone else. They’ve guessed. Avoided. Hidden. Memorized. Acted silly. Pretended to sharpen their pencil. Asked to use the bathroom right before independent reading. Sound familiar? They’d do almost anything to avoid another reminder that reading seemed impossible. After enough failures, they stop asking, “Can I even do this?” Instead they start believing, “I know I can’t.” And that’s not a motivation problem. It’s an efficacy problem.
That means before my students can become intrinsically motivated readers, I have to help them believe they’re capable of becoming readers at all. Sometimes a Jolly Rancher simply helps keep them engaged long enough to experience success. They know there’s a reward at the end of the period for their hard work– not their perfection. The candy didn’t build their confidence. The success did.
The reward simply helped bridge the gap.
What Deci and Ryan Actually Said
Here’s something I think gets lost in a lot of professional development. Educators often invoke Self-Determination Theory as if it says, “Never use rewards.” It doesn’t. Deci and Ryan warned that controlling rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation, especially when people already enjoy the activity. That’s a very important distinction. Imagine paying a child five dollars every time they ride their bike. Eventually they may start wondering, “Would I even ride my bike if nobody paid me?” That concern is real. But that’s not the child sitting across from me.
My students aren’t begging to read books. In fact, they’re wondering if they’ll ever finish a chapter book at all. Deci and Ryan also emphasized something that often gets overlooked in the studies. People flourish when three basic psychological needs are supported:
- Competence — “I can do this.”
- Autonomy — “I have some control.”
- Relatedness — “Someone believes in me.”
Reading specialists spend every day trying to build all three. Competence- through carefully scaffolded instruction. Autonomy- by giving students meaningful choices whenever possible. Relatedness- by creating relationships built on trust, patience, and encouragement. Notice what’s missing. The theory doesn’t say rewards are automatically harmful. It says controlling rewards can become harmful. There’s a difference.
A Jolly Rancher handed to a child while saying, “I’m proud of how hard you worked through those vowel teams today,” doesn’t feel like control. It feels like someone noticed.
Sometimes that’s exactly what discouraged readers need most.
Meet Students Where They Are
This may be the biggest lesson my students have ever taught me. We often expect children to behave the way we think they should instead of responding to the child standing in front of us. Read that again. Because that’s not just about rewards. That’s about intervention. That’s about teaching. That’s about relationships. It’s easy to create educational philosophies around the students we wish we had. The eager readers. The naturally curious learners. The children who devour books under the covers with a flashlight. I love those kids! But typically they aren’t the ones referred to reading intervention. The students sitting in my room often arrive carrying something much heavier than a reading disability. They’re carrying embarrassment. Frustration. Anxiety. Years of comparing themselves to classmates. Years of wondering why reading seems effortless for everyone else. If we ignore those experiences because they don’t fit neatly into our philosophy of motivation…we’re not meeting students where they are. We’re asking them to meet us somewhere they simply aren’t ready to go. Good intervention starts with reality, not theory.
“Don’t They Just Work for the Candy?”
This is probably the question I get asked most often. My answer? Not for very long. If handing out candy were enough to create motivation, we’d have cracked the code on reluctant learners a long time ago. Here’s what actually happens. At first, students notice, ask about, and live for the reward. A month later, they notice they’re reading words they couldn’t read before. Two months later, they’re proudly showing their parents how their fluency chart is improving. Next, they’ll show me a chapter book they checked out from the library. Around Winter Break, they burst into my room before school to tell me their MAP score went up 9 points. No candy involved.
And here’s what I’ve noticed from years of intervention. I’ve never had a student stop by my room during lunch because they were deeply attached to blue raspberry-flavored Jolly Ranchers (although those are always the first to go)! They stop by because they know I believe in them. They ask if they can eat lunch with me. They email me- even years later when they’re in high school. They high-five me in the hallway. Some tell me, “I wish I could stay with you all day.” Others quietly whisper, “You’re my favorite teacher.”
Trust me…If their affections were based on candy alone, Halloween would be a very confusing holiday for them. The relationship always outlasts the reward. Because the reward was never the relationship.
The Goal Was Never Candy
I don’t hand out Jolly Ranchers because I want students to work for candy. I hand them out because I want students to stay in the game long enough to discover they don’t need the Jolly Rancher anymore. Somewhere along the way, the reward changes. What started as reliance on a Jolly Rancher becomes reading an entire chapter independently. It becomes recognizing a multisyllabic word without help. It becomes passing a spelling test. It becomes volunteering to read aloud. It becomes checking out a library book because they actually want to. It becomes raising a hand instead of looking down at the desk. And eventually, it becomes hearing themselves say, “Hey…I’m actually getting pretty good at this.”
That’s the reward I’ve been chasing all along.
Research Nerd Corner 🤓
If you’d like to explore both sides of this debate, here are a few excellent resources.
A thoughtful critique of rewards
- Alfie Kohn. Punished by Rewards. A provocative argument that external rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation and create dependence.
Why the conversation is more nuanced
- Cameron, Banko, & Pierce (2001). Pervasive Negative Effects of Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation: The Myth Continues. This paper argues that many broad claims about rewards have overstated the evidence and that context, task type, and how rewards are delivered matter greatly.
- Pros and Cons of Extrinsic Motivation (ConnectUS Foundation). A balanced overview that summarizes common arguments on both sides in accessible language.
- The Relationship Between Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation (Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences). A useful overview explaining that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation often interact rather than operate as complete opposites.
Amy’s Bookshelf 📚
One of the books that deeply influenced my thinking wasn’t actually about reading. It was Albert Bandura’s Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. Bandura reminds us that confidence doesn’t magically appear before success. Success creates confidence. That idea not only transformed the way I taught in the classroom, but also my approach with struggling readers when I became a reading specialist.
Because if students have spent years collecting evidence that they’re “bad at reading,” my job isn’t simply to encourage them. My job is to help them collect new evidence. Evidence that says, “Whoa. Maybe I can do this.”
Click here to read more about Self-Efficacy and Dalton’s full story.
☕ Amy’s Take
When people hear that I give my students Jolly Ranchers, they sometimes assume I’m rewarding correct answers or trying to “buy” motivation. But that’s not what’s happening.
My students earn a Jolly Rancher for showing up, persevering, and giving their best effort—even when reading feels hard. The reward isn’t for perfection; it’s for persistence. These small rewards are like training wheels on a bicycle. We don’t put training wheels on our kids’ bikes thinking they’ll stay there forever. We know they’re temporary support while our little ones discover something much more important: “Hey, Mom! I can do this!”
That’s how I view extrinsic rewards in reading intervention. They give discouraged readers just enough encouragement to keep pedaling until they begin experiencing authentic success. As those successes accumulate, confidence grows. And once students believe their effort leads to improvement, the reward naturally begins to fade into the background.
The goal was never the Jolly Rancher. The goal was always helping students discover that the real reward is believing in themselves.
Up Next…
This is just the first conversation many of us quietly have in reading intervention. Next time, we’re tackling another taboo:
Why Some Kids Need to Read the Same Thing Again…and Again…and Again.
Because repeated reading isn’t “drill and kill.” It isn’t due to a lack of planning. And it definitely isn’t bad teaching. In fact…it’s one of the most powerful tools we have for helping the brain build automaticity.
We’ll dive into the research, tackle the myths, and explore why rereading is often the bridge between accurate decoding and effortless reading. Trust me…This one’s going to ruffle a few feathers, too.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Where do you land on the rewards debate? Have your experiences with struggling readers changed your perspective? Share your thoughts in the comments. My goal isn’t to convince everyone to stock a candy bowl—it’s to start a conversation about meeting students where they are and helping them become confident, capable readers.
References
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.
Cameron, J., Banko, K. M., & Pierce, W. D. (2001). Pervasive negative effects of rewards on intrinsic motivation: The myth continues. The Behavior Analyst, 24(1), 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03392017
Cerasoli, C. P., Nicklin, J. M., & Ford, M. T. (2014). Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives jointly predict performance: A 40-year meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140(4), 980–1008. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035661
Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627–668. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.627
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01
Kohn, A. (1999). Punished by rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, A’s, praise, and other bribes (Rev. ed.). Houghton Mifflin.
Kuvaas, B., Buch, R., Weibel, A., Dysvik, A., & Nerstad, C. G. L. (2017). Do intrinsic and extrinsic motivation relate differently to employee outcomes? Journal of Economic Psychology, 61, 244–258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2017.05.004
Öztürk, G., & Ok, A. (2014). The relationship between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation with academic achievement. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 141, 627–632.
University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. (2013). Negative effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation: More smoke than fire. Center for Effective Organizations. https://ceo.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2013-05-G13-05-624-Negative_Effects_of_Extrinsic_Rewards.pdf
ConnectUS Foundation. (n.d.). 6 advantages and disadvantages of extrinsic motivation. https://connectusfund.org/6-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-extrinsic-motivation