ABSTRACT

This study examined the effect of punishment and reward on academic performance of senior secondary school students in Shomolu local government area of Lagos State. Five research questions were formulated to guide the study. Through the process of simple random sampling, a total of two hundred (200) students from five (5) senior secondary schools were selected to participate in the study. The major instrument used for collecting data was a questionnaire tagged EPRAP. The data collected were analyzed. Chi square was used to test the hypotheses. Findings showed that punishment has significant effect on the academic performance of students. It was also discovered that intrinsic reward has no effect on the academic performance of students. Research also showed that extrinsic reward has a significant effect on the academic performance of students. From results findings, it was recommended that students should focus more on self motivators rather than on gifts and awards. Also, teachers, and parents should use all forms of punishment and reward systems appropriately as over use frequent reliance on any of them may reduce the effectiveness.

Motivation itself is a hodge-podge- a term of very complex dimensions. It is known to include the rewards and punishments among many other interacting drives, forces and incentives which affect or influence student’s learning. ‘Extrinsic’ forms of motivation like rewards and punishments have always been used by lectures/ teachers educators to correct or stimulate certain forms of behaviors. Yet, what their effects and consequences are, whether they facilitate or hinder learning and to what extent, how they operate to increase, if at all, the efficiency of learning and many such allied questions have remained largely unanswered. Or, their answers have generally been improvised, for the most part, from intuition, conjecture or just intelligent guess- work rather than on research findings. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to examine these questions in order to discover (uncover, to be more specific) the effect of punishment and reward on the academic performance of students. For purposes of analysis, rewards will include intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.  Also, punishment will include corporal punishments, Expulsion and suspension.