Can you change how intelligent you are? Can you alter your personality? Can a student predicted a D grade get an A*? Are there things it is simply impossible for us to do?
I’ve always fancied the idea of being able to play the guitar but have made excuses like, I haven’t the patience to learn. The truth is, I’m not prepared to put in the effort required. I took lessons when I was about 10 years old and gave up after a few weeks. But why? Cos, my stupid teacher wanted me to learn stupid chords and I just wanted to play Beatles tracks. The fact that I couldn’t made me feel like a failure. When I strummed away I sounded awful. So I stopped. It was easier to give up than it was to go though the pain of wanting, but not being able to play. If I couldn’t be perfect I wouldn’t try.
I had similar issues with maths. Maths lessons made me feel really stupid. Feeling stupid made me deeply uncomfortable. So I decided maths was stupid and stopped trying. Predictably, I left school with a D grade. But who cares, maths is stupid, right? When I decided to train to become a teacher, that D grade hung, albatross-like, around my neck. Going to night school and retaking the old intermediate tier GCSE maths is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I hated it. Probability made me feel like crying with frustration and I seriously considered paying someone to sit the exam for me. In the weeks before the exam I slogged through a past paper every day. On the day of the exam I remember thinking that I had got every single question right. I got a B grade. A few weeks later I had forgotten everything I’d learnt because maths is stupid.
When it comes to guitar playing and mathematics, I have what Dr Carol Dweck, author of Mindset, the new psychology of success, calls a ‘fixed mindset’. This means that I struggle with failure. Failing is evidence that I am failure; success is about being successful. Often people with fixed mindsets want to achieve without making effort; if something’s hard that means they’re not good enough. Success should be effortless. If they fail, there must be an excuse; it must be someone else’s fault.
In other areas, I have a ‘growth mindset’. When I started out as a teacher I was rubbish. I cringe now to think how woeful I was and I very nearly quit the profession after my NQT year. I’m not entirely sure what changed, but somewhere along the line I decided I quite enjoyed teaching. At about the same time I also decided I wanted to be a better teacher. In fact I wanted to be outstanding. I was prepared to take risks and get things wrong. For some reason failing felt like progress.
The growth mindset enjoys learning and making effort for their own sakes. They are intrinsically motivated to, in the words of Samuel Beckett, “Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” I love experimenting, tinkering and trying out new ideas in the classroom. I don’t do it because someone is watching; I don’t even do it for any high-minded principles. I do it because it’s fun.
I first encountered Dweck’s work last year due to the work of North Somerset’s AST team and it had an immediate impact on me. We’ve all encountered students who fit into these two categories and possibly we have a ‘fixed’ view of them. The good news is that we can all cultivate a growth mindset. Students (and teachers) can be taught to see failure as progress and to be intrinsically motivated to learn. Dweck asserts that anyone can succeed. Instead of asking ‘how can I teach these kids?’ instead ask, ‘How can I teach them?’ She cites tons of evidence that anyone, with the right attitude can succeed.
So maybe we should approach our classes with a 100% attitude. 100% of students can make three (and perhaps four) levels of progress. Even those kids.
OK, so how do we do it? As teachers, there’s a number of things we have to do:
- Teach students about mindsets theory and encourage them to adopt a growth mindset.
- Praise effort, not ability. When we say, “You’re really clever” we are fixing their view of how intelligent they are. Saying, “You really worked hard” reinforces the fact that the effort we make is the biggest factor in our likely success. It also shows that you value the process of learning over the end product.
- Use formative assessment to help students understand exactly what they need to do to be successful. Avoid making summative judgments wherever possible – these just fix mindsets and make students either give up because they’re crap, or coast because they’re clever.
- Have very high standards: don’t accept minimal effort and insist that students produce work that they can take pride in. Don’t accept excuses and don’t make any excuses for them.
- Don’t offer extrinsic rewards – these prevent students from valuing the learning and remove intrinsic motivatin – there’s a great post on the Creative Education blog here.
- Build a nurturing environment where it is safe to make mistakes and above all, don’t give up on the difficult ones; that’s what they’re expecting so prove them wrong. Know that they can achieve.
So, this is my manifesto for being a brilliant teacher. What else would you add?
I am a big fan of Dweck’s work and have commented generally on her important findings here: http://www.teachit.so/mindset.htm
The link between Dweck’s work and feedback, as you have stated, is a vitally important one:
http://www.teachit.so/feedback.htm and http://www.teachit.so/dweckagain.htm
Other important work that shows that genius is ‘made not born’ I have explored here:
http://www.teachit.so/experts.htm
The biggest issues I have with Dweck’s work are-
1. I have not seen it being taken seriously except by occasional individuals in only a few schools (policy makers and LEAs must catch up)
2. Dweck has opted to commercialise her ideas through the online ‘Brainology’ programme: http://www.brainology.us/default.aspx . It ain’t cheap- and she doesn’t seem to have funded any real research into the online resources effectiveness as an intervention. (I guess she is entitled to create her pension as a spin-off to her lifetime academic endeavours? Views welcome!)
There is much merit in her research, its application is vitally important, and further affirmative and developmental research by other workers in the field is overdue.
Thanks for all the links Mark, I’ll have a look through them in due course. Didn’t know the brainology stuff was Dweck’s but I’m not really interested in these sort of ready made packages. Always worth the effort to create my own stuff.
“I love experimenting, tinkering and trying out new ideas in the classroom. I don’t do it because someone is watching; I don’t even do it for any high-minded principles. I do it because it’s fun.”
Very well put. I am about to start my second year in the job tomorrow, and strangely I’m looking forward to getting back to making new mistakes. It is a fascinating way to learn when you know how.
Great post, thanks
Thanks Chris, have a great year failing better!
[…] someone to hold their pen and explain the big words. Even worse, they may very well develop what Dweck calls “learned helplessness” due to their dependance on a particular individual. This […]
[…] this got me thinking about the kids. Since reading (and writing about) Carol Dweck I’ve become very aware of trying to intrinsically motivate my students and today […]
[…] How to fix your attitude […]
[…] How to fix your attitude […]
[…] How to fix your attitude […]
[…] How to fix your attitude Post a Comment (0) Comments Read More […]
[…] How to fix your attitude Post a Comment (1) Comment Read More […]
[…] How to fix your attitude […]
[…] Matthew Effect – why literacy is so important How to fix your attitude Building Resilience: Sir, I’m […]
[…] If, for some reason, you’ve been hiding in a cave for the last few years and haven’t heard of Dr Carol Dweck’s Mindset theory, you can read about it here. […]
[…] I’m often suspicious of lesson time spent on meta-cognition: I’d rather they expanded their cultural capital instead. But it may be profitable to teach students about the process of learning to enable them to monitor, control and regulate their own practice. We should definitely encourage them to see that hard work is its own reward and that anything worth learning will be challenging. At the Explaining stage of the sequence I often begin a new topic by telling students that it’s really hard, that they’ll struggle but that this is normal: if it wasn’t difficult what would be the point in doing it? I tell them that they will make mistakes and that this is not only OK, it’s essential. I tell them that they can achieve more than they believe possible if they’re prepared to put the effort in, and that whatever they do achieve will be exactly proportionate to that effort. If, for any reason, you’ve managed to avoid hearing about Dr Carol Dweck’s Mindset theory, you can read about it here. […]
[…] How to fix your attitude Feedback: it’s better to receive than to give Deliberating about practice […]
[…] on effort have been heavily influenced by Carol Dweck’s ubiquitous theory of fixed and growth mindsets. I’ve found this a very useful way of thinking about the world, and it’s certainly true […]
[…] Matthew Effect – why literacy is so important How to fix your attitude Building Resilience: Sir, I’m […]
[…] How to fix your attitude When independent learning meets high stakes success […]
[…] How to fix your attitude […]