“In short, the belief that intelligence is fixed dampened
students motivation to learn, made them afraid of effort, and made them want to
quit after set back. This is why so many bright students stop working when
schools become hard.” This quote demonstrates that many of our students are
having issues dealing with challenge. They are raised to believe that being
smart is something you are born with. Therefore, when challenging problems
arise in school they feel hopeless and not smart. I can relate to this way of
thinking because when I was in jr high school I always struggled in math. This
made me feel insecure and I never asked questions because of fear of being
looked at as “dumb.” In my class I can tell that my shy students do not raise
their hands or shout out answers during discussions. Even when we are working
in groups these same students do not ask for help and just sit they’re doing
nothing they are supposed to. I feel this ma e due to the way they were raised
or fear of being looked at negatively by their peers. Speaking to other student
teachers they have told me that during math their students experience the same
feelings about intelligence. Some students do not ask for help even thought
they need it.
Furthermore, this next quote is related to the praise given
to students based upon intelligence. It may seem harmless to praise students
for being smart, however this has negative effects on their self-esteem once
they start making mistakes because they feel less smart. “Intelligence praise
compared to effort praise, put children into a fixed mindset. Instead of giving
them confidence, it made them fragile, so much that a brush of difficulty
erased their confidence, their enjoyment, and their good performance, and made
them ashamed of their work. In my class, I know that I always praise students
for being “sooooo smart!” Now that I read the article I am realizing that this
may not be the best approach. The article proves that students should be
praised on effort more than intelligence. Otherwise our students become ashamed
or fear being viewed as less intelligent for low performance. They may feel
like maybe they are not as smart as they thought. They start doubting
themselves and their potential to try hard.
I think that it is super important for us to build our communities in a way that our students can feel ok asking for help. In my classroom the students who are "low" do not seem to have problems asking for help. The ones that do have a hard time are the students who are right in the "middle." For example, we were working on graphs last week and when it came time for the students to do independent practice I told the class they could come to the carpet for help if they are not sure what to do and the rest of the class could complete the worksheet and turn it into the bin. I had 5 students who attempted to complete the worksheet on their own when they clearly did not understand what they were supposed to do. The students who did come to the carpet for additional support struggle in all subjects. While the students who struggled with the graphs are great readers. I wonder if they did not feel secure in getting help because they are so secure in other subjects...
ReplyDeleteSeeing that these students did not understand and did not ask for help did help me understand did help me in modifying my instruction the next day.
I feel like that labeling students can eventually hurt the students. If you are labeled as "smart", students tend to shut down when they do not understand sometime and are not willing to ask for help. It also makes the students not willing to take risk to answer questions they do not know.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the 275 class with Shannon where we talked about praise and again praising for what the students is doing or the strategy and not on the aspect of getting the answer correct. I find it is challenging as it is very easy to praise students for the right solution or an interesting approach and can have negative effects on the other students who got the answer wrong. It can be challenging when students look at their scores on report cards or even the STAR test and see how they did and find themselves labeled as a good math students or some with challenges in reading. I think that can be difficult for students who get special services for reading or even speech in that it separates students and they find themselves labeled which can affect their confidence. It depends on the student but again it affect their own esteem and like you said whether they will seek help.
ReplyDeleteIt's so hard to do, isn't it? I feel like I'm always making trait-based affirmations of children ("you're so smart, cute, sweet, polite, caring, etc"), rather than effort-based or behavior-based affirmations ("wow, you really worked hard, thought about that a lot, really made an effort to dress nicely today, waited patiently so as not to interrupt, etc"). It even takes *more words* to praise for effort or behavior rather than traits. It's exhausting. We're so conditioned for exactly the opposite.
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