Mindset and Me
One interesting change in my teaching recently has been, rather than a technical change in my practice, a change in the fundamental beliefs and attitudes I hold about learning, talent and achievement. I am inclined to the view that teaching is, largely, a learned skill, and feel that I've benefitted a great deal from experimenting with new techniques and strategies in the classroom. I'm not sure that any of them, however, has made a more positive difference than the change in the way I understand talent.
My change in mindset has come about through reading a number of recent books which look closely at the nature of ability and high-performance. These include Outliers and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, Carol Dweck's work on Mindset, The Genius in All of Us by David Schenk and, especially, Bounce by Matthew Syed. The central conclusions that these texts share is that society places far too much emphasis on the idea of achievement being led by natural, innate, genetically-guided talent or ability. As a result, we put far too little emphasis on the role of factors such as|the power of excellent teaching, of purposeful hard work and effort, of being offered and taking opportunities to learn.
It can seem that
as a society, and to some extent in schools, we are obsessed with the notion of natural talent; we love, admire and laud it. References abound to 'effortless brilliance', to 'genius', to '...the greatest natural talent of their generation...'.
In schools, we habitually refer to 'gifted and talented' students, as well as to their 'low ability' classmates; UCAS references define students as 'among the most talented of his year group' and 'talent walls' adorn display boards in corridors. Is this a problem? Isn't this just realism alongside healthy celebration of the abilities of our high-achievers? Consider this killer paragraph from Syed:
“The talent theory of expertise is not merely flawed in theory, it is insidious in practice, robbing individuals and institutions of the motivation to change themselves and society. Even if we can’t bring ourselves to embrace the idea that expertise is ultimately about the quality and quantity of practice, can’t we accept that practice is far more significant than previously thought? That talent is a largely defunct concept? That each and every one of us has the potential to tread the path to excellence?”
This way of thinking raises important questions and is worthy of consideration. What is it like for students who come to school with relatively low levels of achievement, and believe that this is from a deficiency of talent – that they just aren't as clever as the rest? What is this likely to do to their motivation, self-esteem and self-belief?
Learning about Mindset led me to reflect carefully on my own experiences of education and achievement. I was pretty much a classic high-achiever at school, attaining high grades in more or less everything, through GCSE and A Level. I worked hard, but I can't honestly say that the work was often a struggle – writing A grade English essays may have taken a fair amount of time, but I don't think I ever found it very hard; instead I would enjoy it, and certainly relish the praise and recognition that accompanied high attainment. I regarded myself as 'high-ability' – all the evidence I was presented with through experience suggested to me that I just naturally found this stuff easier than many others.
Carol Dweck would term this attribution of success to innate, natural factors as a 'fixed mindset', which is to say holding the belief that an individual's level of ability or potential performance is, more or less, set within us from birth. Some kids are just cleverer than others – lucky you if you are on the clever side, hard cheese if not.
But let's look at little more closely. If it's accepted that I was performing to a strong level in English before I arrived in year 7 (or 1st year as was), and if I'm suggesting that this wasn't, in actual fact, a manifestation of natural talent, how is it explained? Where was it from? Well, how about taking these points into consideration:
1) My dad was an English teacher who worked up to being a head
2) My mum was a deputy in a primary school
3) My grandmother was a school teacher
4) My house was (still is) full of books and I was read to constantly as a child, before reading all the time independently as soon as I got the hang of it
5) Many of my parents' friends were teachers, therefore lots of my friends were the children of teachers or similar professionals
So what? So everything, when it comes to explaining my apparently natural talent at school. More or less everything that happened to me as a child was influential in preparing me to be 'good at school'. Being read to and encouraged to read books is a no-brainer, but add to that the constant exposure to and involvement in language, ideas, styles of thinking, concepts – all of the 'right kind' in order to succeed at school. I should be absolutely clear that I am in no sense suggesting that my upbringing was in any way 'better' than any one else's; only that in terms of preparing me for the sort of tasks I would have to do at school, it was ideal.
A telling image: a photograph of myself at a tender age sitting in classic 1980s cords and M&S jumper, engrossed in The Guardian. Before digging it out, I had thought that it was taken in a caravan in Wales, probably in an interval between games of Boggle or Scrabble, with rain drumming incessantly on the roof. This, it transpires, is wrong – the photo was taken during a visit to a friend of my parents; this friend is now on his second headship, and was then a senior figure in NATE (National Association for the Teaching of English) and author of several books on grammar. I could not construct a more apt image to illustrate the roots of my alleged 'talent'; it was a product of environment, of exposure to particular ways of thinking and communicating, which I could then cash in – in fact I couldn't help but benefit from - on arrival at school.
A couple of telling early memories – I distinctly remember the pleasure of sitting cross legged in my infant school classroom and being praised for knowing the word 'sewer'! And I remember the shame a few years later of not being able to define the word 'optimisim', and a teacher's expression of surprise at this deficiency! Why did these memories 'stick'? Because I was brought up in an environment and a culture which put high value on these sorts of skills – articulacy, vocabulary, literacy and oracy. This is what life was like – my point here being, that when I got to school and was found to be 'talented', all this stuff, this reality, was not recognised. The hours and days and years of advantaged preparation for exactly the sort of performance which schools and assessment systems judge to be worthy of reward and celebration was not discussed as a contributory factor, or at least not to me, that I can remember. Instead, my success was understood, by me at least, to be a product of natural talent (there's no criticism of my school intended here, by the way!).
But I agree with Syed et al that the way that 'talent' is understood is important, and potentially corrosive on motivation, both for those who don't have the same level of advantage in preparing for school and therefore see themselves as relatively talent-less (so why try?), but also for those like myself, who learn to attribute their own achievements to natural causes.
Why would the latter be a problem? What's the harm, really, in a learner putting their relatively high-achievement down to their genes? At the risk of this post turning into an even more elongated and self-indulgent autobiography than it already is, things got interesting when I got to university, reading English. Suddenly, the game had changed, and I no longer knew the rules. The days of 'doing well' used to rest on having a decent vocabulary, the ability to knock out a pretty coherent argument in writing, and being comfortable with reading and interpreting texts (interestingly, a set of skills that I don't think I'd had to learn as such; instead they'd sort of gone in by osmosis, through sitting in future head teachers' houses reading The Guardian etc). These skills didn't help me so much at Uni. In came structuralism, postmodernism, post-colonial theory and all that, and straight away, the upbringing I'd had no longer came to my aid in the same way. I floundered, and I had no idea why. Where had my talent gone? What was going on? Suddenly, I was a failure, and that was hard to take!
Of course what I needed to do was to be comfortable with finding it difficult, to work hard, and to have strategies on which I could draw in order to help me learn. I was prepared to work hard, but the other two weren't there – I had very little experience of failure to draw on, and very little understanding of how I needed to respond when things got hard. As a result, I didn't do well, motivation, work-rate and interest plummeted and I felt bad about it. I'm not sure what I put my relative underachievement down to at the time - I don't think I really knew - but I do remember that it wasn't good, and that it knocked my confidence significantly and for a period of time which stretched over years. Of course, it could be argued that my performance was simply my own fault for not working hard enough - for spending too much time in the pub or listening to indie bands, to immaturity, to general fecklessness and weakness of character. I think I probably believed that for a while, and it's certainly the easiest response to reach when faced as a teacher with students who, apparently, won't try or can't achieve. But now I'm not so sure- I still remember the frustration of wanting to do well but not knowing how, and the ease with which this turned into disengagement. In retrospect, as a teacher, I'm grateful to have had this taste of failure - I think it's left me much better equipped to work with young people experiencing similar difficulties with engagement. I'm also grateful to the learning provided by Syed et al for helping me to understand learning, motivation and achievement in a more complex, less morally judgemental way - it feels... healthier.
David Didau (in the excellent The Perfect English Lesson), seems to agree that teaching is largely a learned skill, showing how we can learn to plan, to use AFL, to employ various strategies etc. However, he gives equal weight to the need for '...having high expectations of, and a passionate belief in, the children in front of you'. In the past, I think I would have told students that they could do it, but out of a sense of duty - I knew that I should, but wasn't so clear as to why. Shifting my understanding of where 'talent' comes from has meant that I have increased the belief I feel about the children in front of me, particularly those children who haven't yet been successful in their learning, and therefore display relatively low levels of attainment, engagement and confidence. Now, when they tell me 'I can't do it sir', I am able to look them in the eye and tell them, with conviction, 'Yes you can'. And the powerful thing is, I really believe it; I have evidence to back it up. It seems to me that genuine belief communicates itself to students in many more ways than a teacher can control, and I'm therefore grateful to the likes of Syed et al for helping me to understand the reasons why showing 'passionate belief' in students isn't just a nice thing to do - it's the right thing to do.
My change in mindset has come about through reading a number of recent books which look closely at the nature of ability and high-performance. These include Outliers and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, Carol Dweck's work on Mindset, The Genius in All of Us by David Schenk and, especially, Bounce by Matthew Syed. The central conclusions that these texts share is that society places far too much emphasis on the idea of achievement being led by natural, innate, genetically-guided talent or ability. As a result, we put far too little emphasis on the role of factors such as|the power of excellent teaching, of purposeful hard work and effort, of being offered and taking opportunities to learn.It can seem that
as a society, and to some extent in schools, we are obsessed with the notion of natural talent; we love, admire and laud it. References abound to 'effortless brilliance', to 'genius', to '...the greatest natural talent of their generation...'.
In schools, we habitually refer to 'gifted and talented' students, as well as to their 'low ability' classmates; UCAS references define students as 'among the most talented of his year group' and 'talent walls' adorn display boards in corridors. Is this a problem? Isn't this just realism alongside healthy celebration of the abilities of our high-achievers? Consider this killer paragraph from Syed:“The talent theory of expertise is not merely flawed in theory, it is insidious in practice, robbing individuals and institutions of the motivation to change themselves and society. Even if we can’t bring ourselves to embrace the idea that expertise is ultimately about the quality and quantity of practice, can’t we accept that practice is far more significant than previously thought? That talent is a largely defunct concept? That each and every one of us has the potential to tread the path to excellence?”
This way of thinking raises important questions and is worthy of consideration. What is it like for students who come to school with relatively low levels of achievement, and believe that this is from a deficiency of talent – that they just aren't as clever as the rest? What is this likely to do to their motivation, self-esteem and self-belief?Learning about Mindset led me to reflect carefully on my own experiences of education and achievement. I was pretty much a classic high-achiever at school, attaining high grades in more or less everything, through GCSE and A Level. I worked hard, but I can't honestly say that the work was often a struggle – writing A grade English essays may have taken a fair amount of time, but I don't think I ever found it very hard; instead I would enjoy it, and certainly relish the praise and recognition that accompanied high attainment. I regarded myself as 'high-ability' – all the evidence I was presented with through experience suggested to me that I just naturally found this stuff easier than many others.
Carol Dweck would term this attribution of success to innate, natural factors as a 'fixed mindset', which is to say holding the belief that an individual's level of ability or potential performance is, more or less, set within us from birth. Some kids are just cleverer than others – lucky you if you are on the clever side, hard cheese if not.
But let's look at little more closely. If it's accepted that I was performing to a strong level in English before I arrived in year 7 (or 1st year as was), and if I'm suggesting that this wasn't, in actual fact, a manifestation of natural talent, how is it explained? Where was it from? Well, how about taking these points into consideration:
1) My dad was an English teacher who worked up to being a head
2) My mum was a deputy in a primary school
3) My grandmother was a school teacher
4) My house was (still is) full of books and I was read to constantly as a child, before reading all the time independently as soon as I got the hang of it
5) Many of my parents' friends were teachers, therefore lots of my friends were the children of teachers or similar professionals
So what? So everything, when it comes to explaining my apparently natural talent at school. More or less everything that happened to me as a child was influential in preparing me to be 'good at school'. Being read to and encouraged to read books is a no-brainer, but add to that the constant exposure to and involvement in language, ideas, styles of thinking, concepts – all of the 'right kind' in order to succeed at school. I should be absolutely clear that I am in no sense suggesting that my upbringing was in any way 'better' than any one else's; only that in terms of preparing me for the sort of tasks I would have to do at school, it was ideal.
A telling image: a photograph of myself at a tender age sitting in classic 1980s cords and M&S jumper, engrossed in The Guardian. Before digging it out, I had thought that it was taken in a caravan in Wales, probably in an interval between games of Boggle or Scrabble, with rain drumming incessantly on the roof. This, it transpires, is wrong – the photo was taken during a visit to a friend of my parents; this friend is now on his second headship, and was then a senior figure in NATE (National Association for the Teaching of English) and author of several books on grammar. I could not construct a more apt image to illustrate the roots of my alleged 'talent'; it was a product of environment, of exposure to particular ways of thinking and communicating, which I could then cash in – in fact I couldn't help but benefit from - on arrival at school.A couple of telling early memories – I distinctly remember the pleasure of sitting cross legged in my infant school classroom and being praised for knowing the word 'sewer'! And I remember the shame a few years later of not being able to define the word 'optimisim', and a teacher's expression of surprise at this deficiency! Why did these memories 'stick'? Because I was brought up in an environment and a culture which put high value on these sorts of skills – articulacy, vocabulary, literacy and oracy. This is what life was like – my point here being, that when I got to school and was found to be 'talented', all this stuff, this reality, was not recognised. The hours and days and years of advantaged preparation for exactly the sort of performance which schools and assessment systems judge to be worthy of reward and celebration was not discussed as a contributory factor, or at least not to me, that I can remember. Instead, my success was understood, by me at least, to be a product of natural talent (there's no criticism of my school intended here, by the way!).
But I agree with Syed et al that the way that 'talent' is understood is important, and potentially corrosive on motivation, both for those who don't have the same level of advantage in preparing for school and therefore see themselves as relatively talent-less (so why try?), but also for those like myself, who learn to attribute their own achievements to natural causes.
Why would the latter be a problem? What's the harm, really, in a learner putting their relatively high-achievement down to their genes? At the risk of this post turning into an even more elongated and self-indulgent autobiography than it already is, things got interesting when I got to university, reading English. Suddenly, the game had changed, and I no longer knew the rules. The days of 'doing well' used to rest on having a decent vocabulary, the ability to knock out a pretty coherent argument in writing, and being comfortable with reading and interpreting texts (interestingly, a set of skills that I don't think I'd had to learn as such; instead they'd sort of gone in by osmosis, through sitting in future head teachers' houses reading The Guardian etc). These skills didn't help me so much at Uni. In came structuralism, postmodernism, post-colonial theory and all that, and straight away, the upbringing I'd had no longer came to my aid in the same way. I floundered, and I had no idea why. Where had my talent gone? What was going on? Suddenly, I was a failure, and that was hard to take!
Of course what I needed to do was to be comfortable with finding it difficult, to work hard, and to have strategies on which I could draw in order to help me learn. I was prepared to work hard, but the other two weren't there – I had very little experience of failure to draw on, and very little understanding of how I needed to respond when things got hard. As a result, I didn't do well, motivation, work-rate and interest plummeted and I felt bad about it. I'm not sure what I put my relative underachievement down to at the time - I don't think I really knew - but I do remember that it wasn't good, and that it knocked my confidence significantly and for a period of time which stretched over years. Of course, it could be argued that my performance was simply my own fault for not working hard enough - for spending too much time in the pub or listening to indie bands, to immaturity, to general fecklessness and weakness of character. I think I probably believed that for a while, and it's certainly the easiest response to reach when faced as a teacher with students who, apparently, won't try or can't achieve. But now I'm not so sure- I still remember the frustration of wanting to do well but not knowing how, and the ease with which this turned into disengagement. In retrospect, as a teacher, I'm grateful to have had this taste of failure - I think it's left me much better equipped to work with young people experiencing similar difficulties with engagement. I'm also grateful to the learning provided by Syed et al for helping me to understand learning, motivation and achievement in a more complex, less morally judgemental way - it feels... healthier.
David Didau (in the excellent The Perfect English Lesson), seems to agree that teaching is largely a learned skill, showing how we can learn to plan, to use AFL, to employ various strategies etc. However, he gives equal weight to the need for '...having high expectations of, and a passionate belief in, the children in front of you'. In the past, I think I would have told students that they could do it, but out of a sense of duty - I knew that I should, but wasn't so clear as to why. Shifting my understanding of where 'talent' comes from has meant that I have increased the belief I feel about the children in front of me, particularly those children who haven't yet been successful in their learning, and therefore display relatively low levels of attainment, engagement and confidence. Now, when they tell me 'I can't do it sir', I am able to look them in the eye and tell them, with conviction, 'Yes you can'. And the powerful thing is, I really believe it; I have evidence to back it up. It seems to me that genuine belief communicates itself to students in many more ways than a teacher can control, and I'm therefore grateful to the likes of Syed et al for helping me to understand the reasons why showing 'passionate belief' in students isn't just a nice thing to do - it's the right thing to do.
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