Your Potentiial is as Good as you Think it is…
I have been a teacher for forty
years I believe in the power of learning and knowledge for good. I don’t
believe that human potential is limited and neither does Carol Dweck who is
Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, New York. She is a leader in
the field of student motivation and her research is widely recognised. Over
many years she has developed a highly influential theory of student motivation
building on the work of others, notably on ‘attribution theory' – what we
attribute for our failures and successes.
She
divides students into two types, based
on the student's own belief about their ability.
Fixed IQ
theorists: These
students believe that their ability is fixed, probably at birth, and there is
very little if anything they can do to improve it. They
believe ability comes from talent rather than from the slow development of
skills through learning. “It's all in the genes”. Either you can do it with
little effort, or you will never be able to do it, so you might as well give up
in the face of difficulty. E.g. “ I can't do maths”.
Untapped
Potential theorists : These
students believe that ability and success are due to learning, and learning
requires time and effort. In the case of difficulty one must try harder, try
another approach, or seek help etc.
About
15% of students are in the middle, the rest are equally divided between the two
theories. Surprisingly there is no correlation between success at school and
the theory the student holds.
Differences in performance only show when
the student is challenged or is facing difficulty , for example when a student
moves from school to college. Then research has shown that the ‘Untapped
Potential Theorists' do very much better, as one might expect.
It is
possible to move students from the Fixed IQ theory to the Untapped Potential
theory.
It's
a matter of persuasion of course.
Many
teachers, myself included, thought that “it's obvious” that learning is worth
the effort and can produce improvement. But almost half of students at every
level, do not share this view. The
challenge to change their view will be well rewarded.
Why
bother with ? A recent review of research by Hattie, Biggs and Purdie into the
effectiveness of teaching programmes found that the programmes that had the
greatest effect focussed on the ‘attribution' by students of what affected their
learning – this is precisely Dweck's focus. Whether students attribute their success to something they can
change or to something they can't is immensely influential, and this
attribution can be changed. The effect sizes found by Hattie et al
showed that work on attribution can improve a student's performance by between
two and three grades!
Hattie, J., Biggs,
H. & Purdie, N. (1996) Effects of learning skills interventions on student
learning: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 66(2),
99-136.
