Building Resilience

The Risks Of Praise

There was an interesting article in the Herald on Sunday which challenged the notion of positive praise for students.  It makes for a good read and an excellence source for discussion on teaching and learning.

I like educational articles in newspapers.  You see everyone is a self appointed expert, everyone has been through the schooling system.  I find myself liking this article too, but I think that it can be misused...

University of Melbourne's Professor Stephen Dinham has urged teachers to ditch untested learning styles - including glowing praise and shying away from giving bad marks - if they wanted children to succeed.
That included "self-boosting" where students were saturated in "rampant positivity".

I think that our NZ Curriculum works well with the wider education of the child (the core 'Values' of "excellence, innovation, inquiry, and curiosity").  I like to think that most teachers have a good instincts for pushing and encouraging our students.

Giving children regular, constructive feedback about how to improve was a better policy, he said.
"We need to say to kids that they can do this, they can't do that but to move their learning forward they need to do this, that or the other. What we don't say is you're good or bad at something," said Dinham.
This reinforced a valuable message that effort brought reward.

This is where I believe the notion of 'growth mindset' comes into play (see my posting on Dr Carol Dweck here).  The idea that we can build into our teaching practice that students can achieve more if they're in the frame of mind that they can grow.

This post is related to RTC#1. "Establish and maintain effective professional relationships focused on the learning and well-being of ākonga." And RTC#6. "Conceptualise, plan and implement an appropriate learning programme i. articulate clearly the aims of their teaching, give sound professional reasons for adopting these aims, and implement them in their practice."