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Confidence..........taught, not caught.

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Richard Wilson

Tuesday 10 October 2006

Have you ever wondered where some people get that unshakeable self belief and supreme confidence? Not the misplaced variety we see on shows like the x-factor and others of that ilk. Well, there is a huge body of secure evidence that tells us we can do something about this for our pupils and dare I say even ourselves, but we must teach it and teach it consistently to bring it out in all of our youngsters.

I was given seven big messages about learning recently and include them here for your comment:

intelligence is not fixed

effort is as important as ability

learning is strongly influenced by emotion

we all learn indifferent ways

deep learning is an active process

learning is messy

we learn from the company we keep

I was never taught this when I was a pupil and wonder if any teachers take the opportunity to go over this with their pupils and use it as a focus to explore learning issues with pupils of all abilities. I think this is especially important for those learners who have acquired helplessness and perceive that nothing they do matters.

The whole issue of Learned Optimism has been developed by Martin Seligman who has worked extensively on exploring helpnessless and personal control. One of the key findings was that resilience in the face of defeat was not an inborn trait and it could be acquired. This is a crucial skill that can help lead to finding solutions to the challenges of raising and educationg young people and fitting them for the rigours in this fast changing society.Basically, and again the reference to x-factor sits well here, many parents bolster their child's confidence by valuing feeling good more highly than how well they are doing. This distorts the child's view and is detrimental to their development. Doing well must come before feeling good. The other way is unlikely to succeed when faced with defeat.

Anyone been working with these concepts and like to share?

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