Effort or Talent?

An extract from the award winning "The Decisive Element, Unleashing Praise and Positivity in Schools, Toward, Henley and Malton

If you find it hard to accept the idea that some kids grow up believing there is a glass ceiling on their aspirations, then take a little time to think about this situation which Chris, Gary and Mick have seen many times as teachers. Imagine the scenario: as head of Year 9 you have a group of thirty teenage boys engaged in a conversation about their future studies and GCSE option choices. You ask them if they think they can take up and learn some new challenging stuff such as higher level maths, physics or French. Trust us, you will get a lot of answers along the lines of, ‘No, I’m not good at that,’ ‘It’s too hard for me’ or ‘I can’t do French.’ Then ask the exact same group if they are going to learn to drive. We would lay a small wager that the overwhelming majority will look at you as if that was a pretty daft question: ‘Doh! Of course we will – everyone does.’

You will struggle to find a teenager who doesn’t feel pretty sure that they will be able to master one of the most complex and challenging skills out there. Why? Because they believe they can drive because they want to drive and, crucially, because if they fail to pass the test the first a couple of times, they know that if they keep practising then they will get there and pass the test eventually. In the driving context, they simply don’t believe that their ability is fixed – they can grow it. However, in French, physics, maths or other challenging subjects in school, their ability only goes so far – it’s fixed. Research by people like Carol Dweck would call this having a ‘fixed mindset’ or ‘growth mindset’ about what they can learn.

Although we said that it was best not to praise for talent, we are not some kind of anti-talent police, and we are of the view that success and talent can be grown and developed. However, weather gods think it is far more productive to praise a young person for traits they have the power to change, such as effort, practice, process and determination. By developing these qualities, they can succeed, develop and grow.

Let’s take a couple of interesting examples of successful people who exemplify this view:

"If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery it would not seem so wonderful after all." Attributed to Michelangelo

"I don’t believe in magic. I believe in hard work." Richie McCaw, All Blacks captain

We will all remember the praise and feedback we got from teachers and other adults in school and how it came in many forms – you might even be as odd as Mick who still has loads of his exercise books from secondary school stashed in his loft! The teacher might simply have patted you on the back or praised you face to face. Perhaps they did it in writing when they marked a piece of your work. Written praise and feedback follow the same rules and patterns as verbal praise as far as effort and ability are concerned.

This leads nicely to an observation from our professional experience in secondary schools about a pretty standard practice for marking work (which readers may well recognise). A grade ranks the standard of the work, alongside written feedback to explain why the work was graded in the way it was, what has gone well and also what the child might do to improve their work in the future. All too often the response from the child is to look straight at the grade, make an instant judgement on whether it’s telling them that they have ability or not, and virtually ignore the written developmental praise and feedback. Another signal that by praising ability we risk limiting and closing down improvement.

A great deal of brilliant work is currently going on in schools, at all ages, to develop marking and assessment systems which avoid the dilemma of assessing and praising work for its standard versus assessing and praising work for improvement. Teachers across the country are wrestling with the problem of trying to get the balance right between the two.

Carol Dweck is a leader in education theory in the United States and a world renowned psychologist at Stanford University. Along with her colleague, Claudia Mueller, Dweck conducted detailed research with groups of children to test out their thoughts on the impact of praise for intelligence and praise for effort. Their findings challenge what seems to be common sense thinking: that by telling a kid they are really smart, they will feel great about themselves, pump up their chest and fly off into the next even greater challenge full of confidence and determination. That’s not what Dweck found out. She sums it up like this: ‘Praise for ability is commonly considered to have beneficial effects on motivation. Contrary to this popular belief, six studies demonstrated that praise for intelligence had more negative consequences for students’ achievement motivation than praise for effort.’

In these experiments with fifth graders, Dweck and Mueller found that kids who were praised for being clever and intelligent cared more about continuing to look clever rather than improving and getting better. If they didn’t do as well as their cleverness meant they should, they tended to give up, not persevere and improve. The opposite was true for kids praised for effort.

[1] Claudia M. Mueller and Carol S. Dweck, ‘Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75(1) (1998): 33–52.