5 tips for effectively practising Positive Education

1. It starts with you.

Have you ever heard a sales pitch and thought “I just don’t buy it”? Perhaps it didn’t seem that the seller was all that convinced either. If you want to help others to understand and adopt the concepts, principles and techniques of Positive Education, you must understand and believe in them yourself.

Authenticity is everything. If Positive Education doesn’t have real meaning for you and your core team, it will be very apparent to others. So take the time to work on your own level of wellbeing and builda deeper understanding of Positive Education theory and practice. It can make the journey much smoother and – as a side-benefit – give you stronger self-awareness and improved self-management skills.

Personal/Team Reflection: (group or individual) take some time to answer the questions below.

To what extent do you think schools should be involved in building wellbeing?
What do you know about wellbeing in your own life?
What strategies, programs or interventions do you already have in place to improve wellbeing
How literate in wellbeing are you?
What do you think your students should know about wellbeing?

(Robinson, 2016)

In the Classroom: It starts with you. If you would like to improve your wellbeing know that it takes regular practices to create habits of wellbeing. Try some of these evidence-based exercises from the Greater Good Science Center. Some of these exercises may even be adapted for use in the classroom.

2. Use consistent language and definitions based on published science.

As you explore Positive Education, you’ll soon discover there’s no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’. Many researchers, psychologists and educators before you have grappled with the questions: What is Wellbeing? What is Positive Education? How does Positive Psychology fit in? What interventions have a research base and could work well within our school culture?

Their work means that there are already definitions, models and language in use that are understood by the broader Positive Education community. Whichever definitions and language you use, it’s important that everyone involved in your program is consistent in the way they describe your approach and activities. Make sure that you draw your definitions and language from the research and literature (remember, it gives your program the strong foundation you need to explain its value, importance and intended outcomes to those who may be skeptical or on the fence).

Personal/Team Reflection and in the Classroom: (group or individual) Create your wellbeing glossary. This will ensure that teachers, students, staff and parents are on the same page and using consentient language when they speak about wellbeing and Positive Education. You can even invite students and parents to assist in creating a wellbeing glossary.

(Robinson, 2016)

3. There is nothing as practical as a good theory.

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a general (or macro) theory of motivation and personality that has evolved over three decades. It was developed by Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan (www.selfdeterminationtheory.org).

SDT explores why a person may be motivated to pursue and act on a goal, identifying four reasons people move towards their goals.

The theory defines the intrinsic and extrinsic things that motivate us to act, and how these motivators contribute to our social and cognitive development. One of the key aspects of SDT is the Basic Needs Theory, which suggests that three universal psychological needs must be satisfied for wellbeing and optimal performance: we need to feel competent, we need independence and we need to connect with others.

Competency: I feel I have the capacity to master this activity

Autonomy: I have a sense of choice or some independence in the activity

Relatedness: I feel connected to others

The theory explores whether you are motivated by autonomous factors (from within your self) or controlled factors (from outside your self).

If you feel autonomous motivation, you choose to act because you are interested in the activity or find meaning from it. If you feel controlled motivation, you act because you believe you ‘should’ do something; you feel guilty for not acting; or your action will be rewarded (or your inaction punished!).

Research shows that people who are autonomously motivated to pursue goals have greater goal attainment and improved wellbeing (Sheldon & Elliot, 1999).

So how does SDT apply to the educational context? From a teaching perspective, applying the theory means creating the necessary conditions for students to want to do something autonomously and not because they are being forced to do it. To encourage this, teachers provide ‘autonomy support’ by:

Providing as much choice as is realistically possible
Asking more than telling
Learning and practising the micro-skills of communication (such as active listening)
Focusing more on self-improvement for each student and less on comparisons between students
Building meaningful relationships within and between groups to encourage relatedness and social support

Research tells us that an autonomous and supportive teaching style promotes learning and performance. It has proven to significantly predict the Grade Point Average of students as well as their sense of competence. And a meta-analysis of the advantages of such an approach found that it generated:

Higher self-esteem
Higher feelings of competence
Higher creativity and flexibility of thought
Better conceptual reasoning and long-term memory
Better school performance
A more positive emotional state

(Wiest, Wong, & Kreil, 1998; Reeve, 2002; Robinson, 2016)

Personal/Team Reflection:

Reflect on a time when you asked someone (a student, family member, employee or coworker) to complete a task or project. Now, think about how you could encourage competence, autonomy and relatedness in a similar situation.

Task/Situation:

I could encourage competence by:
I could encourage autonomy by:
I could encourage relatedness by:

In the Classroom:

Adopt and Autonomy Supportive Teaching Style

Listen more
Resist giving the solutions
Support the employee’s intrinsic motivation
Verbalise fewer directives
Ask more questions about what they want to do
Respond more to employee-generated questions
Volunteer more perspective-taking statements

(Reeve & Jang, 2006)

4. What’s your mindset?

For decades Stanford Professor Carol Dweck has been studying the question “why do some people succeed while people, who are equally talented, do not?” What she discovered was that their mindsets were what set them apart. Dweck outlines two ways of thinking, or two mindsets, that can greatly impact one’s performance. Some of us have a Fixed Mindset, believing that we are born with our set talents, intelligence or skills and that you either have them or your don’t. In other words, you are not in control of your abilities. The other type of mindset is known as a Growth Mindset. These individuals believe that your intelligence and skills can be developed and improved with effort. These people believe that you are in control of your abilities.

Which mindset do you think is accurate? Dweck’s work has shown that people who have a rrowth mindset tend to learn more and achieve more over time than those with a fixed mindset. Further, shows that those with a growth mindset:

View challenging work as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Value effort, realise that even geniuses have to work hard to develop abilities and make their contributions.
Respond to initial obstacles by remaining involved, trying new strategies and using all the resources at their disposal for learning.
Take more risks.
Achieve higher academic results, improved grades and higher GPAs.
Have a greater sense of belonging.
View setbacks as an inevitable part of learning.

(Meuller & Dweck, 1998; Dweck 2010; Rattan, Savani, Chugh, & Dweck, 2015)

You can encourage a growth mindset by changing your language:

Instead of saying "I'm not good at this" try saying "what am I missing?"
Instead of saying "I'm awesome at this" try saying "I'm on the right track."
Instead of saying "I give up" try saying "I'll use some of the strategies we have learned."
Instead of saying "this is too hard" try saying "this may take some time and effort."
Instead of saying "I just cant do maths" try saying "I'm going to train my brain to do maths."
Instead of saying "I made a mistake" try saying "mistakes help me learn."
Instead of saying "He's so smart, I will never be that smart" try saying "I'm going to figure out how he does it so I can try it."
Instead of saying "It's good enough" try saying "is this really my best work?"

Another strategy you can use is the power of “yet”. If a student says “I can’t do it” remind them that maybe they just can do it yet. With effort they can develop the skills they need.

Personal/Team Reflection:

Test your mindset online
Don’t worry if you don’t have a growth mindset yet, you can change your mindset with effort and determination. Learn how at Mindset Online.

In the Classroom:

There are many mindset activities available online. Edutopia has an extensive list of Resources for Teaching Growth Mindset that may assist you in creating a lesson. Just remember to ensure that your lessons are evidence based and rely on published science.

5. The Right Way to Praise.

“Wow, you must be so smart!” “You’re so talented in maths!” “You did it without even trying!”

These all seem like fairly harmless statements that many of us say to students and our own children. But does praising intelligence actually undermine a child’s motivation and performance?

As part of her research on mindset Carol Dweck examined the effect of praise on 400 fifth-grade students in New York. In one study researchers would take a single student from the class to complete a nonverbal IQ test consisting of various simple puzzles. The puzzles were easy enough that the students were expected well on the exercises. The students were randomly divided in to groups and either praised for their intelligence or for their effort. The intelligence praised was told, “You must be smart at these problems.” The effort praised group was told, “You must have worked hard at these problems.” After the children were praised they were asked if they preferred certain learning or performance goals then given a more difficult self of puzzles to solve. Children in both groups and the control were all told that they performed “a lot worse” on them. After the negative feedback the children were then asked a set of questions rating their desire to persist on the problems, how much they enjoyed them, the quality of their performance and the failure attributions. A third set of puzzles was completed and a then debrief carefully ensuring that each student left feeling proud about their accomplishments.

The results from this study and five others conducted by Dweck’s team may require us to rethink the way we praise kids at home and at school. In all the studies the children that received intelligence based praise appeared to measure their intelligence from their performance in a way that the other children did not. After facing failure the intelligence praised group viewed their poor performance as ability-based rather than effort-based. These children had more negative responses in terms of lower levels of task persistence, task enjoyment, and performance that the group praised for effort. Further, the intelligence praised group had a tendency to misrepresent their scores on their performance more than the effort group, even though the reports were anonymous. These children were also more likely to view intelligence as a fixed trait while the effort praised group appeared to lead children to hold a more growth mindset view with the theory that intelligence is malleable.

It is interesting to note that the control group children showed more positive achievement and motivation than the intelligence praised group, but less so than the effort praised group. These findings were also consistent across genders, ethnic groups and rural and urban communities. Read more about the study here and here.

Personal/Team Reflection:

Try the "Praise Makeover"

Here are some examples of common phrases that have been reworded with a "Praise Makeover".

Are there common phrases that you use that can use a makeover? Make a list of these phrases and give them an effort makeover following the example above.

In the Classroom: Praise the process, not the product. For a great classroom example view this video: https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/praise-the-process-perts

Helpful Do’s and Don’t from the American Psychological Association

Do's:

Notice students' good efforts and strategies and praise them.
Be specific about the praised behaviors and reinforce this behavior with your feedback.
Use praise to link the outcomes of an assignment to students' efforts.
Talk explicitly and in detail about the strategies a student has used. Comment on which strategies were helpful, and which ere not.
Ask a student to explain his or her work to you.

Don'ts:

Don't offer praise for trivial accomplishments or weak efforts.
Don't inflate praise, particularly for students with low self-esteem.
Don't let a student feel ashamed of learning difficulties. Instead, treat each challenge as an opportunity for learning.
Don't ever say, "You are so smart." in response to good work. Instead, praise the work a student has done (e.g., "Your argument is very clear" or "Your homework is very accurate").
Don't comfort students following a failure by telling them that not everyone can be good at everything.

References

Bronson, P. (2017). How Not to Talk to Your Kids. New York. Retrieved from http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/index4.html#

Dweck, C. S. (2010). Even geniuses work hard. Educational Leadership, 68(1), 16-20.

Greater Good in Action. (2017). Ggia.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 3 February 2017, from http://ggia.berkeley.edu

Mindset | Test Your Mindset. (2017). Mindsetonline.com. Retrieved 3 February 2017, from http://mindsetonline.com/testyourmindset/step1.php

Mindset | The Nature of Change. (2017). Mindsetonline.com. Retrieved 3 February 2017, from http://mindsetonline.com/changeyourmindset/natureofchange/index.html

Mueller, C. & Dweck, C. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 75(1), 33-52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.75.1.33

Sheldon, K.M., & Elliot, A.J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal wellbeing: The self- concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482-497. doi: 0022-3514/99/$3.00

Rattan, A., Savani, K., Chugh, D., & Dweck, C. (2015). Leveraging Mindsets to Promote Academic Achievement. Perspectives On Psychological Science, 10(6), 721-726.

Reeve, J. (2002). Self-Determination Theory Applied to Educational Settings. In E. L. Deci & M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of Self-Determination. Rochester, NY: The University of Rochester Press.

Reeve, J. & Jang, H. (2006). What teachers say and do to support students' autonomy during a learning activity. Journal Of Educational Psychology, 98(1), 209-218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.98.1.209

Resources for Teaching Growth Mindset. (2017). Edutopia. Retrieved 3 February 2017, from https://www.edutopia.org/article/growth-mindset-resources

Robinson, P. (2016). Practising Positive Education: A guide to improve wellbeing literacy in schools. Sydney: Australia: Positive Psychology Institute.

Teaching Channel,. (2017). Praising the Process. Retrieved from https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/praise-the-process-perts

Using Praise to Enhance Student Resilience and Learning Outcomes. (2017). http://www.apa.org. Retrieved 3 February 2017, from http://www.apa.org/education/k12/using-praise.aspx

Wiest, D.J., Wong, E.H., & Kreil, D.A. (1998). Predictors of global self-worth and academic performance among regular education, learning disabled, and continuation high school students. Adolescence, 33, 601– 618.