Self Esteem A New Framework

1. Self Esteem A New Framework Staff INSET Day 28th April 2014

2. Self Esteem: What is it? The traditional view; “We need to praise children on all occasions, shielding them from failure wherever possible so as they will not feel bad about themselves. This will have a long term impact on their self esteem”

3. Freedom from Failure “Self Esteem is not about success, it might prop up the embarrassment of failure but that is not self esteem”

4. Quote from Guy Claxton “If you are not in a fog you are not learning” Guy Claxton

5. Views of Year 6 : General Views However some of the robust feedback given to children challenged my traditional “Candy Floss” view of Self-Esteem Yet… The children seemed to have good self esteem

6. Quotes from Year 6 Children When I receive robust feedback… “I am happy with it because it means you can improve your work and it will make you better. I feel impressed with myself because I feel I can do more”

7. Quotes from Year 6 Children When I receive robust feedback… “If he tells you that you can do better then he believes you can and he expects you to achieve even more than you have and that makes me feel good about myself. If teachers always tell you your work is good then you feel like you can’t do better but you can always do more. You could become the best in the class”

8. Quotes from Year 6 Children When I receive robust feedback… “If he tells you then it means that he thinks you can do better, he has faith in you and believes you can work to a high standard and that makes me feel good about myself”

9. Quotes from Year 6 Children It makes us work harder the next time because we know what the expectations are and if we don’t want to have to do it again we know what to avoid”

10. Quotes from Year 6 Children “Sometimes teachers say that work is good when it isn’t and that makes me feel weird. Also if they say it is good then you wouldn’t try harder next time because you have reached the standard. In fact when they say it is good and I know it isn’t it makes me feel like they have not read it properly and that they don’t care much”

11. Quotes from Year 6 Children When I receive robust feedback… “Being criticised feels OK because I know he thought I could do better. It puts on pressure because he is expecting you to do better”

12. Quotes from Year 6 Children When I receive robust feedback… “If the teacher says your work is good all the time it stops you trying harder”

13. Quotes from Year 6 Children When I receive robust feedback… “When he criticises my work I think it is because he believes in me and knows me. If I tried really hard then I would be cross if he said it could be better and I would feel let down. If I tried hard I would get angry if I was told it was wrong and I might not change it”

14. Views of Year 6 : General Views In a straw poll 17 out of 20 “enjoyed” the criticism given and had no problem with it All agreed that criticism about a piece of work where 100% effort had been put in was a no go area and would not be appreciated Underlying all their views was the relationship between teacher and child that was key

15. My own thoughts The children were feeding back to me the antithesis of what I had believed. They felt that “criticism” boosted their self esteem because contrary to what I had always thought they saw this as an expression of the adult’s faith in them.

16. Self theories: Their role in motivation, personality and development Carol S. Dweck

17. Challenges to perceived norm High ability children less likely to suffer from low self esteem Success at school fosters good self esteem Praise, especially praising intelligence, promotes good self esteem Children’s confidence in their intelligence relates to good self esteem (Pages 1-2)

18. A different view of self esteem Self esteem is not an internal quality fed by easy success and diminished by failures. It is not something we give to people by telling them about their intelligence. It is something we equip them to get themselves by engaging in learning.(Page 4)

19. Structure of the Presentation A Bit of Theory… Self Esteem: The Facts Choice of easy or hard tasks. Why? Self esteem is not related to intelligence Self esteem is not related to confidence Self Esteem: The Future Is it possible to change a child’s self esteem? How do we use praise and criticism constructively? What impact should this have on our teaching and learning?

20. A Bit of Theory

21. A bit of theory! The major divide between those with high and low self esteem is their view of intelligence Entity Theory – Intelligence is a fixed commodity Incremental Theory – Intelligence is cultivated through learning (Pages 2-3)

22. Glossary Helpless: Where children’s confidence drops when undertaking a task perceived as difficult. Mastery: Where children rise to the challenge of perceived difficulty and develop learning strategies and perseverance. (Dweck uses the terms interchangeably with low/high self esteem)

23. Performance Goals v Learning Goals Performance Goals Focus on child’s perception of their own intelligence, thus a need to avoid failure Leads to strategies that involve avoiding any chance of making a mistake Emphasis on measuring ability

24. Performance Goals v Learning Goals Learning Goals A goal to increase competence A desire to get smarter whatever the perceived failures along the way Emphasis on finding new strategies

25. Performance Goals v Learning Goals “Often children see these two goals pitted against each other and will therefore often have to make a choice of which path to follow The child’s perception of the goal will determine and fashion a “helpless” (low self esteem) or “mastery” (high self esteem) response”

26. Thinking About How We Think To what extent do you agree or disagree with these statements: Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

27. Answer Key

28. Final Score

29. Choice of Easy or Hard Tasks

30. Study 1: 12 Problems All children were given 12 problems 8 easy to solve 4 relatively unsolvable They were then categorised into those with an entity view of intelligence and those with an incremental view (p 6-10)

31. Study 1: 12 Problems Low Self Esteem Quickly denigrated their abilities “I guess I am not very smart” – but they had just answered 8 questions easily High Self Esteem When difficulty arose they did not blame themselves in fact they blamed nothing

32. Study 1: 12 Problems Low Self Esteem 1/3 of the children did not think they would be able to answer the easy questions if asked again High Self Esteem They remained confident. 2/3 expressed confidence that they would succeed, none of the low self esteem group did

33. Study 1: 12 Problems Low Self Esteem They remembered 5 successes – in fact they had scored 8 High Self Esteem The high esteem group tended to embrace failure with relish “I love a challenge”

34. Study 1: 12 Problems Low Self Esteem Their strategies in the easy questions were as good as the other group but in the latter questions they resorted to things like guessing High Self Esteem 80% of this group showed improved strategies when working on the harder questions. In fact some children actually solved them.

35. Study 1: 12 Problems Low Self Esteem Children gave up work on the problems very quickly High Self Esteem They did not consider themselves to be failing they simply dug deeper “I should slow down if I am to figure this one out”

36. Study 1: 12 Problems Low Self Esteem In other studies the children could not do identical “easy” questions after they had failed on the more difficult questions High Self Esteem By definition the implication from the study is that this made no difference to the high self esteem group

37. Study 1: 12 Problems Conclusion The low self esteem group saw both their intelligence and their self worth as being on the line The high self esteem group were not seeing failure as an indictment of themselves so the risk was not great

38. Views of Year 6 : Maths 2006 The children had undertaken the question that neither Jon or I could get right. They had spent a whole lesson (seemingly) achieving nothing. I interviewed them individually after the lesson to catch their views of the challenge and their own self esteem

39. Views of Year 6 : Maths 2006 There was not one child who felt discouraged by the experience They had all thoroughly enjoyed it, even though they were unable to solve the task When quizzed as to whether they felt this was frustrating a few said they would have liked to have solved it but for most it did not seem to matter

40. Views of Year 6 : Maths 2006 From what I could discern there was little that led me to believe the children had found this a negative experience for their self esteem. In fact when questioned their response was a sort of “What’s that got to do with it” approach

41. Study 2: Choose a task Children were given the option of choosing from a selection of 3 tasks: • Easy; Easy enough to not make mistakes • Hard; Hard but possible for children to achieve • Hard, New and different; You will make mistakes but you will learn something

42. Study 2: Choose a task Entity 80% chose the two Performance based tasks 50% choosing the easier of the two Incremental 60% chose the challenging task

43. Study 2: Choose a task If I had to choose between getting a good grade in class or being challenged I would choose… Incremental: 68% chose the challenge Entity: 65% chose good grade

44. Isn’t Self Esteem related to Intelligence

45. Study 3: Isn’t Self Esteem to do with Intelligence? There is a general notion that the more intelligent you are by definition shielded from issues of self esteem and it is therefore the less able that need support Research does not bear this out, indeed the most vulnerable group discerned by Dweck were higher ability girls

46. Study 3: Isn’t Self Esteem to do with Intelligence? All children given Science material to learn. All scored well and there was no discernable difference between the abilities of any of the children within the group They were then asked to apply their learned knowledge in a fresh test

47. Study 3: Isn’t Self Esteem to do with Intelligence? The incremental children: Scored higher than the children with performance related goals They produced, on average, 50% more written work They more readily applied original material to new tasks

48. Study 3: Isn’t Self Esteem to do with Intelligence? “ The key to self esteem does not relate to how confident one feels about oneself tackling a given task” But… Rather your view of intelligence and whether it is fixed (therefore every task measures one’s ability) or malleable (therefore every task has the ability to increase intelligence)”

49. Self Esteem and Confidence

50. Self Esteem and Confidence “As a society we have come to believe that this (praise) will raise student’s confidence. And confidence we believe is the panacea.