Brain, Education, and Inquiry - Fall, 2010: Session 14A

this discussion was very interesting, mainly because of the questions it raised - we spend all this time thinking about how to mold a child's mind, what to say and what not to say, how much positive reinforcement to give etc - but how much of it do we really control?

is a child inherently good at some things? or is it just because of the environment he is placed in? if people push him towards something, will he grow to love it/be good at it?

these leave me wondering. for example, i know a boy who is a brilliant artist, and his parents pushed him towards engineering - it wasn't a you-have-no-choice kind of pushing, but more of a you-have-the-grades-and-the-intelligence-for this kind of 'manuvering'. and while he did brilliantly at his subject, and had the best professors, he never fell in love with it. photography was always his passion and always something he excelled at without always having to try. no one praised his art, they looked at it as a hobby and left it at that, but he was still good.

does this take away from his natural talent? is there anything like natural talent? maybe he could have grown to be a world renowned  photographer, maybe he would have lost interest in it in a while, but what are we really trying to establish when we try and draw distinctions between what youre good at and what you potentially could be good at?

i agree with linkai when he says that kids do not fall under one or the other category of learners - i have definitely, over the years, watched myself change from a growth learner, to an entity learner and back again.

so what should we do? should we praise them, or not? or how?

i think, for the most part, parents and teachers both, should give their kids exposure to different fields of study, different perspectives, different ways of being. they should give them that and then give  them a secure, comfortable base, and then allow them to branch out and live their lives - and im confident that the kids themselves will figure out what they want to do, what they love, and who they want to be.

I wonder how the researchers who proposed these theories would respond to an idea like Linkai's, that people telling a kid they are smart gives them a positive prophecy to live up to.  Although sometimes the stress of having to be "the smart kid" might be overwhelming to the point of failure, I do think there's a balance that will help kids try to live up to being the "smart kid."  I also see how this could cause kids who are not often praised for being smart to self-label as the "dumb kid," and how crippling that label can be. 

I think that although these theories may have some flaws in them, the key message is similar to that of stereotype threat - that labeling people can hinder or help them (depending on the label, flexibility of the label, and how much people self-identify as the label).  If people know that a label can change and they are being praised for their work, they will work hard.  If people are praised for the quality and accuracy of their end results, they will work until their end results match their expectations.  It seems to me that the studies were a bit flawed because the children were praised for different things, and so of course they learned to behave in a way that was praised.  I think children need to hear that they are good at something - whether it comes from intense work and dedication or natural talent.  Maybe we could praise the work and the final result?  I'm not sure what a good half-way point between only praising effort and only praising results would be.

I disagree with the basic assumption of the entity theory that our intelligence is fixed (or largely unalterable). It is contrary to how our brain develops. The extreme flexibility of babies' brain is an evidence that our intelligence is very much malleable. However, I am not totally against praising kids in the Entity way: oh, you are such a smart kid! I think it can serve to boost students' self-esteem by giving them a positive prophecy to fulfill. In my Chinese elementary school, teachers and parents praised kids by referring to their nature all the time. It worked for me: I was motivated to be the smart kid because I was designated as the smart kid. I acknowledge that this kind of praise could be damaging in cases where the kid just cannot live up the expectation that he and others set for himself. But their option does not have to be feeling inadequate. An Incremental type of praise could complement very well here. Saying something like, "you are a smart kid, but you didn't put enough effort into the work" or "this is a challenging question, you are a smart kid you'll eventually get it" can both affirm the students' "natural intelligence" but encourage them to make more effort. This affirmation is based on the assumption that intelligence is very much subject to modification and especially improvement.