An interesting question I've been pondering since reading the chapter on Ability. I started thinking about this because I have worked with 5-6 year olds for the past 3-4 years and I began to wonder how their little minds begin to shape perspectives of ability.
Does it begin in pre-school/kindergarten when first exposed to challenges, both academic and social? When do they begin to compare themselves to others and their previous efforts in these contexts?
What I understand from the book is that the little guys have a tendency to overestimate the likelihood of their success, but this changes as they get older. I had a little boy in my reading group that, when presented with a book, would almost always say, "This book is too easy", or "Since I can read the title, I know it's going to be easy to read". My response was, "Wow Adam, that is wonderful. Let's open it up to the first page so I can listen to you read". He would proceed to stumble when he came across unknown words and he would stop and look at me to tell him the word. Only then would he admit that some of the words were hard to figure out and the book was not as easy as he thought. I think he wanted to me to perceive him as a reader, but he wasn't using the strategies and problem solving we worked on every day. Was he protecting his self-worth or just overconfident because this is what kids do developmentally? By the end of the year, this kid was jamming and looking to me for much less help with decoding. I realize now I must have been doing something right by the feedback I was giving him. I would constantly point out that he was figuring out difficult words by using the strategies (finally!) he had learned. He learned that he wasn't going to just "know" what the word was by looking at it. He figured out that, hey, it really does work to look at the beginning/ending sound, use chunks of the word, and the picture to figure the word out. Attributing his success to effort.. sweet!
Alderman says that the beliefs children have about their ability become more complex as they get older and that "self-perceptions of academic competence decline with age". This is an important statement because I feel that I have a pretty big responsibility to begin to instill positive perceptions of one's self at this early age. The hard part is keeping things positive as tasks and social situations get more difficult from grade to grade. Keeping that motivation going.
I'm feeling that the key to doing this is not only creating the kind of classroom environment that reinforces that it's okay to fail and that you might have to practice something 20 times to have that one success, but also getting parents on board to be fostering this kind of environment at home. Parents can be one of our greatest resources, but we as teachers must explicitly share what we know now and what we are learning about motivation to help them help their child. I work at a very diverse school with kids from all over the world and I know it's not possible to get every parent on board. There have been times when I haven't even met parents until the spring because they are dealing with other priorities that don't include their child and school. So maybe we can make some suggestions in class/school newsletters or have a parent night to at least expose and get to some of our parents. My feeling is that if I can make a difference with one or some of my students, then I'm doing the best I can.
Yay!
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