{"id":42,"date":"2014-05-05T21:54:42","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T21:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/?p=42"},"modified":"2014-05-06T12:56:01","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T12:56:01","slug":"raising-the-bar-or-removing-the-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/raising-the-bar-or-removing-the-bar\/","title":{"rendered":"Raising the Bar or Removing the Bar?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his popular TedTalk, Shawn Achor<\/a> speaks about the need to escape \u201cthe cult of the average\u201d through the lens of positive psychology. This is a break from the traditional aim of psychology \u2013 to understand and treat mental illness. Rather, positive psychology attempts, in the words of Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the seminal thinkers in the field, to allow humanity to flourish<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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According to Achor, our brain\u2019s current definition of happiness, one which pervades everything from parenting to business models, is based on working hard and being successful. One of the main problems with this traditional model is that \u201cevery time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like\u2026 And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Achor goes on to talk about how it is happiness that actually increases our chances of being successful:<\/span><\/p>\n

If you can raise somebody\u2019s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed.<\/i><\/p>\n

[youtube]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fLJsdqxnZb0[\/youtube]<\/p>\n

This idea seems to pair well with Carol Dweck\u2019s work on growth mindset vs. fixed mindset. In a nutshell of her own creation, Dweck states<\/a> that the fixed mindset is a great threat to our innate desire to learn.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the fixed mindset it\u2019s not enough just to succeed. It\u2019s not enough just to look smart and talented. You have to be pretty much flawless. And you have to be flawless right away\u2026 After all, if you have it you have it, and if you don\u2019t you don\u2019t\u2026 Beyond how traumatic a setback can be in the fixed mindset, this mindset gives you no good recipe for overcoming it. If failure means you lack competence or potential\u2014that you are a failure \u2013 where do you go from there?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Importantly, a growth mindset can be learned and this has lots of implications for education, including Angela Lee Duckworth\u2019s work on grit.\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

However, what I\u2019m wondering about is how we, as teachers, create, or avoid creating, a bar for success. As much as the educational system, at least in Ontario, has moved the emphasis more onto process and away from high numbers of assessments of learning<\/i>, there is still a very clear bar that is the basis for everything from rubrics to standardized tests for any given grade.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is where you should be in grade 10. You are above, at, or below expectations.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But is there no other way? Before I go any further, let me make it clear that I have no answer to the question. From here on out, I\u2019m musing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember students being furious in a first-year undergrad English class because the professor told us that, to score 90-100% meant that your work was publishable. This was, he explained, the same way he graded his graduate students. Surely this meant that, as first year students, we had little hope of hitting that bar. But perhaps, this took away the traditional marker for success and forced me to redraw a map with a road that extended well beyond this single essay \u2013 a map without a finish line.\u00a0 And without a finish line, a race becomes a journey.<\/p>\n

If happiness must be placed, to borrow Achor\u2019s terminology, on this<\/i> side of the cognitive horizon \u2013 meaning before<\/i> success \u2013 and if growth mindset thinking is about recognizing that traits are not fixed and can be developed, then there is certainly a common ground of emphasis on the pre-success process.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Where these two ideas don\u2019t seem to talk to each other is about where<\/i> we should place success, or how<\/i> that success is defined. For Achor, it lays somewhere beyond happiness; it is not the goal, but the product. For Dweck, it is a bit more complicated. For Dweck, it is important to recognize that a <\/i>success is not the <\/i>success. Setting goals, and recognizing a success is surely an important part of seeing growth, but it would seem that hitting success as some kind of a finish line is detrimental to maintaining a growth mindset.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as Achor remarked how students quickly \u2013 within 2 weeks \u2013\u00a0 got over the joy of being accepted into Harvard as they were overwhelmed with the pressures and workload that had become their reality, student success, when measured by a great mark can be a fleeting feeling despite the work it took to get there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To tie Achor, Dweck, and my former English professor together, I find myself wondering all sorts of things about expectations and success:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n