(In)effective praise and the way we think about our thinkers: we're pretty fantastic, but watch how you say it*

Research over the last decade has changed the way teachers, parents, coaches and other professionals give praise. Telling students they are smart or gifted seems to negatively affect their performance, whereas praising their efforts and the processes they used to produce results seems to support achievement and create a mindset that promotes academic engagement.

However, I think applying this technique is most effective when integrated with its underlying principles, rather than as a singular trick of language to use in a mechanical sort of way. Before I get into that deeper nuance and my personal take on intelligence and development in this context, let me explain the overall distinction being made by this set of research.

"Many educators have hoped to maximize students' confidence in their abilities, their enjoyment of learning, and their ability to thrive in school by praising their intelligence. We've studied the effects of this kind of praise in children as young as 4 years old and as old as adolescence, in students in inner-city and rural settings, and in students of different ethnicities—and we've consistently found the same thing (Cimpian, Arce, Markman, & Dweck, 2007; Kamins & Dweck, 1999; Mueller & Dweck, 1998): Praising students' intelligence gives them a short burst of pride, followed by a long string of negative consequences." ("The Perils and Promises of Praise," Dweck)

This finding (largely championed by Carol S. Dweck) makes perfect sense to me when I look at my own fear- and ego-based experience as a "smart/gifted" kid, and when I look at my adult development toward a more useful mind-set. With my identity and worth connected to my intelligence, I developed bad habits to protect that identity. For example, I masked my ignorance in a number of ways, often by not asking questions. That habit developed into having difficulty developing questions or even recognizing when I had questions, masking my ignorance even from myself. (That piece of character is a hard one to shake to this day.) This combined with other related habits also outlined in the studies (e.g. avoidance of challenge) to produce academic decline and general maladjustment for quite some time.

What we are to do when praising others (and ourselves) is to focus our praise and evaluation on observable things rather than on some abstracted intrinsic nature. It's important to do so in a way that connects the results (e.g. a piano recital) to the person's process/effort, "It sounded like you worked hard on that piece." Simply praising the work leaves the connection to the individual open to interpretation. "That's a fine piece of work," could just as easily be received with a subtext of "because you're smart" as it could get the subtext "because you worked hard."

Giving praise in such a way frees people's identities, lowering the stakes. And, by connecting what they did to what they produced in the world and within themselves**, it demonstrates that they can substantially affect their learning and the world around them. It empowers people to engage in learning and practice -- to get behind the wheel of their own development.

This is the essence of the approach, a change in "mind-set" from thinking of intelligence/talent as something "fixed" which reveals itself, to thinking of intelligence/talent as something that grows and can be built by the individual. That message gets conveyed in the way we speak, and it can also be taught directly.

Dweck and others did a study demonstrating the effectiveness of directly teaching students this mind-set. They carried out an intervention in 7th-grade classes. The control group received instruction in study skills, time management and memory skills. The experimental group also learned about how their brains work and what they can do to make their brains grow. It worked. 

"The idea that their intellectual growth was largely in their hands fascinated them. In fact, even the most disruptive students suddenly sat still and took notice, with the most unruly boy of the lot looking up at us and saying, 'You mean I don't have to be dumb?'" ("The Perils and Promises of Praise," Carol S. Dweck)

Here's the nuance

Yes, when I talk about learning, skills, abilities, knowledge and so on, I try to use that approach -- to speak in terms of doing the work to gain and build what you want in life, rather than in fixed terms of being good or bad at something. It's not that I'm an educator or anything like that, but I think it is important to do for myself and others, to promote a healthy mind-set in the world. I see and hear people sort of stuck in themselves, with a rigid mind-set that has practically beaten them down. So, I try to use that way of speaking and praising.

However, the power of that "growth" mind-set is very much in the affirmation of how inherently amazing we actually are. So, I also speak and think in terms of the awesome gifts and capacities that we all have as human beings.

Consider everything that makes up a human infant (i.e. a body). We all start out mostly the same; those that are particularly different from the norm are still mostly like everyone else. As we grow up, we continue to be mostly the same as those within similar cultural contexts, and to a lesser degree, we are still mostly the same as those in different contexts. As a pithy teacher friend once said, we like to think we're all special snowflakes, but we aren't. That means, in a certain light, we might be about as amazing as our heroes/idols.

I don't mean to downplay the significance and value of diversity and opportunity, or to celebrate mediocrity -- at all. Some people are clearly better at certain things than others, gifted so to speak. But, the vast majority of what we think of as "natural" talents were in fact built over time through individual choices and efforts and through social/environmental factors, by strengthening muscles, reinforcing some neural pathways over others and so on.

In fact, the way our DNA works was once thought to be fixed and determined in the same way that intelligence and talent were thought of, but we now know that even the way our DNA expresses itself can be shaped by behavioral and environmental factors.

On the face of it, this sort of emphasis on social/environmental factors can seem deterministic, setting up a mindset of powerlessness in the same way as does praising an individual's inherent character. And, while social inequities are very real and worth addressing (and, redressing), what I am talking about here is individual mind-set, which is both socialized and self-directed. I find it excitingly empowering when the reality of "external" factors and our own efforts shaping us is framed in support of the reality that we humans are quite wonderful creatures capable of impressive changes, developments and diversities.

Perhaps how we use three overlapping concepts associated with what fashions an individual might be particularly salient here: nature, character and identity. Nature seems a fairly fixed mystique, as extrinsically thrust upon us as it is intrinsically rooted. Character is built, stable but malleable; identities can be fluid, rigid, unstable, overlapping, tricky -- quicksilver. I think these and other concepts play significant and valid roles in shaping our humanity. To which are we assigning different aspects of the self and experience? To what are we consigning ourselves and others?

Whether I am carving paths catered to my built-up strengths or working on improving my areas of weakness, I find comfort in the fact that I can choose to be what brings me joy rather than do what protects my ego, freeing up a lot of energy. In that spirit, I am neither compelled to shine nor afraid to shine, and, I can't say that I don't fear failure, but that fear is more healthy than not. We each probably have what it takes to get where we want; we just make choices about what we think is worth the work and sacrifice to get there from where we are, and about which paths are worth taking for their own sakes.

*This post was triggered by this post by Donald Miller. Reading his post brought me back to the excitement of my studies of pedagogy at The Evergreen State College.

**This is the basis of the scientific method, no? Science, having developed as the most adaptive way for our organism to understand the world thus far, is not surprisingly modeled on our biology, also having developed as the most adaptive way for our organism to be in the world thus far. So, it only follows that we should model our thinking and education on the scientific method. But, that is for another blog post.