Growth mindset and behavioral management in the classroom

The classroom is a stage for the social balancing act. There are innumerable actions and events that contribute, over time, to how people become the individuals they become. Most people can attribute major parts of their personality to singular events from their childhood. These singular events can determine whether someone is a risk taker, a charitable person, an friendly outgoing person, an unfriendly outgoing person, a trusting person, or a cynical person. The relationships that learners develop with their classmates, teachers, and administrative “authority figures” are the individuals who present the learners with these formative events or actions. It is understandable (possibly cannot be underestimated) that what is said to or done with students and the feedback they receive is never unimportant.

It goes without saying that student behavior in the classroom is a focal point for educators at every level. The reasons for a student’s misbehavior in class are often as varied as the individuals themselves. The methods that an average teacher handles misbehavior are similarly varied. Every educator has their own class management style and there are often differing circumstances from class to class that influence how the class must be managed. As stated in the 12 Touchstones of good teaching, sometimes teachers will allow a little bit of disruption, where the philosophy is “It’s only one student”. Some teachers who may have less ability to deal with disruption end up with a class environment that isn’t conducive to proper focus for the class as a whole. Even worse, some teachers can take it personally, where they are disciplining students because they feel the students are doing something purely to get a rise out of the teacher. (Goodwin & Hubbell, n.d.) These are all possibly not the best choices.

The ways in which one can attempt to foster a growth mindset become more clear as these ideas are compared to those of a fixed mindset. In a fixed mindset, students are evaluated and told what they are capable of. They are given a ceiling to the person receiving the comment, basically limiting them, mentally, to a fixed level of knowledge and skill acquisition. “You have a really short attention span.” would be a fixed mindset comment. “You aren’t great at Algebra, so you are going to have to work harder.” would be another.

Comments like these sound cruel and damaging to a lot of modern teachers as it would seem that the words come from a bygone era of education. Simply put, adding the words “yet” or “right now” to either of these statements can really soften the blow of such negative feedback and get a struggling student into a frame of mind where they might feel like they have a chance to “right the ship”. While mistakes seem very negative to students initially, the opportunity for growth should be highlighted. Even if the mistakes are constant, there are ways to prop the student up by their past successes to give them the idea that this is just temporary.

Goodwin and Hubbel note that the timing of feedback is just as important as the feedback you give. Waiting too long to give feedback or being too willing to give it instantaneously are both situations to be aware of. Making students wait too long is obviously not ideal, because students generally want to know how they may have done on a given assignment. Without feedback on an earlier assignment, they might miss an opportunity to improve their skills before the next assignment. Continuing to make the same mistakes without getting feedback leads to more less-than desirable grades. Instant feedback also has it’s pitfalls as students use it as a crutch, needing to know whether they got questions wrong or right during a test. In my own experience, students who feel like they need instant feedback have trouble with resiliency in concerts. If they make mistakes, they don’t know how to continue on or pick themselves back up.

The cultural relevance of this issue has been covered recently in an article by Brita Belli for Yale News in which she references a 2020 Connecticut study of 5 high schools. In this article she notes that of all the students surveyed, 75% of students had negative feelings about school. (Belli 2020) Many of these feelings stem from feeling like they don’t matter or that school is too hard. Teachers, now more than ever, can use the power of their words to boost the morale and eventually the output of their students.

Within my own classes, I try to be as relatable to my students as a 36 year-old man can be to the average middle to high school student. In my experience, through learning to play nearly every scholastic band and orchestral instrument to a high school proficiency, I feel as though I have made every mistake more than once. When modeling skills for students, I lean on recounting these experiences to show students that what felt like failure yesterday becomes part of what made you succeed today.

The ways in which teachers manage the behavior of a misbehaving student can affect the entire classroom. As stated previously, there are many ways that teachers view behavior, and many ways that it will be dealt with. Depending on the size of a class, course content, and unforeseen circumstances, the teacher will always have to make instant decisions based on the events at hand. In my particular case, what may be unacceptable in a science classroom, is perfectly acceptable, to a point, in my band class. The band class is the only class that students will have the same classmates all year, every year, for possibly 8 years. They form bonds and friendships that are long lasting which generally contribute positively to the day to day comings and goings of band class.

As a special area class, I am certainly more able to have a little bit of controlled chaos as the positive environment of the class is as important as the accomplishments of the band; so long as milestones are met, and the efforts to “have a good time” don’t end up far exceeding the efforts to achieve. For example, our marching band had, at one point, 120 members. If we were very stringent in our rules that there be absolutely zero talking during rehearsal, it is apparent that the students don’t enjoy the activity as much, and it really makes the teachers have to be more strict and less positive. However, when that many people aren’t quite working towards the goal and are being very social, it can be hard to get much of anything done at all. It is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Sometimes misbehavior that can go unnoticed can result in what would be considered to be bullying. This can be between two students, or it can be seen as a group of people piling on to one. Since cooperative learning is something that we do quite a bit of, it has felt very significant to make sure that all students are practicing good boundaries with such things. There have been instances where a student leader finds themselves in a disagreement with a younger student and, feeling whatever sense of power they think they have, will take it upon themselves to treat the younger student very negatively during times when the student leader is asked to run a portion of their own rehearsal. Students can be very mean when they feel like they aren’t being supervised.

Another way in which students can misbehave where the learning environment is affected is during these cooperative learning times is that a student who feels like they can let another student do more work and then let themselves slack off. This is highlighted in an essay by Robyn Gillies in the the Australian journal of Teacher Education:

“Placing students in groups and expecting them to work together will not necessarily

promote cooperation. Group members often struggle with what to do and discord can occur

as members grapple with the demands of the task as well as managing the processes involved

in learning such as dealing with conflicting opinions among members or with students who

essentially loaf and contribute little to the group’s goal” (Gillies 2016)

The cultural impact of this within the class is such that, if they get away with it, the student who lets other people do their work gets a high mark or praise without working towards it. This very quickly can become a pattern of behavior and they may not succeed in courses that have rigorous requirements in the classwork. It can also force other students to work even harder than they need to for a possibly lower grade, which can contribute to fatigue, anxiety, and a negative view of school.

There is a great importance to how and when an instructor interacts with students. Timeliness and types of feedback can help guide students through their formative years and mould their personalities. Practicing good behavioral management helps students understand how they fit into a community and teaches them appropriate social skills. Developing proper cooperative learning skills provides students with the ability to work towards a goal as part of a unit where each person in the group produces equal amounts of work. The sum total directs learners toward a future as a productive and confident individual.

References

Goodwin, B., & Hubbell, E. R. (n.d.). The 12 Touchstones of Good Teaching. Retrieved from https://platform.virdocs.com/r/s/0/doc/578098/sp/176919652/mi/566607737?cfi=%2F4%2F4

Brita Belli january 30, 2020 National survey: Students’ feelings about high school are mostly negative. Yale News. https://news.yale.edu/2020/01/30/national-survey-students-feelings-about-high-school-are-mostly-negative

Gillies, R., M. (2016) Cooperative learning: review of research and practice, Australian Journal of Teacher Education Vol 41., https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1096789.pdf