An Intrinsic Update - Growth or Fixed

A lot of what Include Solutions does on a daily basis is talk to professionals about their experiences of developing an ethos which motivates young people intrinsically rather than extrinsically. This however is a very broad area to try and develop within education so we constantly ask ourselves one very simple question; What would an intrinsically motivated school look like?





Although a simple question it can not bring simple answers and this is why talking to fellow professionals is vital in this process. Today Dr Barry Hymer led a session on exploring the contribution of mindsets towards intrinsic learning motivation and gift creation in the classroom. I am sure that some people in the audience looked at the title with a slight gasp, however with what followed any sceptical attitudes were replaced by ones much more open to this idea of radical reform.


I want to summarise the main learning outcomes from today's session for you and I encourage you to go away and find out more for yourselves. The running theme throughout the session was looking at ways at turning from a fixed mindset into a growth mindset and how systematic change on a personal and whole school level is required for this to happen.

• In a study by Hattie containing over 50,000 studies he found that it is the excellence in teachers, and not just the teachers themselves that makes the greatest difference to student achievement
• The key factors in expert teaching are Challenge, Quality Feedback and a Deeper response to key ideas.
• The difference between someone who is exceptional at something rather than just good is down to time spent mastering that something rather than a natural 'gift'. How often do we hear top athletes talk about absolute dedication throughout their lives as the reason for their success. Even the most arrogant of performers don't talk of anything but a huge amount of time investment.
• Praise the effort and not the 'ability'. In fact any reference to 'ability' should be removed from your vocabulary full stop.
• Praise 'now that' and not 'if then' (See earlier blog post on punished by rewards)
• Failure is an important part of mastery and young people who go through life not being allowed to fail will struggle to recover the first time this happens, and it will happen. It is often referred to as resilience to failure.

So we ask the same question again, What would an intrinsically motivated school look like? Based on today and thanks to the work of all whom Barry Hymer has worked with including the likes of Carol Dweck, we may be a little further along the journey:

• Students would be the ones to set their own targets which would be based on learning goals rather than performance ones.
• Extrinsic rewards such as stamps, commendations, rewards assemblies and prize giving events would be removed.
• All work carried out would be set with a 50% chance of student failure (Particularly important for our top sets)
• Setting of classes could be done on effort towards the learning goals and not the current performance or expected performance of a given student.
• Feedback would be based on how to improve their learning and would not be given any formal grading.
• Within the curriculum time there would be time for students to choose their own learning experience (FedEx Days/Google 10% time)
• Teachers would not make reference to judging a students intelligence nor would any feedback involve labelling the product; only the effort and measure taken to work towards the product would be commented on.
• The curriculum would be supported by dilemma based learning and philosophy for children as a way to encourage deeper thinking across all subjects.

I must add that the additions and examples that were provided by Dr Barry Hymer were much more detailed and rounded then what is included above. However what I do hope is that by reading the summary it sparks something within you. Even if you read some of the ideas presented here and think it is a load of nonsense, please go away and find out more. We are confident that soon you'll be convinced. The research is far too strong to ignore!!

One final thought....The pictures at the top are of Rory McIlroy, one taken at the Masters in April and the other taken at the US Open a couple of months later. If you are not familiar with his story, Google it as it is a most wonderful example of a growth mindset in action!!

Include Solutions Ltd would like to thank Dr Barry Hymer and those who he references in his work for the time and commitment clearly spent researching and developing Intrinsic Theories of Behaviour.