BELIEFS ABOUT TEACHER EFFICACY
8. Belief: Children’s learning is primarily determined by their effective ef- fort and use of appropriate strategies. “Intelligence,” or the ability to learn, is not a fixed, inborn trait. All children have the raw material to learn rigor- ous academic material at high standards.
Most Americans believe that intelligence is a fixed, innate trait that is endowed at birth, is unevenly distributed, and determines how well a student can do. This belief in the bell curve of intelligence—that only a few students are smart enough to learn sophisticated academic material at high standards—has huge implications for teaching and learning.
“You can get smart” (Howard, 1990, p. 12). Teachers who have internalized this belief believe it is their responsibility to give their students
p the belief that ability can be grown,
p the confidence that it applies to them,
p the tools to accomplish it, and
p the desire to want to.
T H E S K I L L F U L T E A C H E R 25
PART ONE | ESSENTIAL BELIEFS | SCHOOLING
Effective effort and good strategies are the principal determinants of academic success.
Teachers who believe that almost all of their students can achieve at a high level given the right conditions—that students can increase their ability through ap- plication, focus, and good strategies—are almost driven to rethink their role as a teacher. That new conceptualization would include being a teacher of strate- gies as well as a teacher of an academic discipline. And it would include an implied obligation for the teacher to diversify his or her teaching to match dif- ferent student learning styles. When a student isn’t learning, it would drive the teacher to ask, “How might I approach this differently or alter the conditions?” And it would certainly imply developing the commitment to—and repertoire for—conveying high-expectation messages to students.
Others (Gould, 1996) have documented the history of the bell curve’s limit- ing view of intelligence, with its sad consequences for students. We present this history in Chapter 14, “Expectations,” and we make the case that intel- ligence can indeed be developed and that effective effort and good strategies are the principal determinants of academic success (Howard, 1990; Resnick, 1995; Dweck, 2007). Our point is that a teacher’s belief about the nature of intelligence and its limits (or limitlessness) forms a powerful frame around the motivation to expand his or her teaching repertoires. Anyone serious about professional development must address this belief system to unleash the full energy of adults to expand their capacity to reach all students.
9. Belief: We can get underperforming, low confidence students to be- lieve in themselves. We really can change their attributions so that they outperform their own internalized stereotypes.
This is a belief about teacher efficacy. It means that not only do we believe that all students can learn and that effective effort is the key to academic success, we also believe we can get our students to believe it too and act from that belief. Furthermore, we believe it is our job to do so. Chapter 14, “Expectations,” de- scribes in some detail how we carry out that commitment. These how-to’s are further elaborated on in High Expectations Teaching (Saphier, 2017).
Having completed over seven decades of desegregation since Brown v Board of Education, we are experiencing the de facto resegregation of schools through socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic neighborhood stratification. We are faced with significant achievement gaps for African American, Latino, and other stu- dents of color in our society. Communicating positive expectations and dis- solving persistent negative stereotypes—perhaps, even internalized (Howard & Hammond, 1985)—is especially important. The roots of what students will do are planted firmly in their beliefs about what they can do.