The more we believe we can change, the more we will change for the better. This is the simple but profound statement
that empirical research is showing to be true.
The more that we view ourselves and others as “works in progress” rather
than “finished products”, the more we will treat each other with more respect
or at least cut ourselves and others more slack. This research has profound implications not
just for bullying prevention but also for all education.
The research that is demonstrating this truth is an
outgrowth of the work that Carol Dweck has done with the concept of
mindset. Students who believe that their
success is attributable to their effort, i.e.
encountering difficulty and struggling only strengthens them as learners,
actually learn more than students who view their success as attributable to
their innate ability. Daniel Yeager and
colleagues are doing this new line of research.
I urge everyone to check out his work. Not only
is it fascinating, but it also points the field of education in
a new and very promising direction. It
hold the potential for practical interventions that can get bullying prevention
unstuck and untied from the many NOTS that it currently finds itself.
In the article, An
Implicit Theories of Personality Intervention Reduces Adolescent Aggression in
Response to Victimization and Exclusion by Yeager, Trzesniewski, and Dweck (
Child Development, 2012)
they present researching findings on the positive
changes that occurred with adolescents when they were given a serious of lessons teaching
them the malleability of the human brain and how people can and do change with
changes in their environment.
Here are
some of the keys points made in the article:
Adolescents are more likely than younger children to believe
that people can’t change –this is referred to as an entity theory of
personality-similar to the fixed mindset in Dweck work.
They hypothesize that this type of implicit theory (entity) is an explanation
for why certain treatments or social/emotional skills training are less likely to result in significant changes in adolescent
behavior towards peers.
They also suggest that feelings of depression are associated
with the belief in the entity theory of personality. If people are think that they can’t change
they are more likely to become depressed.
This research focused on students who could be considered
bully/victims who would seek to get revenge either on those who bullied them or would find others to bully.
The experimental group was given a series of lessons that
taught an incremental theory of personality-that people have the potential and
capacity for change. They were also
exposed to examples of people who demonstrated this capacity for change.
The students taught about the incremental theory were told
that changing personality is not easy and can take a long time. Changing requires a great deal of help but is
always possible. They were told about
various mechanisms of change: maturity, motivation, situations, new experiences,
learning from mistakes etc. This
learning and changing actually reorganized people’s brains. They were given actual testimonials from
students who did change.
At the end of this series of lessons, the students trained
in incremental theory were asked to write letters to incoming ninth graders
advising them on how to respond to bullying without seeking revenge.
Some sessions also told stories about famous people who
encountered and overcame social rejection.
There was another control
group given a similar number of training sessions that the incremental
group but the content of the sessions were about coping skills. There was also a third group with no
treatment given.
The results showed that the group taught the incremental
theory were significantly less aggressive, more pro social, showed fewer
conduct problems and were absent less from school than the other groups.
The researchers point out in the article that many adults
have entity theory/fixed mindset towards adolescents-that they aren’t likely to
change. Adults can make the entity/fixed
mindset in adolescents become more set and less likely to change leading to
more aggressive and inappropriate behavior.
The more schools use a legal approach to bullying prevention
and view the problem as being the “student transgressors” rather than the
circumstances/environment of the school culture and climate, the more the
problem of bullying will just fester. If
schools believed in “change” not just as possibility but also as a reality (or as I stated in previous
posts – acted on the Y assumption not the x assumption), then the students
would be follow and act on what is truly in their hearts and experience the
intrinsic joys that are possible with being a member of a caring community of
people. The adults would also like being
in that type of environment. The first
step is believing it is possible. Imagine!
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