Ability - why do so many still think it's fixed?

[Cortina]

I've just been reading about CLAPS - or current levels of achievement or performance.

So much research has been carried out about intelligence being expandable recently. In fact I think it has been proved that intelligence is 'learnable' and yet I see so many comments about a child of 'x ability' and one of 'y ability'.

It's depressing and it's limiting. In judging children's ability and suggesting it has a ceiling we are still making fatalistic predictions about what we can expect from them.

Someone on here recently was extolling the virtues of Carol Dweck and her research (see book, Mindset). I'd started a thread on it a while ago and would have been interested to chat to them. In my opinion Mindset should be compulsory reading for every parent and every teacher, it is a book that has changed the way I run my life.

You sound like you're trying to flog the book.
Are you?

I guess I never bought into the idea that intelligence is fixed, anyway, so the book premise is kind of obivous (see 1 star Amazon review).

I do know what you mean about many people getting invested in the idea that intelligence is static, it's the thinking behind some of the G&T programmes in schools in the USA, for instance.

Two words- League tables.

If you examine most data schools base their student's performance on, it is -at best- flimsy.

But pseudo-scientific collation of student's achievement in relation to perceived 'ability' makes for easy, bite-sized stamps of 'quality' or lack thereof, and gives the illusion that two completely different schools can be compared objectively.

Dweck should have me on commission! I'd be a millionaire!

Just reading New Kinds of Smart by Claxton and Lucas. I'd recommend that for something deeper and more relevant to the UK system and what we 'value' in schools/how we see intelligence.

lljkk - I was interested to read Claxton's observation (in 'What's The Point of School' - another good read on the subject) that:

Less than half the children who came top on the national tests at eleven go on to remain in the top 5% at GCSE. Despite such statistics the Times Educational Supplement of March 2006 reported that the Specialist Schools and Academics Trust (SSAT) had drafted plan with DfES to encourage universities to establish links with the pre-teen students who excel in the year six tests. The Trust's chairman is convinced that 'bright eleven year olds' should achieve 3 As at A-level and wants secondary school heads 'held accountable' if those students don't make it. The SSAT's register of 'gifted and talented' students is being created so they won't be 'let down' by secondary schools.

Those who get on this list could benefit from the so-called 'pygmalion effect' or self fulfilling prophecy whether their inclusion is justified or not or they may suffer from the weight of pressure that being 'registered bright' places on them and become more of an anxious learner as a result. Those who don't make the list could suffer form a reverse pygmalion effect and stand less chance of pushing their way to the front if they happen to be a late developer.

It also takes no account of extraneous factors in the child's life which impact on achievement.

But like I say, it's because they cannot come up with an accurate way of measuring schools' performance.

What other methods could they use?

I think it would be a huge stride forward if we could banish talk of ability groupings and ability tables certainly from primary schools. I think (current) attainment tables would be a better term.

I believe 'ability tables' encourage people to buy into a belief in the 'fixed' nature of ability. Threads here are shot through with references to 'ability'- x child is more able than y child and so on. It suggests that most really believe that ability has a ceiling and that this 'ability' is decided very early, in reception or year one.

How about no tables at all?

The notion of 'parental choice' is merely an illusion- the 'best' school may be on the other side of the country.

Agree that the idea that 'ability' is fixed is ludicrous.

The best schools have no 'ability' tables at all, the curriculum is rolled out to each individual child in an appropriate way. Unfortunately in our large (ish) primary classroom a lack of resources makes it impossible to teach like this.

Our 'ability' groupings are fairly stagnant (not the norm apparently). We have only on group - your general ability is decided in both English and Maths and this determines where you sit. My children are making progress so it isn't all bad news.

What's curious is how all the parents now have decided that X in the top group is 'clever' and Y in the bottom group is rather dim. No one seems to see it in terms of current attainment, which it is of course. Talking to others this is fairly representative of how 'ability' is seen and understood in the classroom. I may be mistaken of course.

As I said on your other thread, I don't think teachers do talk about ability tables - parents might.

"The best schools have no 'ability' tables at all, the curriculum is rolled out to each individual child in an appropriate way. Unfortunately in our large (ish) primary classroom a lack of resources makes it impossible to teach like this."
What lack of resources? We have the tiniest classrooms imaginable in our newish building (the building regulations have changed since it opened in 2002). My groups (which is what most teachers refer to, not ability groups) change weekly, sometimes daily, depending on what I am teaching - a child who is fantastic at number may require extra support in work involving measuring, for example.

Providing a curriculum which precisely matches a child's needs doesn't require extra resources, or space.

I don't 'differentiate' in terms of 'ability' just in terms of skills/attainment which varies within an individual child over time (children develop unevenly). I also find differentiation is best as a light touch thing. The whole idea of scaffolding a child means that you should be aiming to reach the learning objective with everybody; although that may be in different ways, the ways cannot be TOO different or you are losing the point of the objective. Consequently, as Feenie says, you don't actually need extra resources to any great degree.

BUT I have noticed that when the children go to take the selection tests there are a lot of reasoning tests (and I know that these are actually forms of intelligence test - quite traditional ones too). I have also noticed a pattern within families and that the outcomes of these tests are very difficult to improve by more than 10%.

This suggests something to me.

I will look at your book though.

Alicatte, this book is very well researched and interesting on the subject:

Bill Lucas and Guy Claxton, New Kinds of Smart - How the Science of Learnable Intelligence Is Changing Education.

Thank you Cortina

I think POTENTIAL is fixed but ability can improve within that potential IYSWIM

well put, oldandgrey

if it was merely a case of opportunity+growth mindest, then it would be difficult to explain that many young musicians were hothoused in the same way as Mozart, some of them genuinely believed that they were geniuses and that the sky was their limit- yet the work that they produced is not on the same level as the Magic Flute

if opportunity and mindest was all there, how come what they wrote simply isn't as good as Mozart?

have seen this a lot in academic circles: postgraduate students who have had access to top class tuition, who themselves have believed there was no limits to what they could do- but the work they produce, after years of hard work+oppportunity+high expectations, is still simply not intelligent

In fact, far better work is often written by people who doubt themselves and who have never been told that there are no limits.