Self-Belief

“One thing at any rate we know with certainty, that no teaching, no information becomes knowledge to any of us until the individual mind has acted upon it, translated it, transformed, absorbed it, to reappear, like our bodily food, in forms of vitality. Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.”

~ from Charlotte Mason’s 6th Volume

I was recently reading an article titled “Improving Student Engagement.” The authors - Zypke & Leach - came up with four research perspectives, one of which was “Motivation and Agency.” They write, “Engaged students are intrinsically motivated and want to exercise their agency,” and one of their proposals for action is to “enhance students’ self-belief.”

In their section about self-belief, they bring up constructivism, which is an idea some people in the Charlotte Mason community don’t like very much. Instead of seeing what constructivism and Charlotte Mason-“ism” have in common (“education is about students constructing their own knowledge” and “no information becomes knowledge...until the individual mind has acted upon it”), some people in the Charlotte Mason community reject constructivism because of what constructivism has become: students seated in groups doing project-based learning, with the classroom teacher as a “guide on the side.” Some people in the Charlotte Mason community, and the “classical” education community, believe that direct instruction is best.

But let’s assume that education is about students acting upon information, translating it, transforming it, absorbing it, carrying it across the divide that exists between the teacher and student, changing it from one shape to another.

Zypke & Leach continue: “The self-theories learners bring to their learning impact motivation, agency and engagement.” The ideas we have about ourselves have an effect on why we do what we do. This is always true, but what implications does this have in regard to learning?

I used to think I didn’t like math. I used to think that people had either a numbers brain or a letters brain, and that I had a letters brain. Then, I was forced to teach pre-algebra and my thinking changed. I realized that, in school, I’d decided that I wasn’t good at math because math took work. Teaching pre-algebra helped me see that math is just a language. My self-belief changed. I decided that I was capable of developing a deeper understanding of math, and the result is that now I love it.

I think it’s important to give Gemma lots of opportunities to do things that take work - taking swim lessons, learning a dance routine for a recital, learning to play a new song on the piano. When she is working on something new, we tell her, “You are capable of this. Remember when you were learning [fill in the blank], and it was hard, and you thought you couldn’t do it? But you did it. And now you can do it like it’s no big deal. You’ll get this too. Not today. But you’ll keep practicing, and you will get it.”