Competence

I often hear parents telling their children "it wasn't that good" right after their cello recital, or not giving any feedback at all. I understand they just want their kids to practice more and play better, but this kind of feedback usually isn't very effective: a student that plays in a recital should always be rewarded for his courage, strength and resilience to face an audience. Specially in performative arts, where you practice for months just to stay 5 minutes on stage: if you mess it up, that's frustrating enough.

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That's why I'm a bit against evaluating on-stage performances, and when I'm obliged to do it I always give 100%. For me, if you step into a stage and play, you already have your feedback: you did it. That's always good even if you don't play that well. I do evaluate performances, of course, but in a private environment, often with the presence of a good stringed instrument teacher that can advise me and my students on how can we get better at teaching and learning.

Competence leads to motivation, because the human being is naturally prone to do things he's good at. If you're learning how to dance and everyone around you says you're awful, you may still do it for some time but you'll eventually lose motivation to dance. On the other hand, if everyone lies to you saying you're a great dancer when you're not (extrinsic reward), you'll eventually you'll lose track of the reality and it won't be challenging enough for you to keep doing it. Some teachers are aware of this so they avoid giving feedback at all: students will seek for feedback elsewhere so you may loose control of the situation. Never lose control of your student's motivation!

Here are some ideas to promote competence in schools:

• Understanding what's a kid's achievement. - I'll start with this one because it's very important. If you ask a 2-year-old kid to draw something he will just scribble some incomprehensible stuff in a paper and say it's a house. You need to give him feedback, but instead of focusing on the final drawing, you can focus on how did he draw. Was he happy? Was he focused? Was he putting a lot of effort on it? In that case, he's a winner so you say it's a great drawing. Because in his view, he just achieved something valuable. Don't expect kids to draw like adults, because it's not supposed to. Here is a clip of Yo-Yo Ma (one of the best cellists ever) playing with 7 years old:
  Hear this gritty sound? A bit out of tune and all? But it's a great performance for a 7-year old kid. He sounds like a 7-year old, not like a professional cellist. He then proceeded as a healthy talented young cellist, and today he's a living legend.
• Accepting their ideas. - They may not be the best ideas in your view, but they're their ideas so you should do everything possible to carry them on. It happens often if you do implement a school assembly. Remember that teaching is your job, but they're the ones learning from mistakes, and in the meantime you gave them the opportunity to decide and be competent, while developing their autonomy. Unless they're dangerous, illegal, or really very bad ideas, let them happen.
• Make wise use of positive/negative reinforcement. - Negative reinforcement is not punishment (that's a common mistake). If you drive without the seat belt, the car will ring a bell until you do: that's negative reinforcement. You put the seat belt on just to shut up the bell, but you know it's a good thing. Negative reinforcement doesn't mess up with a children's motivation and makes them do things you can then grab on to give positive feedback. They feel competent and it raises their autonomy and intrinsic motivation. Constant negative reinforcement is bad, but such is constant positive reinforcement, so you should aim for an equilibrium.

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• Start seeing competence as a mechanism instead of a reward. - A student needs to feel he's competent doing what he does, and that doesn't mean spoiling him with positive feedback (extrinsic rewards) when he's messing up. One approach is to keep establishing small achievable goals and having them done by the end of the class. A student that leaves the classroom without achieving something will have no intrinsic motivation to practice at home! For example, if you need a student to solve a difficult maths equation and it keeps doing it wrong, just try a less difficult equation. If he solves it, you probably won't even need to give feedback: he just did it to himself. So he feels competent at it and will be prone to do some other equations at home... Maybe even doing the one initially proposed. Competence as a mechanism.

Here are some posts I read recently and I'd like to promote:

Homemade bird feeders for wintering birds by @eunice.sousa

How to educate yourself by @skycae

Where I'm At Currently With Care Package 4.0 by @alexbeyman

Algarve - Portugal by @portugalcoin

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_{Source: @runicar}

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