Social and emotional issues for highly able learners

In the UK, the number of children with emotional and mental health issues is increasing. The organisation Potential Plus UK believes that many of these cases are amongst children with high learning potential, particularly those who find it difficult to cope with:

• increased stress levels exacerbated by their perfectionist traits
• isolation and loneliness caused by lack of friends and understanding within the classroom and beyond
• rigid structures within some school environments which do not address their needs.

The UK organisation Potential Plus has concluded that a growing number of high learning potential children at a younger age are facing more serious emotional and mental health issues, perhaps than ever before. Some of the issues from a wider trawl of research identifies some significant issues facing more able young people to be confidence and self-esteem; positive mindset; feedback and praise; striving to be perfect.

 Confidence and self-esteem

“Confidence means feeling sure of yourself and your abilities — not in an arrogant way, but in a realistic, secure way. Confidence isn’t about feeling superior to others. It’s a quiet inner knowledge that you’re capable.” (kidshealth.org)

Self-esteem is an overall sense of self-value and people with low self-confidence tend to have low self-esteem. Associated symptoms are anxiety, depression and academic stress (Nguyen et al., (2019).  Self-esteem is reported to have a significant impact on important life outcomes including health and social outcomes during adolescence and adulthood.  In contrast, high self-esteem is reported as an important predictive factor for students’ academic achievement (Mak et al., 2013). Young people with low self-esteem or who lack confidence often hide from social situations. They stop trying new things and avoid things that are challenging because by doing so, they feel safe. Self-esteem relies heavily on “social comparison” of one’s capabilities compared to ones’ peers. Beyond adolescence, there may be less dependence on feedback from others as individuals strive to create their own criteria for success and self-efficacy. Motivation and adjusting ones’ mindset are key to improving self-image and confidence.

Anxiety is the body’s way of preparing for some form of danger. Children with high learning potential are prone to feelings of anxiety. They feel things intensely, vividly, and are often aware of how different they are from their school friends, how they don’t fit in, that they are bored all of the time or struggle to concentrate. While most people will experience anxiety in certain situations, like preparing for an exam or taking part in a competitive game, for some children anxiety can become so intense that it has devastating consequences on their feelings of self-worth.

Social anxiety is fear related to being judged negatively or being embarrassed in social situations.  In school situations, gifted learners may experience social anxiety when asked to speak in front of the class, when expressing their opinions to others or even as part of peer interactions like group texts. Visible symptoms include difficulties concentrating, not talking or talking incessantly. They report headaches, stomach pains or sleep issues. They appear to worry constantly.

There are strategies for parents and teachers to help improve social self-esteem, that include reinforcing how much they are loved and their contributions are always valued. In school reinforce that their contributions influence outcomes. Academic challenge must be appropriate but acknowledge that some things may be difficult but express confidence that they will succeed. Parents and teachers should be role models.

Read the strategies by the Davidson Institute here. 

Useful Websites:

• Anxiety UK – A UK based charity supporting children and adults with anxiety disorders.
• Have I Got a Problem – Videos and Resources on mental health and addiction issues. 
• Youth Wellbeing Directory – Helps locate help for young people up to the age of 25 in the UK.
• Young Minds – a UK based charity supporting children and young adults with mental health issues. 

References

Mak K.K, et al., (2013) Body esteem in Chinese adolescents: effect of gender, age, and weight. Journal of Health Psychology 18(1): pp. 46–54.

Nguyen, D.T. et al., (2019) Low Self-Esteem and its association with anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation in Vietnamese Secondary school students: A Cross-Sectional Study. Frontiers in Psychiatry 10: 698.

Positive mindset

A mindset is way of thinking: a disposition or a frame of mind. Mindsets shape attitudes and attitudes reinforce mindsets. Cherry (2022) believes three components are involved.

1. An emotional component: how the object, person, issue or event affects feelings
2. A cognitive component: one’s thoughts and beliefs about the subject
3. A behavioural component: how attitude influences behaviour

Mindsets exist on a continuum from fixed to growth. Research by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, first presented a research-based model to show the impact of mindsets in the late 1990s. She showed how a person’s mindset sets the stage for either performance goals or learning goals. A student with a performance goal might be worried about how they look to others and avoid challenging work. On the other hand, a student with a learning goal will pursue interesting and challenging tasks in order to learn more. In later studies, Dweck found that people’s theories about their own intelligence had a significant impact on their motivation, effort and general approach to challenges. Those who believe their abilities are able to be changed are more likely to embrace challenges and persist despite failure. This model of the fixed vs. growth mindset shows how cognitive, affective and behavioural features are linked to one’s beliefs about the malleability of their intelligence (Dweck & Leggett, 1988).

A growth mindset is the belief that one can boost intelligence and develop new skills through effort, tenacity and learning from others. Talent alone is not enough. Fulfilling one’s individual potential requires perseverance and hard work.

In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success: How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential, Dweck describes two different mindsets:  a fixed-mindset and a growth mindset.

• In a fixed mindset, people erroneously believe their basic qualities, like intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success without effort.
• In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work and that their brain and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people possess these qualities.

Her research and that of others, have important implications for gifted learners. Findings argue, firstly, that a growth mindset is understanding that personal qualities and abilities can and do change. This can lead individuals to taking on challenges, persevering in the face of setbacks and becoming more effective learners. Telling children that they are very intelligent and implying that their success depends on this alone, fosters a fixed mindset. When these students inevitably later struggle, they tend to conclude that their ability is not high enough, and as a result they lose confidence and give up. Secondly, students may not understand or appreciate that working hard involves thinking hard. It involves reflecting on and implementing deep learning strategies to become more effective learners over time. Teachers and parents have important roles here in guiding gifted students to understand this. 

Mindset interventions complement and do not replace other traditional educational reforms. They do not teach students academic content or skills, restructure schools, or improve teacher training. Instead, they allow students to take better advantage of learning opportunities that are present in schools and tap into existing recursive processes to generate long-lasting effects . . . Indeed, [Mindset] interventions may make the effects of high-quality educational reforms such as improved instruction or curricula more apparent (Yeager & Walton, 2011).

Further resources on developing mindset are available at:  Resources for Teaching Growth Mindset | Edutopia.

Take the free mindset test from mindset works.

References

Dweck, C.S. & Leggett, E.L. (1988). A Social-Cognitive Approach to Motivation and Personality. Psychological Review, American Psychological Association. Vol. 95, No. 2, pp. 256-273

Dweck, C.S. (2016) Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House

Yeager, D. S., & Walton, G. M. (2011). Social-Psychological Interventions in Education: They’re Not Magic. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), pp. 267–301. 

Feedback and praise

Research has demonstrated that positive feedback and affirmation has benefits to children’s academic outcomes. Much has been written about it and its role in knowledge and skill enhancement and on motivation to learn. When effective feedback is combined with effective teaching, it can be very powerful in facilitating learning. Educationalist John Hattie (2007) placed it in the top ten influences for student achievement.

Feedback is “the process in which learners make sense of information about their performance and use it to enhance the quality of their work or learning strategies" (Henderson et al., 2018, p. 16). This definition of feedback goes beyond just providing comments about pupils’ work. It describes the process of using information resulting from a task to make improvement.  Feedback is most powerful when it helps learners negotiate the gap between where they are and where they need to be. It should address three fundamental questions:

• Where am I going? 
• How am I doing? 
• Where to next?

Doherty (2021) provides 10 essentials for effective feedback-  

1. Feedback resides in what is received and interpreted by a student, rather than what a teacher believes has taken place.
2. Feedback is only successful if pupils use it to improve their performance.
3. Feedback is more effective when the criteria for success are known in advance and where the goal to achieve success is shared by pupil(s) and teacher.
4. The purpose(s) of the feedback should be made clear and be specific.
5. It should be timely and given as soon as possible. 
6. It must assure learners that meeting cognitive challenge is part of learning.
7. It should be elaborative, i.e. telling the learner something about their work that they were not able to see for themselves.
8. It works best in a positive, affirming climate (including online classrooms).
9. It should help to teach more able learners to answer their own questions and develop self-regulation skills.
10. Feedback must challenge pupils to invest effort in moving forwards.

Praise is a complex social communication with the potential to either enhance or undermine children’s intrinsic motivation (Corpus & Good, 2021). Research has found associations between (parent and teacher) use of praise and school-aged children’s academic outcomes. Henderlong and Lepper (2002), found praise is positively associated with various outcomes for school-aged children, including self-perceptions of ability, interest in and motivation for completing the task and the development of wider academic skills. In agreement, Bąk and Leśniak (2020) found that praise following failure resulted in increased self-perceptions of intelligence for high school students. Parental praise was found to positively predict the learning goals of young children (Gunderson et al., 2013).

Not all praise is beneficial. Praise that comments on a child’s abilities based on their performance known as person praise is repeatedly shown to have negative effects, particularly for children with low self-esteem (Brummelman et al., 2016). After receiving person praise, children may interpret their performance as indicative of ability and develop ability attributions for successes and failures, increasing their vulnerability to a helpless response to failure. When giving praise, adults need to be mindful that praise may have the opposite effect of what was intended. On the other hand, praising hard work or strategies used, things that children control, has been shown to support a growth mindset. But simply praising children for working hard is not enough. Exhorting students to work hard would be an attempt to directly change behaviours without changing the underlying belief about the nature of abilities. Praising effort alone that is not linked to progress or, telling learners they can do ‘anything’, fails to create a growth mindset culture.

For example, a novice teacher who sees a student trying hard but not making progress may think “well, at least she’s working hard, so I’ll praise her effort”. This strategy is unlikely to lead to success. Instead, the teacher should coach the student to try different approaches to working, studying, and learning, so that she is thinking more deeply (i.e. mentally working harder) to become a better learner, e.g. “It’s not just about effort. You also need to learn skills that let you use your brain in a smarter way... to get better at something” (Yeager & Dweck, 2012).

An interesting piece of research from Gunderson et al. (2013) showed that boys receive more than twice the amount of process praise about learning skills than girls, who are more likely to be praised as a person (outcomes praise).

For further information see Dweck explaining the effects of praise.

References

Bąk, O. & Leśniak, M.M. (2020) Can praise undo the unfavourable effects of earlier failures?, Educational Psychology, 40:10, pp. 1287-1305,

Brummelman, E., Crocker, J., & Bushman, B. J. (2016). The praise paradox: When and why

praise backfires in children with low self-esteem. Child Development Perspectives, 10, pp. 111–115.

Corpus, J. H., & Good, K. A. (2021). The effects of praise on children’s intrinsic motivation revisited. In E. Brummelman (ed.), Psychological Perspectives on Praise. Abington, UK: Routledge.

Gunderson, E. et al., (2013). Parental praise to 1-3 year olds predicts children’s motivation. Child Development, pp. 1-16

Hattie, J. & Timperley, H. (2007) The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research. Vol. 77, No. 1, pp. 81–112 

Henderlong, J., & Lepper, M. R. (2002). The effects of praise on children’s intrinsic motivation: A review and synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 128, pp. 774-795.

Henderson, M. et al., (2018). Feedback for learning: closing the assessment loop. Australian Government Department of Education and Training.

Yeager, D.S. & Dweck, C.S (2012) Mindsets That Promote Resilience: When Students Believe that Personal Characteristics Can Be Developed. Educational Psychologist, 47 (4) pp.302-314

Striving to be perfect

Many children with high learning potential suffer from the negative aspects of perfectionism. Perfectionism in children with high learning potential is caused by their advanced perception. They understand what carrying out a task as well as expected looks like. Their perfectionism is compounded by almost always being able to fulfil that expectation and not experiencing a degree of failure or falling short of expectation very often. Some children, partly because of perfectionism and partly due to their intense emotions, suffer with extreme self-criticism and are never able to live up the high standards they set for themselves.

Perfectionism can result in depression, anxiety and other mental health problems. The energy behind perfectionism comes largely from a desire to avoid failure. Fear of failure is a function of their unrealistically high standards and their desire to do things well. Their fear is that if they don’t do it perfectly, they expose some inner weakness or vulnerability. They need to be guided to understand that there are better goals for them than perfectionism, such as perseverance, flexibility, and diligence. In adopting such high standards, those with higher levels of perfectionism set themselves up for the failure that is damaging for their self-esteem. These individuals need help recognizing what is realistically achievable and require guidance on setting appropriate goals.

Perfectionism is recognised as a psychological factor that can enhance or interfere with the healthy adjustment of students who are academically gifted (Grugan et al., 2021). Whilst it might motivate some gifted learners to work hard and strive for success, perfectionism can also hinder healthy adjustment in learning environments. Learners who are perfectionistic, often report greater negative reactions to mistakes and tend to respond more adversely to failure. The two main dimensions of perfectionism are perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns:

• Perfectionistic strivings capture the extent to which individuals set and strive for unrealistically high personal standards. 
• Perfectionistic concerns capture the extent to which individuals are excessively concerned about mistakes, fear negative evaluation, and worry that their performance is never good enough. 

These two dimensions can be exhibited to different degrees in students. Research suggests that perfectionistic concern is the most problematic dimension in the classroom and generally have the biggest influence on learners. Hill argues that schools need to ensure that they have appropriate policies and referral mechanisms to provide support for more able learners who develop some of the extreme consequences of perfectionism such as burnout and depression. While perfectionism may not lead to these types of outcomes for all learners, it is conceivable that teachers need to be prepared for and be able to help recognise early signs.

According to researchers Andrew Hill and colleagues at York St. John University (UK), classroom environments can actually promote perfectionism. Some classrooms have perfectionistic qualities that can increase levels of perfectionism among those in the environment as well as having a detrimental impact on everyone else. This is concerning as perfectionistic environments are likely to hinder learners’ capacity to thrive and contribute to a range of negative outcomes, such as greater stress and poorer wellbeing. A key message is that it is likely that learners will know what is expected of them in terms of behaviours and grades. However, what is most important about these targets and expectations is that they are realistic and adaptable for each learner. Standards that are personally challenging and lie within reach with concerted effort are the most motivating and offer the greatest development opportunity for (all) students.  How perfectionistic is your classroom? - NACE

Further information from Andrew Hill is available on YouTube here. 

Reference

Grugan, M.C., Hill, A.P., Madigan, D.J. et al. (2021) Perfectionism in Academically Gifted Students: A Systematic Review. Educational Psychology Review 33, pp. 1631–1673