The summer holidays are a fabulous time to reconnect with interests that you may not find time for during school term. These interests are what bring breadth and depth to your lessons so it is important that you nurture them and yourselves over the break.
This summer I have been inspired by Applied Positive Psychology and in particular the work of Martin Seligman. The success of our instruction is influenced so much by the psychological state of our students. As we know, building rapport with individuals and developing a positive classroom atmosphere will influence student learning outcomes – and the teacher’s stress levels at the end of the day!
One concept that may help us with this is the Losada ratio. This study found that there is a “sweet spot” for the ideal ratio of positive to negative comments in our daily interactions. Roughly 3 positive to 1 negative statement was found to result in flourishing companies – both economically and socially. There is a need for honest negative feedback though and being too positive (13 positive statements to 1 negative) was found to result in a lack of credibility and not enough direction for success and growth to occur.
It is easy for us to fall into the trap of only correcting behaviour rather than acknowledge what is going well. When I refer to behaviour here though, I am also including student language skill development. When teachers provide spoken or written feedback to students they tend to provide predominately feedback about how to improve. Whilst this can be useful, it is important we aim higher at reaching the Losada ratio sweet spot. If we fail to acknowledge that a student has used correct stroke order and a great connective between two statements then they may not realise that what they are doing is impressive and they will be less likely to repeat the good habits next time. Students are not always aware of their strengths so it is important that we look for evidence of their progress and report it back to them as a positive comment. Using growth mindset language can greatly help with this as well. Take a look at the two examples below of teacher feedback regarding a student error.
Feedback 1:
You have written the dash in シドニー the wrong way. You should write the dash horizontally when writing a text horizontally. (Note the underlines are for emphasis here and would not be included when given to the student. This is explanation feedback but the terms “wrong” and “should” do not reflect growth mindset terminology.)
Feedback 2:
I was really impressed to see you stretch yourself to include the new kanji from chapter 2 of Jblog 2. Take a look at the kanji index on page 125 of Jblog 2 and see if you can find the reason I have highlighted this kanji. See me though if you can’t see what I am referring to. (Growth mindset language used to highlight an error in kanji without labelling it as a mistake. A strategy to assist the students in making the correction themselves is provided instead. This has the potential to increase their feelings of self-efficacy.)
You can see from these examples that it is still possible to provide useful feedback to students about their mistakes using more positive language and thus bumping up your Losada ratio.
(There are more examples of how to do this in our Stage 5 Formative Assessment Writing Resource. Check out the link https://www.mantenresources.com.au/teachers/blog/new-growth-mindset-formative-assessment-resource/ if this is an area of interest for you.)
Good luck with those Losada ratios this term and remember that they work for both your interactions with students and your colleagues. Let’s spread some positivity in term 1!
Reference : Flourish by Martin E.P. Seligman (2013) published by Atria, New York.
