Victory is Mine!The Power of Keeping Track of Progress
Join me, for a moment, on a geek journey back to my days as an education professor, when I helped graduate students learn about work based on John Hattie’s work (2009).
Hattie is an Australian educational researcher who synthesized over 800 meta-studies involving more than 80 million students worldwide*. In a nutshell, he set up a system to statistically rate the effectiveness of all the methods schools and teachers use to help students learn. He then listed the various interventions in descending order from most to least effective.
Understandably, this list became a holy grail for teacher educators. We could, with statistical authority, now say: “If you use these methods, your kids will learn better.” Happily for us, it was not new news, but it provided back-up for helping nascent educators shift their practice from the way they had been taught during their own schooling to more effective methodology that works for everyone, not just the school-inclined.
Happily, what Hattie’s work identifies as the most effective learning method is also one of the easiest: having the learner keep track of progress.
End of mini-lesson. Here’s why this is relevant to academic anxiety, but bear with me.
Anxious learners by definition want to be high performers, yet barriers unrelated to their ability to succeed academically stymie them. Identifying those barriers and devising ways to circumvent or overcome them return these learners to their expected success. Often, those strategies are counter-intuitive to methods generally used by “good students.”
Because anxious learners have “bought into” school from an early age, their academic behavior is grounded in “good student” habits and expectations built throughout early schooling: “Sit at your desk and work quietly.” “Set aside two hours at night to do homework.” “Take notes during the lecture.” “Don’t talk to your neighbor.” “Keep track of all your assignments in folders on your laptop.” While these are excellent practices for the “neurotypical,” they don’t tend to work for the neurodiverse.”
Neurodiverse learners are generally frustrated by their attempts to adhere to this advice, perceiving their difficulty following these practices as a moral failing. They don’t know to consider that it’s misguided advice for their learning style.Part of the work of identifying performance obstacles is figuring out why the “good advice” doesn’t work, then convincing the learner to abandon the expected practices. For a student who has spent a decade trying to be a good student by following the “rules,” this behavior change (AKA learning) is easier said than done.
When a learner finds a strategy that works for them, using that strategy can go against the expectations they hold for themselves. An example:
You may recall my student who lacked the spatial ability to make sense of a building layout; he had to take a friend to find the professor’s office. This required overcoming the embarrassment of asking a friend for help. Afterall, who can’t find a clearly labeled room? Due to this, it was an entire semester between identifying the barrier and strategizing a work-around and actually enacting the strategy by asking a friend. (See previous blog: “Turning Setbacks into Victories: One Learner’s Story”.)
This mental shift to actually use effective strategies can be the hardest part. I call them “Victories.” Here’s where the power of keeping track of progress comes into play.
Changing ingrained behavior is difficult for our brains. Just think how hard it is to break a habit. Keeping track of victories is a tangible way to see results and shift behavior. It gives the learner a chance to celebrate doing something that works, eventually overriding the previous behavior. Remember I said you can’t unlearn something, you can only learn something new to eventually change previous learning.
I have my learners make a victory tally sheet. I ask them to mark it any time they use a new strategy. They almost never do, but it gives me a tool for reflection when we meet to go over what they have done to make themselves successful. My learners’ self-imposed high standards incline them to discount their small wins. Guided reflection interrupts that process. Here’s how it goes:
Learner: I went to office hours and the professor explained the stats homework.
Me: Hang on! You went to office hours? How did you get there?
Learner: Oh. . I asked my friend to go with me after lunch.
Me: Victory!! Do you see what you did? Victory! Victory! Victory! Give yourself a check mark!
John Hattie is correct. When my learners start keeping track of strategy implementation - their victories - behavior quickly changes. Anxiety disappears.
*In my humble opinion, John Hattie must have a stable of long-suffering graduate assistants. Just sayin’.