Call me n
eurotic but the phrase “good luck” has never done much good for my psyche. Although I appreciate the good intentions embedded in the delivery, the phrase has always generated more nerves than confidence, as though I’ll need to rely on luck in order to achieve success. As it turns out, I’m not alone. A belief in luck has been found to undermine students’ academic performance.
After decades of research, we now know that students have theories about why they succeed or fail and these theories provide important insights into their behaviors in the classroom.
Students who feel that both their successes and failures are the result of causes within their control, like the amount effort they exerted on a problem or the extent to which they studied for a test, are likely to demonstrate high levels of motivation, engagement and persistence. In contrast, students who report that the reasons for their success and failure are out of their control, rather the result of the actions of their teacher or due to luck, are more likely to behave in a helpless manner, reducing effort, strategy use and motivation in the face of a challenge.
Yet even with this information in our educational arsenal, the phrase “good luck” still prevails as the dominant expression of encouragement lfor students facing a challenge.
There seem to be two reasons why the term is so pervasive. First, luck does have some role in student success. Consider the spelling bee contestant who receives one of the 500 words she’s been studying as the contest tie breaker, luck is certainly central to her success and our hope, as educators, is that hard working students will always have luck on their side. But the second reason for the phrase’s popularity is that there is no sufficient alternative. Although expressions like “good effort” or “show how hard you’ve worked” don’t quite have the same ring to them as the original, it may be worth expanding our encouragement repertoire to include phrases that emphasize the power students have over their own future.
llow directions, expand their vocabulary, and strengthen their memory. Following a recipe can be particularly effective for children with language based learning disabilities. They often struggle with directions that are only delivered in an oral manner. Learning opportunities that couple oral directions with visual and tactile experiences are more likely to ensure the successful encoding and retrieval of memories. Overall, there is nothing better than ending an afternoon of hard work, and hard thinking, with a scrumptious dessert.
getting children to edit their work. Although many students have been taught the role of editing in the writing process from an early age, it does not make the act of taking one last look over their work any easier. Perhaps it is our perfectionist tendencies that dread finding mistakes. On the other hand, it maybe that we like time to revel in the feelings of relief associated with writing the last line of an assignment. The glory of putting the pencil down and exhaling “finished” is quickly dashed when you need to pick it back up and read over the assignment again looking for errors.
