Teach Middle East Magazine Jan - Mar 2020 Issue 2 Volume 7 | Page 18

Sharing Good Practice
TEACHING THAT HELPS CHILDREN AND
YOUNG PEOPLE GROW THEIR INTELLIGENCE
BY: PROFESSOR DEBORAH EYRE
T
here was a time when educators
thought girls could not achieve
as highly as boys? We thought
it was genetic because that’s
what most psychologists believed. Well
life has certainly proved otherwise. So
why are we still so wedded to the idea
that some other students are incapable
of achieving highly? We continue to
think that our ‘potential’ defines us
and that this will inevitably define
educational outcomes. We routinely
institutionalise this by calling students
more or less able.
We are wedded to the Bell Curve.
This was early 20th century thinking.
Now we know better. Most of us have
already accepted that innate ability
does not account for everything. We
are all familiar with the nature versus
nurture arguments and have accepted
that environmental contexts, family
background and support can play a
part. Some of us have even adopted
Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset’ ideas.
Too many, however are wedded to the
idea that these are merely additional
or even marginal factors. In the end,
we still believe that you either have
what it takes to succeed in school or
you haven’t. Our research found that
nearly 60% of teachers in international
schools believe that they have children
in class who cannot perform highly in
school 1 .
As a result, education has become
more and more committed to
measuring how much cognitive
potential each child has and using tests
to define them. On the basis of these
results we make confident predictions
from an increasingly early age about
who will do well and exactly how well
we expect them to do. Schools doing
particularly well are said to add-more-
value but this is still adding value to a
child’s predicted, innate potential.
But here’s the truth. Intelligence is one
of the least inheritable traits as it has
no obvious genetic link. Throughout
a child’s lifetime, as a result of their
experiences, changes to DNA occur and
it is these that determine a child’s skill
development and intelligence levels.
Just like with girls’ education, when
you ensure that students have the
right learning opportunities, the right
support and the self-belief that they
can achieve highly, then most of them
do. Research from a whole variety of
directions indicates this. Neuro-science
tells us that the brain is exquisitely
plastic and can be developed 2 . So
it’s not a case of born to succeed or
born to fail. We can build intelligence,
build new neural pathways and make
high performance the norm in our
classroom and in our school.
And not only that, a new generation
of teachers and entire schools are
emerging who want to work in this
way and to challenge themselves to
see just how successful their classroom
or school can be. They are High
Performance Learning teachers and
schools.
1. 200 staff and over 700 students were surveyed by HPL Autumn 2019
2. Jaeggi (2008) Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory
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Term 2 Jan - Mar 2020
Class Time
Of course, when you are building
brains it’s not all straightforward. The
journey for some is more difficult but