Good points. 

There are our attitudes as teachers and the impact they have on learners' success, and then there are the techniques we choose.
 
This may be making a wild leap, but your comments make me think of the NCSALL study in which ABE teachers used Multiple Intelligence techniques with their students (see Focus on Basics Vol 3A, http://www.ncsall.net/index.php?id=161).

 Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences proposes that there are eight ---spatial, linguistic, interpesonal, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, naturalist, intrapersonal --- and maybe more identifiable intelligences. THe teachers  helped learners determine their "intelligence" and created lessons that enabled the learners to use it to build their academic skills. Teachers found this to be a very successful way to engage learners. It certainly would be a way to value learners'strengths genuinely.
Barb Garner 

Barb Garner  




=====================
From: "Anastasiya A. Lipnevich" <ana at optimaltec.com>
Date: 2006/09/26 Tue PM 05:51:07 CDT
To: The Focus on Basics Discussion List <focusonbasics at nifl.gov>
Subject: [FocusOnBasics 495] Re: Low Self-Esteem: Myth or Reality? Some	comments

  Hi Barb! You raised intriguing questions and I would love to hear educators' thoughts on this matter. >From my personal observations, informal conversations, and formal interviews with adult literacy teachers, I noticed that educators could be roughly split into two groups: those who believe that one of the key concerns of adult literacy is to raise learners' self-esteem <i>because it's very low, and unless they do it, students cannot succeed, and those who think that teachers need to teach students skills and knowledge, and that self-esteem will naturally follow. If we look at Bandura's research, he believed that the relationship between self-efficacy (a concept, similar to self-esteem) and achievement follows the latter pattern -- you learn to do something well and your feeling of self-efficacy goes up, which, in turn, affects what you do in the future. Years of research showed that attempts to artificially build up students' self-esteem by praising every little thing they do (playing a "cheerleaders' role", as Hal puts it) and such, are very unlikely to lead to increased sense of competence and self-worth. Therefore, starting off from the assumption about learners' low self-esteem would seem to be not quite as beneficial to students as simply trying to help them learn. The study definitely needs replication -- we can't really generalize our findings since only one adult learning center was used as our research setting. I have been recently contacted by a GED instructor from one of the Illinois colleges, who is interested in replicating my study. I am really looking forward to hear about the findings. If they are similar to mine, it will certainly make the case stronger. Thank you for your comments!Ana.This discussion is rich and fascinating. I'm very taken with Anastasiya's research, particularly since her findings resonate with much of my classroom experience. Of course, it is only one study and certainly needs to be replicated with similar and different populations to see how robust the findings are. In the meantime, I wonder how tied we are as teachers to the idea that our students have low self esteem. What role does that idea have in our views of ourselves as teachers?Barb GarnerEditor, Focus on Basics

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