Fostering Young Children's Desire to LearnFriday, October 3, 2003 Gleacher Center, 450 N. Cityfront Plaza Drive, Chicago, IL 60611 Funding was provided by the McCormick Tribune Foundation and the Harris Foundation.
About the Symposium
Young Children's Motivation: Feedback that Promotes Learning Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. For many years the research literature depicted young children as universally eager to learn and undaunted by setbacks. However, research began to show that a substantial proportion of young children become discouraged when they encounter difficulty and lose their ability to formulate effective learning strategies. In many children, this results in a decreased sense of self-worth. Dr. Dweck first described work that documents this pattern and its underlying psychology. She went on to describe the kinds of feedback that teachers and parents give to young children (including praise for the child's intelligence and goodness) that can inadvertently promote these "helpless" reactions. She contrasted this feedback with more process-oriented kinds of feedback that promote more hardy, resilient reactions in young children. Finally, she described recent interventions, growing out of this program of work, that succeed in enhancing students' motivation and achievement. Carol S. Dweck is the William B. Ransford Professor of Psychology at Columbia University. She is a leading researcher in the area of student motivation, having pioneered the study of how children's self-beliefs and goals influence their learning and academic achievement. Her recent books include "Motivation and Self-Regulation Across the Life Span" (with Jutta Heckhausen) and "Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development," which has been translated into several languages. In recognition of her contributions, she was recently elected to The American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
When Children Start Behind: Early Academic Pressure on Low-Income Children Deborah Stipek , Ph.D. As the result of current stress on standards and accountability, teachers in the early grades of elementary school feel pressed to raise students' performance on standardized achievement tests. Expectations for the development of academic skills are, as a result, increasing even in kindergarten. These trends could have negative consequences for children from economically disadvantaged families. Dr. Stipek shared findings from her research which show that children from low-income families are far behind their more affluent peers in basic academic skills when they begin kindergarten. She discussed the ways in which rigid expectations for skill acquisition may frustrate students who have further to go to achieve them. She also discussed research suggesting that even within a very low-income sample, children from the most disadvantaged families receive the lowest quality instruction in the beginning elementary grades, further disadvantaging children who are already at high risk for school failure. She presented the implications of these and related findings for early childhood education and for other educational policies, such as the age of kindergarten entry and the length of the kindergarten day. Deborah Stipek is the James Quillen Dean and Professor of Education at Stanford University. She served for five years on the Board on Children, Youth, and Families for the National Academy of Sciences, currently chairs the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Increasing High School Students' Engagement & Motivation to Learn, and is a member of the National Academy of Education. Dr. Stipek served for 10 years as Director of the Corinne Seeds University Elemetary School and the Urban Education Studies Center at UCLA.
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