An Interview with Ronald Ferguson

For more than a decade, economist Ronald Ferguson has studied achievement gaps. In 2002, he created the Tripod Project for School Improvement, a professional development initiative that uses student and teacher surveys to measure classroom conditions and student engagement by race and gender. The findings inform strategies to raise achievement and narrow achievement gaps. A senior research associate at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Ferguson is director and faculty cochair of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University. He spoke with the Harvard Education Letter about the most recent findings from the Tripod Project surveys.

The Way I See It ... Positive Attitude Training

Annie Lawler of Breathing Space for Business explains how to instil positivity in the workplace by training the mind.

TrainingZone

The mind is incredibly powerful and our thoughts and beliefs influence our words and actions either positively or negatively. If we’re aware of the influences and conditioning that affect our behaviour, we can take positive action to reverse negative trends.

Naturally, we all have certain periods in our lives which are challenging and provide us with some serious hurdles to overcome. This is the nature of life. And, some people's genetic make-up makes them more susceptible to periods of anxiety than others. It’s also true that a lot of our 'conditioning' or learned behaviour as children and from those in authority throughout our lives can affect how we feel and how we respond to situations.

Add to that the many external influences which affect our moods and create anxious states, such as TV programmes, news reports in papers, periodicals and on TV, films, video games and so on and you can start to see what we have to contend with every day of our lives.

Do these really affect our moods and behaviour? Well the short answer is a resounding ‘yes’ and that’s why marketers, politicians et al spend so much money and time on advertising and PR campaigns. Repetition of messages and images start to infiltrate our subconscious (and sometimes conscious) thoughts and behaviour and there’s lots of research and books which confirm this school of thought.

Learning from Failure

Today has been a relaxing day of watching college football and cheering for my favorite teams. I have especially been impressed by the recent rising of teams that had suffered devastating set backs last year only to make emboldened drives for success this season. I wondered to myself could this success have been possible if these teams would have not suffered the pain of setback I then wondered how this principle could fit into an educational environment.

In an age where we want to protect, shield and hide students from the unpleasantness of temporary set-back, this is doing a great disservice to the student and is detrimental to the learning process.

The discomfort of setback offers us a time of deep and serious reflection; reflection which might not have occurred if the discomfort were absent. In our collective realities that we call life, discomfort and setback are entities which we must contend with. By not allowing learners the opportunity to engage with these entities their capacities to deal with them in the real world would be severely hampered.

Competition offers a controlled environment in which important human capacities can be honed and trained. Yes success and failure are a part of the dynamic of competition. Setbacks humble us in the face of future success, making us good stewards of the gifts we oft receive.

Rising from the ashes of perceived defeat is an essential skill invaluable to human development. Perseverance in the face of perceived failure is the key to a fruitful and successful life. We should not rob learners of the opportunity to discover something truly timeless and invaluable within themselves.