The dispositions we draw on can help us for so many everyday aspects of our lives, are those that help us learn and solve problems, and they are available to everyone if we know when and how to utilise them. A disposition is ‘a person's inherent (or built-in) qualities of mind and character’, however, these are not fixed. To have an open mindset, one where we understand the need to draw on dispositions that may not be your go-to dispositions, will be the making of our students as they grow into whole-hearted men and women.
The following article, ‘Intelligence Is Not Fixed’ is an updated article from Term 1, where this article refers to all of the FutureSmart Dispositions we focus on across each and every year at Claremont College.
INTELLIGENCE IS NOT FIXED
At Claremont College we use a program that we have embedded into our student learning programs for over 12 years now, a program created by C. J. Simister that defines intellectual character using 14 Future-Smart® dispositions (Ref., www.future-smart.com ). The fourteen dispositions help students to develop thinking and learning skills so that they understand the dispositions they will need for any particular situation. These 21st Century ‘Future-Smart’ skills are equally relevant for adults.
CJ Simister says,
“Intelligence is not fixed. We shape our brains with every new experience we encounter, every challenge we overcome and every risk we take. And given this happens most powerfully during childhood, the message for parents and teachers is this: the difference you can make to young people's lives, to their futures, is extraordinary. Raising children who can confidently and happily make the very most of their potential in an exciting but unpredictable world is not something we can leave to chance.”
This is exactly why educators love what we do - the extraordinary privilege of helping to prepare children for their future.
We use the 14 Future@Smart Dispositions to increase intellectual character by explicitly teaching each disposition across the year. We break up the dispositions in the following way:
Whole School:
Term 1
Resilience
Collaboration
Term 2
Curiosity
Reflectiveness
Term 3
Empathy
Risk Taking
Term 4
Flexibility of Mind
Primary Only:
Term 1
Initiative
Ambition
Term 2
Persistence
Focus
Term 3
Good Judgement
Self-Assurance
Term 4
Originality
At Claremont College we follow a Scope and Sequence that helps to guide when we specifically teach these skills, from Kindergarten to Year 6. This means that the dispositions are built onto each year so that a student leaving us in Year 6 has a solid grasp of who they are as a learner and an understanding of the dispositions they need to bring to any given occasion. Gone are the days when a person with a particular skill set found their way into a particular job... our students will need to have the full package of skills for any career path they choose in the future. The growth in understanding future needs and the use of these dispositions is what develops intellectual character and therefore improves learning capability.
A report from Deakin University says, “if you want to take your career to the next level, you’ll need to showcase your development in two key skill areas: hard and soft skills. A hard skill is essentially your ability to carry out a specific task, while a soft skill is the way you perform that task within a workplace setting. In the past, employers had a tendency to focus on hard skills, but in today’s modern workplace, they are increasingly seeking soft skills as a differentiator. In fact, soft skill intensive occupations will account for around two-thirds of all jobs in Australia by 2030, Deloitte reports.” (Ref., credentials.Deakin.edu.au)
The activities our students engage in, vary from grade to grade but generally include explicit teaching and learning tasks such as the following examples.
- Talking about what a particular disposition is, when students have seen it displayed by others, when they have displayed this themselves both at home and at school.
- Discussing people who appear to be natural leaders or learners who show a particular disposition, and how they demonstrate this disposition. The examples can come from books, movies, people students know, other students. For example, Woody in Toy Story shows Initiative, or in the movie Moana, Moana displays Risk-Taking and Resilience.
- Asking students to rate their own ability to demonstrate a particular disposition in a number of given scenarios and/or Key Learning Areas. They use a Consistently/Usually/Sometimes/Seldom scale to determine where they are at a particular point in time or during a particular situation.
- Home Learning tasks can involve the use of a disposition, where students are to come up with something they do to demonstrate a disposition, or perhaps when they do not demonstrate the same disposition. For example, they might say ‘I am persistent when I am building with my lego, but I don’t show persistence when I am asked to clean up my room’.
- The students and teachers may have shout-outs at the end of the day for students who have shown a particular disposition that has been a focus throughout the day.
- We ask students to consider how they will improve their own dispositions in certain situations, for example “I will not walk past things that need to be done that I can do, because I show initiative packing up the learning space and helping others to do this too.
- Truly understanding the meanings of the dispositions, word origins, parts of speech, synonyms, antonyms, the skills they need to demonstrate to achieve the
- disposition... for example, what does ‘being resilient’ mean, where does this word come from, how do I use it in a sentence, what part of speech is it, how do I demonstrate resilience, what am I doing when I am not being resilient etc.
- We also use dispositions in the Success Criteria for individual lessons or units of work. For example, ‘collaborate with your team members to solve the problem”, or ‘show initiative by coming up with another way to solve the problem’.
Another very sound reason to focus on these extremely important soft skills is because they help children to develop into amazing adults. As Judith Locke reminds us in her research in The Bonsai Child, we need to consider who our kids will be when they are adults and how they will be perceived by their friends, their peers and in their workplaces. Do we want a friend or a colleague who does not demonstrate good judgement or show empathy?
And finally, are we willing to look away, let things slide, deem them too hard, or simply find it easier to fix everything for our students? The quote from David Morrison, ‘The standard you walk past is the standard you accept’ is equally relevant when working with students. We don’t ever want to leave the development of intellectual character to chance, because we want and need our future adults to be Future-Smart®.
Janelle Ford
Co-Principal
Claremont College
