Education transforms, inspires and helps us thrive. Here are three examples of how I have used psychology to inform my work as a teacher across three continents.

Students need to feel that they can take chances and experience failure without giving up. I used John Hattie’s ‘Visible Learning’ method when teaching in Australian schools. It promotes explicit (‘visible’) goals and sub-goals for each lesson. These explicit goals facilitate task-specific praise (Well done, this sentence has met goal two by including a metaphor) and encourage students to self-monitor (Does this response meet goal three?) promoting an internal locus of control as they feel they have power over their own progress.

In the UK, my year 7 to 10 students sometimes became frustrated when they didn’t achieve the objectives of a task right away (Everyone else can do this easily, I’m just bad at it). To help students develop a growth mindset – made famous by Carol Dweck – I used modelling and praise. For example, when writing a paragraph, I modelled the steps involved in reading the task, thinking about the main argument, and writing a structured paragraph. Students could see the desired output, but also it didn’t just ‘appear’. After this modelling, prompting questions and reminders of the steps shaped a group guided paragraph recorded on the whiteboard. Finally, students wrote a third paragraph independently. I used task-specific praise to reinforce the steps we had practiced.

In Laos, teaching English language to adult professionals, my practice focused on building learner self-efficacy. Unscripted role-plays provided a low-stakes environment to practice ‘real’ language and interactions. I asked stronger/more confident students to role-play first while the group watched, to facilitate vicarious experience; then as students practiced their own unscripted role-plays, they gained enactive mastery experience by using language in relevant context.

Around the world, psychological principles shape classrooms in which learners can thrive.

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