Cultivating self-confidence in students

1 Jul 2014
All of us in life face tasks that we are called upon to do, but how motivated we are to
accomplish them varies. Figuring out what factors are linked to motivation and confidence is
especially crucial in the arena of academics, because these are both important in promoting
positive learning outcomes.
When we are more confident about our ability to do something, we are more likely to readily
engage in that activity and we will work longer and harder at it than when we doubt our
capability. This sense of self-confidence in our ability to accomplish tasks is a very important
driver in building motivation.
So, where does self-confidence in our ability come from?
The biggest single factor is, of course, how well we do. We consider how well we performed
similar or related tasks in the past. Success raises self-confidence and failure lowers it, but
once confidence is developed, failure has less impact.
The second most important influence is observing people we know perform the same task.
However, just seeing others undertaking the task and succeeding is less persuasive than our
own performance.
Persuasion or feedback from others also influence our self-confidence. When we want to try
something new, we often find friends and family cheering us on: You can do it. Such
encouragement is initially important in helping someone to try or to start a new task, but
alone is not enough to build confidence unless the person actually performs the task well.
BOOSTING STUDENTS CONFIDENCE
For students, self-confidence is an important element in learning. At the start of a new course,
students vary in their beliefs about their competence to obtain knowledge, develop or perform
skills and master the subject.
Initially, self-confidence varies as a function of aptitude (for example, skills, gifts and
attitudes) and most importantly, prior experience. Once the course starts, other factors come
into operation, including ones real ability. From these elements, students develop indications
as to how well they are learning, which influences their self-confidence for further learning.
We can help students increase their self-confidence and, ultimately, their motivation for
learning. Goal-setting is particularly important.
Students have expectations about how they are likely to do in a course. If the expectation or
goal is too high then when success is slow or not as anticipated, confidence and interest wane.
Goal-setting is an important cognitive process affecting self-confidence and motivation.
When students who set a goal for themselves or are given a goal by others such as a teacher,
they experience an initial sense of confidence and achievement when they reach the goal.
Success in attaining the initial goal reinforces their commitment to continue with the course.

As students work on the course, they immerse themselves in activities that will lead to goal
attainment: Read, practise and extend their knowledge. This increased effort and persistence
leads to further progress and increase in confidence.
Self-confidence is validated as students observe their progress, which signals to them that
they are becoming skilful.
Thus, setting the right goals is the key to enhancing confidence. There are three simple rules.
The first is that goals should be achievable within a short time frame. Goals that are too far
out in time do not easily build self-confidence since it will take a long time to achieve them
and students are likely to lose interest before then.
Second, goals should be specific goals that are general do not help. Lofty, but vague
injunctions such as be like Michael Jordan or the very common prodding parents will
frequently offer to kids, perform to the best of your ability are not useful. These have no
specifics and are therefore not measurable, which means that children do not know how or
when to achieve them. Specific goals are measurable and it is evident when they are met.
The third rule relates to the difficulty level of goals. At the start of a new activity, goals
should be geared towards lower levels of difficulty. Pursuing easier goals increases
confidence when starting out, but setting more difficult goals as skills and ability develop
helps increase learning.
Besides goals, immediate and direct feedback help build confidence and motivation. What is
of interest is giving children specific performance objectives plus an indication of how well
they are doing relative to peers, which indicate that the goal was attainable and led to higher
achievements. This is better than just giving goals or providing feedback.
The two together seemed to be more effective. A particularly illustrative study had a person
model either confident or pessimistic behaviour while attempting to unsuccessfully solve a
puzzle, before the children tried to solve the puzzle. When the person showed high
confidence and persistence, childrens motivation increased whereas the opposite behaviour
lowered motivation. Seeing how others handle tasks can also be drivers that build confidence
and motivation.
So, for children, appropriate goal-setting, immediate feedback and observations of others
doing similar tasks combine to give them the necessary tools and confidence to accomplish
ever more complex problem-solving. By incorporating appropriate goals and feedback into
our educational systems, we can help drive a cycle of increasing self-confidence and
therefore motivation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Prof K Ranga Krishnan is dean of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore. A
clinician-scientist and psychiatrist, he chaired the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural
Sciences at Duke University Medical Centre from 1998 to 2009.

The secret of effective motivation

NEW YORK TIMES 7 Jul 2014
By Amy Wrzesniewski And Barry Schwartz
THERE are two kinds of motive for engaging in any activity: internal and instrumental. If a
scientist conducts research because she wants to discover important facts about the world,
that's an internal motive, because discovering facts is inherently related to the activity of
research. If she conducts research because she wants to achieve scholarly renown, that's an
instrumental motive, because the relation between fame and research is not so inherent.
Often, people have both internal and instrumental motives for doing what they do.

What mix of motives - internal or instrumental or both - is most conducive to success? You
might suppose that a scientist motivated by a desire to discover facts and by a desire to
achieve renown will do better work than a scientist motivated by just one of those desires.
Surely two motives are better than one. But as we and our colleagues argue in a paper newly
published in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, instrumental motives
are not always an asset and can actually be counterproductive to success.

We analysed data drawn from 11,320 cadets in nine entering classes at the US Military
Academy at West Point, New York, all of whom rated how much each of a set of motives
influenced their decision to attend the academy. The motives included things like a desire to
get a good job later in life (an instrumental motive) and a desire to be trained as a leader in
the United States Army (an internal motive).

How did the cadets fare, years later? And how did their progress relate to their original
motives for attending West Point?

We found, unsurprisingly, that the stronger their internal reasons were to attend West Point,
the more likely cadets were to graduate and become commissioned officers. Also
unsurprisingly, cadets with internal motives did better in the military (as evidenced by early
promotion recommendations) than did those without internal motives and were also more
likely to stay in the military after their five years of mandatory service - unless (and this is the
surprising part) they also had strong instrumental motives.

Remarkably, cadets with strong internal and strong instrumental motives for attending West
Point performed worse on every measure than did those with strong internal motives but
weak instrumental ones. They were less likely to graduate, less outstanding as military
officers and less committed to staying in the military.

The implications of this finding are significant. Whenever a person performs a task well,
there are typically both internal and instrumental consequences. A conscientious student
learns (internal) and gets good grades (instrumental). A skilled doctor cures patients (internal)
and makes a good living (instrumental). But just because activities can have both internal and
instrumental consequences does not mean that the people who thrive in these activities have
both internal and instrumental motives.

Our study suggests that efforts should be made to structure activities so that instrumental
consequences do not become motives. Helping people focus on the meaning and impact of
their work, rather than on, say, the financial returns it will bring, may be the best way to
improve not only the quality of their work but also - counterintuitive though it may seem their financial success.

There is a temptation among educators and instructors to use whatever motivational tools are
available to recruit participants or improve performance. If the desire for military excellence
and service to country fails to attract all the recruits that the Army needs, then perhaps
appeals to "money for college", "career training" or "seeing the world" will do the job. While
this strategy may draw more recruits, it may also yield worse soldiers.

Similarly, for students uninterested in learning, financial incentives for good attendance or
pizza parties for high performance may prompt them to participate, but it may result in less
well-educated students.

The same goes for motivating teachers themselves. We wring our hands when they "teach to
the test" because we fear that it detracts from actual educating. It is possible that teachers do
this because of an overreliance on accountability that transforms the instrumental
consequences of good teaching (things like salary bonuses) into instrumental motives.

Accountability is important, but structured crudely, it can create the very behaviour (such as
poor teaching) that it is designed to prevent.

Rendering an activity more attractive by emphasising both internal and instrumental motives
to engage in it is completely understandable, but it may have the unintended effect of
weakening the internal motives so essential to success.

To lead, you must focus

Raymond Edwin Mabus 7 Ju2014
Leading a large, complex organisation such as the United States Navy, which is
interdependent with similar entities, calls for a certain approach. You begin with a narrow
focus on your organisations unique strength and role.
For the Navy, that is presence. US naval forces sailors and marines are constantly
mobilised, do not need an inch of foreign soil and can stay in position a long time. We are in
the right place not only at the right time, but all the time.That focus helps establish
priorities.
For us, it emphasises the obvious: Presence requires ships. My primary objective since
becoming Secretary of the Navy in 2009 has been to rebuild a fleet that declined from 316
ships in 2001 to only 278 before I took office.
The decline was not necessarily a choice; it happened because spirallingcosts and significant
delays had become standard, the technologies on which we relied were immature and ship
design often continued well after construction had begun.
REMEMBERING THE GOAL
As the Governor of Mississippi, I learned the power of setting a few specific priorities and
relentlessly pushing them. As the CEO of a private company, I saw that creating a compelling
vision and crafting an inspiring narrative are key to achieving results. You must never lose
sight of the ultimate goal.
I remember how a foreign navy chief described the difference between soldiers and sailors,
regardless of country: The army is focused on the ground on maps and boundaries; while
the navy looks across open oceans.
Every day, I communicate that our Navy will have 300 ships before the end of the decade,
that a larger fleet is critical to presence and that presence strengthens global security and
prosperity.
Leadership in an interdependent system also means taking responsibility for keeping the
system healthy. For the Navy, taxpayers are an important part of that system.

In the past, private contractors had replaced many government acquisition professionals, so
taxpayers bore the brunt of cost-plus contracts that gave the industry no incentive to hold
down prices. We made fixed-price contracts the norm; we introduced more competition.
With costs rising unsustainably for a new destroyer, we terminated production after three
ships in favour of building more advanced versions of the DDG-51, whose lead ship was
commissioned in 1991.
We put 60 ships under contract during my first four years in office, up from 19 in the four
years before I arrived. An example is the littoral combat ship, which can operate close to and
far from shore. We tested two versions and liked both, but the proposed costs were too high,
so we made the two shipyards compete against each other.
When their bids came back, the price had been cut by 40 per cent. We were able to buy 10 of
each version (one more than planned) and still save US$3 billion (S$3.74 billion).
Of course, a healthy private shipbuilding industry is also important to the system.
Recognising that predictability is crucial to shipbuilders, we shifted to more stable designs,
built vessel types we had built before, made sure new technologies were mature and laid out
the number, type as well as timing of builds (along with more realistic cost estimates and
congressional funding).
In big organisations, managers work interdependently, bringing their various strengths to the
mix.
Devote your energy as a leader to reminding your organisation what its crucial role is,
creating the vision and narrative as well as looking out for the health of the system.
Then your presence, like the Navys,will make a difference.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Raymond Edwin Mabus Jr is the 75th Secretary of the US Navy.

Collective genius: The secret to innovation

Harvard Business School Publishing Corp 17 July 2014

Googles astonishing success in its first decade now seems to have been almost inevitable.
But the companys meteoric growth depended, in large part, on its ability to innovate and
scale up its infrastructure at an unprecedented pace.
Mr Bill Coughran, as senior vice-president of engineering, led the group from 2003 to 2011.
His 1,000-person organisation built Googles engine room the systems and equipment
that allow us to use Google and its many services 24/7.
When he joined the company in 2003, it had already reinvented multiple times the way it
handled Web search and data storage. His group was using Google File System (GFS) to
store the massive amount of data required to support Google searches. Given the firms
ferocious appetite for growth, he knew GFS once a groundbreaking innovation would
have to be replaced within a couple of years. Building the next-generation system was the job
of the systems infrastructure group. It had to create a new engine room in-house while
simultaneously refining the current one.
Because this was Mr Coughrans top priority, one might expect that he would focus first on
developing a technical solution for Googles storage problems and then lead his group
through its implementation.
However, to him, there was a bigger problem, a perennial challenge that many leaders
inevitably come to contemplate: How do I build an organisation capable of innovating
continually over time? He knew the role of a leader of innovation was not to set a vision and
motivate others to follow it; it was to create a community that is willing and able to generate
new ideas.
THE LINK BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION
Few companies have the resources of Google at their disposal, but most of them can relate to
Mr Coughrans fundamental challenge.
In 2005, we came together to study exceptional leaders of innovation. They are a diverse lot,
but they all think about leadership in a similar way: Leading innovation cannot be about
creating and selling a vision to people and then somehow inspiring them to execute it.
Instead, leaders can draw out the slices of genius in each individual and assemble them into
innovations that represent collective genius.
Innovation usually emerges when a diverse group of people collaborate to generate a wideranging portfolio of ideas, which they then refine and even evolve into new ideas through
give-and-take and often-heated debates. Thus, collaboration should involve passionate
disagreement.
Yet, the friction of clashing ideas may be hard to bear. Often, organisations try to discourage
or minimise differences, but this only stifles the free flow of ideas and rich discussion that
innovation needs. Leaders must manage this tension to create an environment supportive
enough that people are willing to share their genius, but confrontational enough to improve
ideas and spark new thinking.

Innovation also requires trial and error. Innovative groups act rather than plan their way
forward, and the solutions that emerge are usually different from anything anyone had
anticipated. Leaders of innovation create environments that strike the right balance between
the need for improvisation and the realities of performance.
Finally, creating something novel and useful involves moving beyond either-or thinking to
both-and thinking. Innovation requires integrating ideas to create a new and better option.
FOSTERING WILLINGNESS AND ABILITY TO INNOVATE
To build willingness, leaders must create communities that share a sense of purpose, values
and rules of engagement.
Purpose. Purpose is not what a group does but who is in it or why it exists. It is about a
collective identity. Purpose makes people willing to take the risks and do the hard work
inherent in innovation.
Shared values. To form a community, members have to agree on what is important. By
shaping the groups priorities and choices, values influence individual and collective thought
and action.
We found four that all truly innovative organisations embrace: Bold ambition, responsibility
to the community, collaboration and learning.
Rules of engagement. Together with purpose and shared values, rules of engagement keep
members focused on what is imperative, discourage unproductive behaviour and encourage
activities that foster innovation.
Generally, rules fall into two categories. The first is how people interact, and those rules call
for mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual influence. The second is how people think, and
those rules call for everyone to question everything, be data-driven and to see the whole.
Innovation requires developing three organisational capabilities: For collaboration,
organisations need creative abrasion, or the ability to generate ideas through discourse and
debate; for discovery-driven learning, they need creative agility, or the ability to test and
experiment through quick pursuit, reflection and adjustment; and for integrative decisionmaking, they need creative resolution, or the ability to make decisions that combine disparate
and sometimes even opposing ideas.
As Mr Coughran began talking with his staff at Google about the need for a new storage
system, two self-organising groups of engineers emerged: One wanted to add systems on top
of GFS that would handle the new storage needs. This was the Big Table team. The other
believed that Googles new storage requirements were so different from those of search alone
that GFS had to be replaced, not adapted. This was the Build from Scratch team.
Mr Coughran gave as much freedom as possible to his engineers, all the while keeping the
reins in enough so we didnt degenerate into chaos. He set certain clear expectations: That
each team would move forward through rigorous testing of its ideas, and that members would
respond to challenges and disagreement with objective data. He rarely had to say Dont do
that words he believed would destroy talent and motivation. Nor did he answer questions

directly, despite his expertise. You want to challenge people to think for themselves, he
said.
After two years, Mr Coughran had to admit that Build from Scratch was not stable enough for
the companys needs and Big Table could not handle the growing array of Google apps,
which included YouTube. However, he believed the Big Table approach was more viable in
the short term.
Ultimately, Big Tables storage stack was implemented throughout the company. But Mr
Coughran also asked the two most senior engineers in the systems infrastructure group to
work on a next-generation system that would eventually replace it. He invited the Build from
Scratch team to join the effort, and indeed, some of the ideas developed by its members
played key roles in the next-generation system.
Great leaders of innovation see their role not as take-charge direction setters but as creators of
a context in which others make innovation happen. We should let them take roles that put
their skills on display and provide them with the experiences and tools they need to unleash
and harness the individual slices of genius around them.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Linda Hill is a professor of business administration and faculty
chair of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School. Greg Brandeau is a former
head of technology at Pixar. Emily Truelove is a researcher and doctoral candidate at the MIT
Sloan School of Management. Kent Lineback has spent more than 25 years as a manager and
an executive. They are the authors of Collective Genius: The Art And Practice Of Leading
Innovation.

Practice, not talent, is the key to success

22 July 2014
Most top athletes are finely tuned machines, spending their lives trying to perfect their craft
and looking to gain every possible physical and mental advantage over their opponents. They
exemplify the credo that hard work leads to rewards.
Just look at Tiger Woods daily routine, as posted on his web site. He starts the day with an
hour of cardio exercise and an hour-and-a-half of weight training. This is followed by at least
four hours of golf and another half an hour of weight training.
Since he was a little child, he has always practised his golf game. But even when he was the
best athlete in the sport, he practised hard to improve his game. When we see him play, he
seems the picture of effortless perfection, a joy to behold, hiding the enormous effort that
went into his performance.
Michael Jordan was born in Wilmington, North Carolina. From the time he was a child, he
was very competitive. He wanted to win every game he played. So he practised hard to
improve. While he had prodigious talent, it was hard work that made him a legend.
When he first joined the National Basketball Association (NBA), his jump shot was not
perfect. So he spent his off season shooting hundreds of jumpers a day until it was just right
and could go swoosh through the hoops.

His defensive skills also needed work. He studied his opponents and then practised hard to
turn his weakness into his strength. His coach Phil Jackson wrote that Jordans success was
due to his humility to know he had to work constantly to be the best.
In football, Lionel Messi is an example of dedication to craft. He went through Barcelonas
youth system, overcame a growth hormone deficiency and practised incessantly so that he
can run with the ball seemingly glued to his foot.
The saying practice makes perfect is true not just in sports, but also in most other fields of
human endeavour. Mr Anders Ericsson, in a series of articles, popularised the concept that
practice, not talent, is the main ingredient for success. Many studies that looked at highly
successful individuals show intelligence alone is not a good predictor of success.
Success is the consequence of practice and repetition. There are no shortcuts. It is based on
pushing oneself to do better and better.
Winston Churchill all through his life had a speech defect where he had trouble with the letter
s. When he went to visit a specialist he was told that practice and perseverance was the
solution. Churchill took the advice to heart and is known for his legendary practice of
speeches. The result was the extraordinary persuasive power of his speeches. Another
example of practice makes perfect.
USING SIMULATORS TO LEARN
Innate talent only gets you so far. Beyond that, it is hard work. Almost everyone who has
achieved greatness in their fields worked hard above and beyond others. Many people believe
that you need at least 10,000 hours of practice to become truly great. In his book Outliers, Mr
Malcolm Gladwell talks about the lives of many successful individuals and how at least part
of their success was due to practice, in keeping with the 10,000-hour rule.
Repetition and practice work not only for motor skills, but for all forms of memory and
learning. Scenario training such as fire drills and emergency safety procedures are a very
useful form of practice to prepare individuals for a rare event. Case studies can also be used
to learn how to handle a range of circumstances. This allows the practice of thinking and
making judgments, not just training for specific skills.
Simulators are now commonly used for practice. Everyone knows about flight simulators, but
they are used in many other fields, from factories to medical and surgical training.
At SingHealth, our medical school training uses simulators to help students learn how to
diagnose illness and perform procedures. There are even those that guide students on
delivering babies, as well as mock operating rooms and intensive care units.
Full-scale simulation of events can be done repeatedly until trainees become proficient in
handling them. Coupled with periodic training and repetition, the skills and ability to handle
complex situations are maintained. These systems can also be a vehicle to build teams that
can work together to handle unexpected situations.
Todays technology and simulators have made practice easier and also built expertise to
handle rare events.

Practice makes professionals

18 August 2014
Last weeks announcement by the Lien Foundation and St James Church Kindergarten that
they would be launching a new Practicum Centre for pre-service pre-school teachers heralds
a welcome addition to the early childhood education sector.
Designed to provide high-quality mentoring to student teachers during their mandatory
classroom teaching, the new centre hopes to enhance the practical skill set of young teachers
and help set the stage for a satisfying career as pre-school professionals.
Particularly now, when the pre-school sector is facing a tremendous shortage of qualified
talent and an above average annual attrition rate of between 15 and 20 per cent, finding
models that encourage people to enter and remain in the field is critical. High-quality
mentoring, such as that envisioned by the centre, is key.
BENEFITS OF MENTORING
One of the important things that mentoring in any field does is help trainees translate what
they have learnt into practical solutions and actions in real-world settings. When new young
professionals struggle to integrate what they know with how to act, mentors can guide them
both by modelling successful strategies and helping them become reflective practitioners.
Rather than simply offering corrections, when mentors watch their mentees in action and later
discuss with them what worked, what did not and what might have, they allow their charges
to figure things out for themselves and develop their own repertoire of professional skills.
Indeed, in a Swedish study of mentoring in school, the author discovered that novice teachers
found the single most important benefit was the opportunity to discuss and analyse classroom
situations with their more experienced colleagues.
At the same time, mentoring is not a one-way street mentors also gain from the
relationship and, in the long run, so will the organisation or profession.
New trainees bring to the field fresh insights and the latest thinking they have acquired from
their studies. Seasoned professionals who are open to new ideas and the enthusiasm of the
young may find their own practice enhanced and updated as a result of being a mentor.
The system as a whole also benefits from strong mentoring programmes. Research shows that
children with young teachers tend to perform better academically when their teachers have
been mentored, presumably because it has made them better at classroom instruction.
Some evidence also suggests retention rates of teachers who have been mentored are higher
an important finding for systems in which teacher turnover is a problem.
Professionalisation is one of the great benefits of mentoring and we see this in many fields
besides education, such as law and medicine. By pairing students or new graduates with
veteran practitioners, beginners are able to develop a sense of the norms, values and codes of
conduct that define a profession.

DEVELOPING A SENSE OF PROFESSIONALISM

In terms of early childhood education, practicum experiences that combine mentoring that is
focused on developing teaching skills and a greater attachment to the profession may not only
help boost retention rates, but also attract a higher percentage of students to the profession.
In a survey I conducted last year of more than 400 diploma-level students in Singapore
studying to be early childhood educators, I found that fewer than half of them considered
themselves very likely to enter the profession.
While this figure seems high, other countries grapple with the same phenomenon. Research
in Taiwan found that almost three-quarters of students in four-year early childhood education
degree programmes had no plans to continue in the field after graduation.
Still, it is worth examining the causes. Students were asked to rate the importance of various
possible reasons some of their peers chose not to enter the profession. Generally, regardless
of their future plans, students tended to have similar views of factors such as low salaries as
explanations to why their counterparts took other career paths after graduation.
However, it turns out that there were two areas where respondents who were very unlikely to
teach preschool (in other words, non-teachers) differed in their views on why students
decided not to teach, compared with respondents who planned to enter the profession (likely
teachers). The areas were the practicum (300 hours of compulsory teaching students do in
pre-schools as part of their training) and professional autonomy.
More than half (56 per cent) of the non-teachers thought the practicum was a very
important reason students did not pursue a teaching career, compared with just more than a
third of the likely teachers who felt that way. This suggests that, perhaps, an unhappy
experience in the practicum led some students to think of alternative careers.
In addition, issues of the profession loomed larger for non-teachers. They were twice as likely
(37 per cent) to see the lack of professional autonomy as a very important reason people
dropped out of the early childhood sector, compared with the likely teachers (18 per cent).
It may be that without a clear idea of a professional trajectory, some students declined to
pursue the career for which they had been trained.
Typically, the conversation about attracting and retaining early childhood educators revolves
around matters of compensation. Certainly, no one expects trained teachers to work for a
pittance, but these data highlight non-monetary issues that are very pertinent to teachers
career decisions. Well-designed interventions such as mentoring schemes can help address
them.
Developing programmes and institutions, such as the Practicum Centre, that focus on giving
pre-service teachers a strong sense of professional identity and tools to hone their craft may
alleviate some of the current shortages faced by the system.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr Trisha Craig is a social scientist and Executive Director of Wheelock College-Singapore.

Learn what you desire, not what is required

15 Oct 14
Learning can be of three kinds: Learning that we desire, learning that we need and learning
that is required (compulsory learning). The third kind is often what children feel they learn at
school and the first is what they want to learn (such as getting better at the World of Warcraft
game).
Plato and sometimes Socrates are quoted as saying compulsory intellectual work never
remains in the soul. There is truth in this saying if we do not desire what we learn, we
may not remember it long enough. Therefore, maybe we need to work on making learning
desirable and interesting. In this regard, a set of simple experiments illustrate desirable selflearning.
A dozen years ago, computer scientist Sugata Mitra in New Delhi carried out a fascinating
study. He took a personal computer and placed it in a room full of children who had never
seen or used a computer.
He then watched them from the outside hence the name for his experiment, the hole in the
wall. What he observed was children playing and figuring out how to use the computer even
though they were not provided with any instructions.
The children were learning by doing, helping each other and experimenting, a desirable form
of self-learning. In a subsequent study, a computer was placed in a kiosk and loaded with
learning games in a village. The games were free downloads from the Internet. Mathematics
games covered numbers, shapes, sizes, quantities, addition, subtraction, division,
multiplication and algebra.
The children did better in tests and their performance was related to the time spent in the
kiosk. Obviously this did not work for everyone, but it shows that a learning environment can
be productive for children.
SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING
But how much can children learn without the help of teachers who are experts in their key
subject areas? Another experiment, which involved Tamil-speaking children aged between 10
and 14, showed they could learn a limited amount of basic molecular biology by themselves
using a public computer facility, but demonstrated improvement when a helper was present,
although he or she was not knowledgeable in the subject matter. In fact, the learning outcome
of the children without a helper was similar to children at a nearby state government school
taught molecular biology by a teacher.
The children who had a helper performed just as well as their peers in a privileged private
urban school.
Could this learning be used as a tool in regular schools? I had the privilege of watching a
class that promotes self-directed collaborative learning at MacPherson Secondary School
with Dr Chew Lee Teo, who is a lead specialist (Learning Partnership in Educational
Technology) from the Education Ministry. They used a knowledge-building approach, where
students and teachers collaborate, brainstorm and learn together. They also conducted a
simple experiment to enhance learning and serve as a focal point.

The learning was interactive, with questions and answers building a knowledge base for the
entire class. The teacher served as a mediator and facilitator, and not the one with all the
answers. The learning environment kept the children engaged and more importantly, they
were able to relate to their own real world experience.
In other words, the learning was less based on a compulsion to learn and more on a desire to
learn. They worked on laptops with access to the Internet and software that promoted
learning. The software and the teacher became the tools to excite, adapt and improvise the
learning process and build context to the learning exercise. The entire class became a selflearning environment.
We have evolved as human organisations by organising ourselves into structures that adapt,
learn and evolve. We have evolved through self-organising. Each time we meet new people,
we learn about them or the world around us. This environment for organising ourselves to
learn has been called the self-organising learning environment (SOLE). While we as humans
are always self-organising to learn or accomplish things, one place that SOLEs do not always
exist are in learning institutions.
Building an environment and structure to develop self-learning is what schools and colleges
should strive for. The MacPherson school experiment demonstrates the development of a selforganising teacher-facilitated learning environment.
The learning environment and the class was a study in excitement and energy. Its
collaborative approach is much closer to what students will encounter in the real world,
where they will not have to regurgitate answers, but work on projects that function in the real
world.
The sooner schools and universities move from a compulsory learning approach to a
desirable learning one, the closer we will get to learning for the soul.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Professor K Ranga Krishnan is dean of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore.
A clinician scientist and psychiatrist, he chaired the Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioural Sciences at Duke University Medical Centre from 1998 to 2009.

The traits of a collaborative leader

Over the past two weeks, United States President Barack Obama and Republicans in
Congress have taken their conflicts to another level. I am not here to apportion blame, but it
would be nice if, in the future, we evaluated presidential candidates on the basis of whether
they are skilled at the art of collaboration.
When you look at other sectors of society, you see leaders who are geniuses at this. You can
spot the collaborative leader because he has rejected the heroic, solitary model of leadership.
He does not try to dominate his organisation as its all-seeing visionary, leading idea generator
and controlling intelligence.

Instead, he sees himself as a stage setter, as a person who makes it possible for the creativity
in his organisation to play itself out. The collaborative leader lessens the power distance
between himself and everybody else. He believes that problems are too complex for one
brain, but if he can create the right context and nudge a group process along, the team will
come up with solutions.
Collaborative political leaders would look very different from the ones we are used to. In the
first place, they would do what they could to create a culture of cooperation, not competition.
They would evoke our shared national consciousness more than our partisan consciousness.
They would take the political people out of the policy meetings. Except in high campaign
season, they would reduce the moronically partisan tit-for-tat, which is the pointless fare of
daily press briefings.
Second, a collaborative President would draw up what Mr Jeffrey Walker, vice-chairman of
the MDG Health Alliance and co-author of The Generosity Network, calls Key Influencer
Maps. This leader would acknowledge that we live in a system in which a proliferating
number of groups have veto power over legislation. He would gather influencers into
informal policymaking teams as each initiative was executed.
Third, a collaborative President would offer specific goals to each team, but he would not
come up with clear visions. He might say the goal of the education team, say, was to reduce
high school dropouts by 10 per cent. But he would not tell the team how to get there.
Fourth, a collaborative President would see himself as an honest broker above the
policymaking process, not as a gladiator in it. In an essay posted on LinkedIn, Mr Walker
argues that collaborative organisations usually need a person at the top who is widely trusted
and capable of rallying the interested parties behind the unified effort.
To be an honest broker, a collaborative President would have to repress some of his own
ideas in order to serve as referee, guide and nudge for the people he gathered.
SHOW VULNERABILITY
Fifth, a collaborative President would tolerate mess. He would acknowledge that if you do
not give mid-level people the freedom to roam, you would not attract creative people to those
jobs. If you adopt a highly prescriptive set of workplace rules, then nobody can do anything
bold.
So what if there are leaks to the press and the policy process becomes semipublic? That is a
price worth paying in order to harvest diverse viewpoints and the fruits of creative
disagreements.
Sixth, a collaborative leader embraces an oppositional mindset. As Professor Linda Hill and
others argue in a Harvard Business Review essay called Collective Genius, successful
collaborative groups resist tepid compromises. Instead, they combine things that were once
seen as mutually exclusive. A collaborative President might jam a mostly Democratic idea,
federally financed pre-schools, and a mostly Republican idea, charter schools, into one
proposal.
Seventh, a collaborative President would create a culture in which relationships are more
important than one persons touchy pride. There are going to be people who take cheap shots.

The collaborative leader would swallow indignation and be tolerant of error in order to
preserve relationships. He would have a merciful sense that every successful working bond is
going to require moments of forgiveness.
The collaborative leader is willing to be vulnerable. Trust is built when one person is
vulnerable to another and the other person does not take advantage of it. Then that person is
vulnerable back and the favour is returned. The collaborative leader understands the paradox;
you have to take off the armour to build strong bonds.
Finally, the collaborative leader would exile those who consistently refuse to play by the
rules. Psychologist David Rand of Yale finds that cooperation exists when people internalise
small cooperative habits as their default response to situations. It only takes a few selfish and
solitary people to undermine a culture of trust. Successful leaders have the guts to marginalise
radicals and nihilists who refuse to play by the rules of the institution (this would be helpful
to leaders on Capitol Hill).
We can all think of technocratic reforms to make Washington work better. But, ultimately, it
takes a different leadership model and a renewed appreciation for the art of collaboration.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, is a author of several books.

Learn for competence, not grades

K Ranga Krishnan January 22, 2015
The thinking that we can help anyone to learn dates back a long time. The words of John
Locke come to mind: That the difference to be found in the manners and abilities of men is
owing more to their education than to anything else, we have reason to conclude, that great
care is to be had of the forming childrens minds, and giving them that seasoning early, which
shall influence their lives always after.
For some students, studying maths seems relatively easy, and they seem to understand the
content quickly. For others, it takes more effort and time. Other students may find it very easy
to learn languages or science. To put it another way, the time it takes for a student to become
proficient in a subject will vary.
This time to learn is a proxy for aptitude. In a traditional class, what is fixed is what the
students need to learn as well as time. In this fixed time, different students learn in different
extents, and that is what gets measured by traditional examinations.
If we look at a population of students, this learning function is likely to be normally
distributed. In a traditional class, if all students receive the same instruction, their
performance will be correlated with this aptitude, and the performance will be normally
distributed.

This is a very substantial, thought-provoking and indeed striking observation that gets at the
heart of learning and education.
However, what society and the workplace are interested in is the competence of students, not
just how well they learnt in a fixed amount of time. Ensuring that students are competent and
proficient is a more important approach to education and learning than grading them on a
curve.
When proficiency becomes the focus, teaching and education move from measuring students
performance on examinations to maximising the learning for the individual student.
An individually directed learning approach can produce students who reach a desired
competence level, either by personalising the instruction or changing the time required to
learn.
The learning and practice of medicine provides an example. Obviously, what we as patients
want are competent doctors. In the setting of learning medicine and I would dare say of
most occupations the goal is competence, not ranking.
In a medical school like ours, the emphasis is not just on rating students, but on producing
proficient practitioners of medicine. It matters little that they did better than their peers if they
do not achieve the skill and competence to practise. The focus moves from grading
performance relative to peers to learning to attain competence.
MASTERY LEARNING
Benjamin Bloom, a well-known professor of education, argued that when students are
individually coached and tutored, they perform much better than those who attend a typical
classroom and receive regular classroom instruction.
This implies that under the right settings, most students have the latent potential to perform at
a very high level, including those who in a normal classroom setting would wind up in the
lower part of the grade curve. This may be why students in Asia and Singapore go for
individual tutoring.
Medical students learn best when they are part of the clinical environment and are therefore
individually mentored and tutored. To do that, we embed students in clinical care teams, that
is, doctors and nurses who take care of patients. In this setting, the medical students are
engaged in watching and learning both the science and art of medicine.
In addition to medical knowledge, they learn the culture of medicine and how to apply their
knowledge to diagnose and manage patients. Having good bedside manners, knowing how to
elicit a patients history, understand their complaints, properly perform an examination or
interpret tests these are all essential to diagnosing, treating and managing the patient.

It is also essential for young doctors to learn communication skills, not just with patients and
their families but with the whole medical team working on behalf of the patient.
The learning happens not in isolation, not from books and not just from the main physician or
consultant on the team, but from other members, senior students, house officers, resident
physicians, registrars, nurses and indeed the entire milieu.
This kind of learning is more than individual tutoring; it includes a living experience by being
part of a team that is managing patients.
This kind of solution does not necessarily work with all kinds of learning. But different
instructional solutions focusing on competence have been developed and used in many
spheres.
Prof Bloom proposed a partial solution: Mastery learning. It means building an approach
using questions, testing and feedback until students master the content of a particular subject.
In other words, the focus is on helping students gain competence rather than on seeing how
they are functioning relative to other students.
Prof Bloom and his group conducted a study comparing three groups: Regular classroom
instruction, mastery learning, and tutoring. As expected, the students with individual tutoring
performed best, but the mastery learning class also did much better than the group with only
regular classroom instruction. Seventy per cent of the students in the mastery class performed
at the same level as the top 20 per cent of the regular class.
This is indeed a very remarkable performance. In this case, testing, assessments with
feedback and examinations were used as tools for learning, not as tools for grading.
The big difference is that the objective was for the entire class, not just a subset, to learn for
mastery. In other words, it is focused not on individual grading where some students get an A
and others a C, but on having everyone reach competence.
In labour-scarce Singapore, focusing on raising the great majoritys competence level will
count more than counting their exam results.