Practical strategies to boost self-belief

In my last column, we looked at the importance of self-belief and the way it directs students’ approaches to their learning and subsequent achievement (http://bit.ly/1muRcPv). I quoted Self and Self-Belief in Psychology and Education: An Historical Perspective by Frank Pajares and Dale H Schunk, who highlight that students’ “academic behaviours and achievement are directly influenced by the beliefs they hold about themselves and about their academic potentialities”.

All teachers will be aware that students have something akin to mind blocks about certain subjects, which ultimately boils down to their self-beliefs. In the vast majority of cases, they are not intellectually or physically incapable, but simply incapable of believing that they can perform successfully – or, as the authors suggest, “see the work as irrelevant to their lives”.