When I was in junior high school, a teacher gave me some advice about luck. She told me and my classmates that for good luck, the first thing we should say out loud at the beginning of each month was "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit." And for years afterwards, I followed that advice.
Did my life improve due to my adherence to this advice? Did I excel in school? Did I land my dream job and wow my employers, so I got promotions and raises? Did I become full of confidence and optimism and happiness? No. My life didn't unfold as I expected it should going forward, and I didn't understand why.
But today, 30-plus years later, I do understand. I was susceptible to my teacher's advice, and I wasn't getting what I wanted in my life, because of my locus of control.
Locus of control is what people see as the forces which shape their lives. There are two types of locus of control, internal and external. People with an internal locus of control believe the course of their lives is dependent on what they do. The actions people with an internal locus of control do or don't take are the primary causes of their success, or lack thereof. On the contrary, people with an external locus of control believe the way their lives progress is primarily due to outside forces, or intangibles, such as luck. If a person doesn't get the promotion, it's because the boss dislikes him or her. If someone's relationships keep falling apart, it's due to the mirror he or she broke five years prior.
In junior high school, and for years afterwards, I had an external locus of control. This wasn't due to the teacher who suggested a way for me to bring myself good luck. By then I was already settled into that mode of thinking. And this locus of control orientation kept affecting my adolescence and young adulthood.
In the very least, educators should be concerned about their students' locus of control orientation about academics. Michael Wise, in "Locus of Control in Our Daily Lives: How the Concept of Control Impacts the Social World," concludes that locus of control orientation significantly affects our daily lives. And according to Drake Baer in "How Your 'Locus of Control' Drives Your Success (And Stress)," people's locus of control orientation impacts emotional health, success in school, ability to deal with stress, job satisfaction, problem solving, and goal achievement. Which orientation more positively affects these aspects of our lives? Internal.
Can students' locus of control orientation change? Mark Phillips, in "8 Myths That Undermine Educational Effectiveness," suggests it can't change. In his discussion of the first myth, he states that significant variables to students' success are socioeconomic status, neighborhood, psychological quality of home environment, and support of physical health. Phillips' implication is that factors outside of students' control greatly influence how well they will do in school. Also, in The Organized Mind, Daniel J. Levitin asserts that locus of control is stable and isn't changed by experience other than to strengthen the orientation someone already holds. However, Kendra Cherry states in "What Is Locus of Control?" that as people get older, locus of control becomes more internal. And Baer writes that locus of control isn't set and can change based on experience. Finally, in The Skillful Teacher, Jon Saphier and Robert Gower posit that students can be retrained to have an internal locus of control, rather than an external locus of control.
Based on my personal experiences, I think teachers should believe students' locus of control orientation can change from external to internal, and teachers should make efforts to bring about that change when it comes to academics. What Cherry writes makes sense. Much of students' lives is out of their control. Students are dependent on adults to make many decisions for them and to ensure that the students are safe and healthy. But when it comes to education, each student can largely be in control of how much he or she learns and how successful he or she is academically.
There are a number of actions I take to reorient students to an internal locus of control, one of which is a quote of the day. Each day, I write a different quote on the board. Many of these quotes have either the direct or implied idea that students can control their success. Quotes, such as "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work," commonly attributed to Thomas Edison, and "You fail, and then what? Life goes on. It's only when you risk failure that you discover things," by Lupita Nyong'o, send the message that students' get out of life what they put into it. I hope that by regularly repeating this kind of idea through these quotes, students will start to believe they can choose how their lives will progress.
Another tactic I take is through my encouragement or praise of students. Whenever students tell me about a test they have coming up in another class, or a performance or competition they're anticipating, or when I give a quiz, I never say, "Good luck." Instead, I say, "Try hard," or "Do your best," or "I'm sure it will go well." And when a student has done well on an assignment, I use phrases such as "Nice job," "Good work," or "Strong effort." As with the quotes, I hope regularly sending the message that effort correlates with success will lead students to believe their effort can control how well they do in school.
A third way I try to influence my students' locus of control happens when I teach them reading and writing strategies. During the course of instruction, I make sure to point out, explicitly, why and how the strategy can help students become a better reader or writer. I talk about the need to become more skillful writers and the need to be able to comprehend increasingly more complex texts. I encourage the students to apply the strategies I teach them to their work in other subjects. By explaining the usefulness of the strategies, my wish is that students will decide they can use the strategies to have more success in school.
Finally, sometimes students tell me about issues outside of class or school and how they think these issues are beyond their control and are impacting their in-school performance. When this happens, I try to reason with students and suggest strategies they can choose to use, so they feel more in control. If, for example, a student is distracted in class by concerns that don't involve the class, I'll point out that for the time in class, he or she can choose to forget about the worries and concentrate on the activities before him or her. Or, if a student complains to me that disruptions at home are preventing him or her from completing work, I'll suggest going to the library or the after-school study center. And I'll ask the student if he or she is making the best use of study hall time during the school day.
It appears undesirable for students to think their success in school is largely dependent on forces outside of themselves. Unfortunately, it's likely that a portion of our students comes to school each day with this belief. Given the powerful influence students' locus of control orientation can have on their lives, it seems reasonable for teachers to work towards pulling students in the direction of an internal locus of control over academics. And fortunately, teachers may be able to have this impact just through mindfulness of how they communicate with their students.
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