Building Success: The Intersection of Emotional Intelligence, Self-Regulation, Grit and Mindset, and High Approval Teaching

Abstract

This chapter will explore how Emotional Intelligence, Self-Regulation, Grit and Mindset, and High Approval Teaching are building blocks for later life success and what teachers and parents can do to foster development of these important skills. Success in life depends on students being able to learn how to be emotionally intelligent, how to self-regulate one’s behavior, how to take on academic challenges and persevere, and how to identify resources that can facilitate success. Learning about these skills and being able to perform them leads to success, not all at once and not in isolation, but with consistency and helpful feedback. Determining how to be emotionally appropriate in a given setting can generate acceptance from peers and adults. Children need to learn how to recruit reinforcement in the environment from teachers and parents. High approval interactions between children and significant others in the environment helps to create an atmosphere where children do not feel threatened and are encouraged to try out new behaviors and take on more challenging tasks. Reciprocity of approval often does not receive the attention that is warranted, when discussing what makes classroom and home environments conducive to positive and appropriate interactions.

1. Introduction

This chapter will explore the how Emotional Intelligence, Self-Regulation, Grit and Mindset, and High Approval Teaching are building blocks for later life success and what teachers can do to foster development of these important elements. Success in life is everything, especially when considering the low literacy levels one might find in the prison population; prisons are filled with individuals who were not successful academically or socially in school. Helping students learn how to be successful is an important part of teaching and one that is not only based on academic achievement. One’s emotional quotient (EQ) may be more important than one’s intelligence quotient (IQ) over the course of a lifetime [1]. Emotional intelligence involves not only being intelligent or aware of one’s own feelings, but also being intelligent about the feelings of others.

Being able to “read” the body language, facial expressions, and voice tone of those in the immediate environment provides an opportunity to modulate or self-regulate one’s behavior so that it appropriately responds to those in the immediate environment. If someone is upset and crying, entering the room, and persisting with humming a tune or maintaining a smile on one’s face, would be inappropriate. Someone with good emotional intelligence would know that he/she would have to adjust or modulate their behavior so that it would convey genuine concern for the person who was crying. Being able to take on the perspective of someone else in the environment is a hugely important skill, where others in the environment would genuinely appreciate your sensitivity and kindness. Being “smart” about one’s own emotions and being able to read the emotions of others provides a road map as to how to respond emotionally and behaviorally in various situations. Once someone can understand his/her own emotions and the emotions of others, he or she can then modulate or regulate responses so that they are appropriate to the context [2]. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, while you may not remember what someone said to you years ago, you will never forget how that person made you feel!

Reading the emotional context and regulating one’s behavior accordingly are important first building blocks. The pursuit of success also must include tenacity and task persistence in the face of challenge, what Duckworth et al. (2007) referred to as “grit” [3]. Helping children to develop grit in the face of challenge involves the supports teachers establish in the classroom; students must learn to identify and use resources in the environment to solve problems [4]. This is best explained by Dweck’s (2007) [5] notion of “mindset,” a sense of one’s own efficacy. Dweck discusses two kinds of mindset: fixed and growth. In a fixed mindset, students perceive their abilities as adequate for a given situation and take limited chances when engaging in academic tasks. They may see their intelligence as finite and do not wish to take chances that may show others they are not as intelligent as one may think.

For early adolescence in particular, the need to “blend in” or “not stand out for any reason” governs one’s willingness to take on challenges academically or emotionally. For students in middle school, this posture defines many children who seem to do the very minimum at best. A growth mindset on the otherhand, is best illustrated by children who are willing to be challenged academically and who have confidence in themselves as learners that over time they can overcome challenges. Developing growth mindsets in children, how they feel about themselves as learners and their willingness to take on challenges, is significant in terms of later life success.

So how does a student develop self-efficacy? Believing in oneself as capable and up to the task does not develop in isolation. Developing feelings of success comes directly from one’s experiences as a student both socially and academically, as a family member, and as a friend. Being able to experience oneself as successful in these different arenas requires opportunities over time that give rise to a sense of acceptance, competence, task completion, problem solving ability, and valuing oneself as a “good person.” Developing self-efficacy does not happen in a specific moment or in a vacuum, but evolves over time, contingent on the amount of approval one receives in the environment from parents, teachers, siblings, and peers.

High approval teaching is one concrete way that students can develop self-efficacy. Not only is high approval teaching a way to develop a warm and supportive classroom environment, but high approval itself is reciprocal, and students in such environments become engaged in ongoing cycles of positive outcomes [6, 7, 8]. Once a student has received approval, that student will keep engaging in whatever behaviors earned that approval initially. Reciprocal cycles of reinforcing consequences can be established and maintained; the student engages in appropriate behavior which the teacher reinforces, which then strengthens the target behavior and makes it more likely to occur, which in turn reinforces for the teacher that what he/she is doing is working and so the teacher again provides this reinforcement for the student when appropriate. Unfortunately, the same reciprocity is evident when cycles of disapproval are evident. A child engages in an inappropriate behavior, the teacher then scolds the child, which causes the child to engage in that behavior again or in another inappropriate behavior that will generate more teacher disapproval and so on. Teachers and students and parents and children often become locked in ongoing cycles of disapproval, which negatively impact one’s sense of self-efficacy [8].

2. Methodology

The research studies reviewed and cited in this chapter were selected because they fall into four discrete categories: theoretical foundations (emotional intelligence, self-regulation of behavior, grit and mindset, and high approval teaching); applied behavior analysis (ABA) methodology (self- evaluation, self-talk, classroom management); behavioral intervention strategies teachers and parents can implement with typical and special needs children (principles of reinforcement and punishment, selective ignoring, peer tutoring) and the application and extension of the principle of “reciprocity of approval” (mutually pleasing cycles of positive interaction). The last category, the application and extension of “reciprocity of approval,” represents the primary focus of this author’s research work across an extended academic career. “Reciprocity of approval” explores how high approval interactions between teachers and parents with individual children and/or classes of children is both interactional and transactional; the teacher or parent approves of a child’s behavior and he or she in turn maintains that behavior or acknowledges the praise and approval of the teacher or parent by smiling, making eye contact, following rules, and completing tasks correctly. In turn, the parent or teacher feels reinforced for their efforts and the cycle begins anew. Parents and children and teachers and children can create ongoing cycles of mutually pleasing interactions, which help to build grit and resilience in children and can prevent teachers and parents from burning out. Overall, the selection of studies reviewed in this chapter emphasize the skills children need to learn to be able to recruit reinforcement in the environment from teachers and parents, which sets the stage for success overtime.

3. Emotional intelligence/emotional quotient

EQ has been reported to be as significant a factor or even a more significant factor than IQ in predicting success in life including developing and maintaining friendships, graduating from high school and/or college, earning promotion at work, and staying married [9]. According to Goleman in his first book, Emotional Intelligence [10], IQ contributes only 20% to the determinants of life success. Peter Salovey and John Mayer [11] coined the term, Emotional Quotient (EQ), and defined it as the ability to understand one’s own feelings and the feelings of others in the environment as a way of regulating one’s behaviors and choices. More concretely, Salovey and Mayer [11] and Goleman [10] conceptualized EQ as: (1) understanding one’s own feelings and relying on them to make good decisions; (2) directing one’s feelings to keep painful events and interactions from limiting one’s ability to think; (3) encouraging oneself in the face of continued failure and other roadblocks; (4) delaying gratification; (5) empathizing and developing rapport with others; (6) reading non-verbal cues in the environment; and (7) monitoring one’s emotions and regulating them so that they are displayed appropriately relative to setting and context.

The research offered by Goleman [10] in his book, Emotional Intelligence, suggests that school-age children and adolescents who have learned these skills seem to have lower rates of delinquency and substance abuse, score higher on achievement tests, and fare better in their later life careers and relationships as adults. Clearly one way to be successful is to be emotionally intelligent and be able to self-regulate one’s own feelings and behaviors [12]. The extent to which a child can understand his/her own feelings, make appropriate decisions, and stay the course despite various setbacks can be seriously compromised by distractibility, problems in focusing, and low self-esteem, characteristics commonly seen in children and adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Moreover, as children and adults spend more and more of their time engaged digitally, there are fewer opportunities to be engaged with others to be able to practice effective emotional responding. Helping a child to develop a positive sense of oneself as a competent and worthwhile individual requires less “screen time” and more opportunities for positive interactions in the environment.

Parents and teachers can help children and adolescents to better develop EQ by teaching them to: (1) distinguish differences among their feelings and to provide the correct vocabulary to describe various feelings; (2) express feelings in acceptable ways appropriate to given situational contexts; (3) read body language and other non-verbal cues in order to enhance communication; (4) treat others in the environment sensitively; and (5) try to see a situation from another’s point of view. Parents and teachers must also recognize their own importance as models of emotional and behavioral responding in the environment, from which children and adolescents learn via direct observation. Discussions with children and adolescents about the emotional and behavioral responses adults in the environment elect to make provides insight into how “emotional” information is processed, responses regulated within given situational contexts, and ultimately viewed in the environment by others. Helping children and adolescents to be reflective about their own feelings and behaviors means that parents and teachers must find time after some inappropriate behavior has been displayed to process the event with the child or adolescent, pinpointing antecedents and consequences of that behavioral display and identifying more appropriate, alternative ways of responding. Understanding one’s emotions and their appropriateness to a given situation is learned via observation of adults in the environment and being able to read social cues successfully.

More and more public schools are incorporating mindfulness training into their daily routines, helping students learn to feel calmer and more focused. According to the National Association of School Psychologists, “With a full repertoire of social skills, students will have the ability to make social choices that will strengthen their interpersonal relationships and facilitate success in school” [13]. Among the types of social skills that need to be trained are survival skills (listening, following directions, rewarding oneself) interpersonal skills (sharing, joining an activity, waiting one’s turn), problem-solving skills (asking for help, deciding wat to do, apologizing), and conflict resolution (peer pressure, dealing with bullies). Typical children learn these skills as a consequence of daily experiences and discussions with parents and teachers. However, for many children with disabilities, learning to read social cues in the environment and regulating one’s actions so that they are appropriate requires direct instruction, either through a structured social skills group, psychotherapy, or a teacher/trainer skilled in helping students learn self-regulation.

4. Self-regulation of behavior

Self-regulation or self-evaluation training is one type of metacognitive activity that can enhance both academic and social performance [14]. In self-regulation, children or adolescents are taught by either parents or teachers to monitor specific academic or social behaviors by providing the child with feedback concerning the frequency, accuracy, appropriateness, and intensity of those target behaviors and how they were rated in the environment by a parent, teacher, or peer. When the child or adolescent has come to understand the rating criteria, (s)he then rates his/her own behaviors independently and matches those ratings to those conducted simultaneously by the parent, teacher, or peer. This matching component is extremely valuable in teaching the child or adolescent to understand the rater’s perspective. Bonus points or other reinforcers can be earned for the degree of match between the child or adolescent and the rater, thereby increasing the motivation to evaluate his/her own behavior from the rater’s perspective. Overtime, once the degree of match between ratings is high, the child or adolescent can then rate his/her own behavior independently and even self-reward as well, if the parent or teacher has empowered the student to self-determine reinforcers and self-consequate when goals are met. As a training package, this not only teaches behavioral control, but heightens responsibility for one’s actions [6].

Another cognitive behavioral strategy that parents and teachers can employ to help children or adolescents learn to self-regulate their emotions involves the use of “verbal self-instruction” or “self-talk” [15, 16]. This technique can be effective in reducing emotional outbursts by training through active rehearsal, a series of pivotal questions that the child or adolescent can ask her/himself in the face of increased feelings of anger or other problematic emotions or behaviors. The “self-talk” can serve to diffuse the child or adolescent’s anger and delay response long enough to avoid a major altercation or deliberate sabotage of oneself. The key here is to train the child or adolescent to first recognize specific feelings and the depth of those feelings in each situation and to provide the child with a strategy to stop and explore what the behavioral/emotional options related to the active display of those feelings might be. For example, when the child or adolescent recognizes that (s)he is angry and starting to “lose it,” a series of self-questions might be learned including: “What am I getting so mad about?” “What should I do?” “What’s the best choice of action?” and “What’s the worst choice I could make?” By the time the child or adolescent recognizes the emotion and “self-talks” the behavioral choices, (s)he may have already passed the moment when the outburst would have occurred. Through “self-talk,” the child or adolescent may become more deliberate in evaluating response options and ultimately make better choices about which responses might be more appropriate, given the situational context and the ensuing consequence. By engaging in this technique, we can help children and adolescents avoid “emotional melt downs,” helping to increase peer acceptance, limiting rejection, and strengthening the understanding that one’s behavior is based on choices one makes. “Self-talk” helps children to understand that their responses in the environment involve making choices, and that those choices can either be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in terms of what might follow. This can be a powerful skill to learn in that a child can literally impact what happens to him/her in the environment by making ‘good’ choices.

5. Teachers and parents as emotional role models

How teachers and/or parents deal with stress, anger, sadness, and fear themselves provides an emotional map for children and adolescents. The adage “do as I say, not as I do” may be problematic for adults who hide their own feelings behind a defensive posture. Challenging commonly held gender stereotypes as displayed in the media and discussing how one’s responses may be different from those portrayed, can serve as a strong emotional compass for children and adolescents who constantly monitor what their parents and teachers do and say and how those responses are viewed in the community in terms of appropriateness. Simplistically, if you want a child or adolescent to show empathy for others or to demonstrate anger without being lost in it, a parent or teacher must be a responsible emotional model!

An important lesson for children and adolescents to learn is that emotional and behavioral responding is situationally governed. What might be appropriate to do or say at recess or on the block with friends may not be appropriate for the classroom or the work environment. This raises an interesting question. Who decides what makes something “appropriate for the setting?” The answer must be seen through the lens of the “significant rater” in that setting.

Helping children and adolescents to be reflective about their own feelings and behaviors means that parents and teachers must find the time after some inappropriate behavior or emotional outburst has been displayed to talk about what happened and why it happened. Alternative ways of responding more appropriately need to be explored. The best question a parent or teacher can ask a child or adolescent after an inappropriate emotion or behavioral response is “What should the child or adolescent do the next time?” Helping children and adolescents to explore what other emotional or behavioral choices might be more acceptable is where valuable learning takes place. Simply punishing a child or adolescent does not teach the correct response; punishment teaches a child what not to do. A parent or teacher’s goal should be to help a child or adolescent identify better options for emotional and behavioral responding the next time a similar situation presents itself. This is where learning a vocabulary to express the “feelings” connected with emotions makes a big difference the next time the child or adolescent confronts a similar or comparable situation [17].

Students who do not have good Emotional Intelligence, behavioral self-control, and/or sustained on-task ability (characteristics often see in children with disabilities) typically do poorly in school, not only because of academic deficiencies but because they are often rejected by their peers. Not being able to “fit in” with peers and struggling academically often puts these children and adolescents in situations where they bond with other students who are seen as not successful in the environment as well. Overtime, this path can lead to dropping out of school, delinquent behavior, depression, and/or criminal activity. Breaking the cycle of failure and peer rejection from both IQ and EQ perspectives are complex challenges that teachers and parents need to be prepared to address, both academically and behaviorally [18].

EQ and self-regulation can be important factors in achieving success not only in school, but in the world of work and in the social life of individuals. Being able to “read” what is warranted in terms of being emotionally and socially appropriate to the demands of a given setting, is an important component of later life success and acceptance. Moving beyond the social/emotional, how one performs academically in school in terms of task persistence, identification of resources to assist and bolster performance and willingness to take on academic challenges are essential components to later life success. These important elements are often referred to as Grit and Mindset [3, 5].

6. Grit and mindset

Over the last number of years, concepts of Grit and Mindset have been given a lot of attention in the research literature in exploring what makes students successful. The middle school grades are an important developmental period where grit and mindset play significant roles in later life outcomes. Polirstok [4] cited the work of Balfanz et al. [19] in noting the degree of “student disengagement in high-poverty middle school grades, its impact on student achievement, and ultimately the role it plays in driving the nations’ graduation rate crisis” (p.2). Young adolescents are especially interested in “fitting in” with their peer group and often work hard to “fly under the radar,” so that they are not seen as different or smart or talented. Dweck [5] characterizes these students as being “closed” as learners, unwilling to take on academic challenges, and notes that they have a “fixed mindset.”

Dweck’s concept of fixed mindset is best explained as “an implicit theory about oneself that is defensive, not wanting anyone to see into one’s real academic abilities or lack thereof” ([4] p. 2). Students with fixed mindsets view their own intelligence as finite or limited, without the ability to grow and develop. Polirstok [4] notes that “students who adopt a fixed mindset, may become trapped in a recursive pattern of low achievement, low motivation, and low effort” ([20] p. 4). The fixed mindset may result in academic avoidance of specific tasks. As Mawer [21] points out, avoiding a task can enable students to fool themselves into believing that they have not failed.

This notion of limited achievement is well supported by the 2019 U.S. reading and math achievement data for 8th grade and 12th grade students reported by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), [22]. The data show that roughly 2/3 s of these students are not proficient in reading and math and that these gaps are chronic, persistent, and resistant to change over time. The question here would be what percent of those who are not proficient could be characterized as having a fixed mindset? While the answer to this question may be elusive, addressing the problem must begin early in students’ school careers, beginning with learning to reading and engaging in mathematical thinking. The fix involves high approval teaching, lots of success in completing academic tasks, and access to high value reinforcers. One might argue that this fix seems overly simplistic but building an implicit theory of oneself as a successful learner requires consistent feedback about one’s successes over time and extends across the school years all the way through college [23].

In contrast with a fixed mindset, a growth mindset is what Dweck [24] describes as a student who is willing to learn new concepts, and take on new academic challenges, even as the academic content becomes more complex. Students with growth mindsets believe that they can be successful in mastering this more challenging content, even if it takes more time or requires them to identify resources that can help them to learn this new content. What is important to this group of students is their beliefs in themselves as learners who can be successful, even if they must struggle to achieve this result. Having a growth mindset will enable a learner to persevere; relying on his/her implicit theory of themselves as a learner gives them the impetus to keep working until mastery is achieved.

Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, and Kelly (2007) call this persistence in the face of challenge “grit.” Students who are successful, able to sustain their effort, and ultimately reach their targeted goal over time are gritty. According to Hochanadel and Finamore (2015), “It appears that when teachers teach students how to persist, a growth mindset develops, thus improving grit to overcome any challenges” ([4] p. 2).

The overlap of grit and growth mindset makes it difficult to know if grit fosters mindset? or if mindset fosters grit? and/or to what degree? To date, there are no definitive answers to these questions; understanding that both theories are so integrally intertwined requires that interventions with students must address both issues [25]. According to Polirstok [4], grit and mindset intervention strategies that teach students how to persist and make choices that lead to success can include: personal student narratives about overcoming obstacles and persevering [26, 27]; biographies and adolescent literature about well-known individuals in pop culture who have made difficult choices that have propelled them to success [28]; computer programs about mindsets [29]; choices and outcomes [20, 30]; self-evaluation [14, 31, 32] and self-talk protocols [15]; and training students to serve as peer tutors in order to strengthen their own ideas about following rules and on-task behavior that help students to be successful [7, 33, 34].

7. Motivating students for success: high approval teaching and building growth mindsets

High Approval Teaching (HAT) can facilitate persistence, resilience, increased academic achievement, and foster a sense of self-efficacy. Most of the research I have conducted and explored over the mainstay of my career addresses the impact of high approval teaching. Discussions of classroom management typically highlight how high approval teaching helps to establish a warm classroom climate, an environment free of fear from answering questions incorrectly, and increased motivation to do well academically and behaviorally. My early research on reciprocity of approval between teachers and students [8] and peer tutors and tutees [7, 35] demonstrates that approval increases not only proacademic behaviors, but fosters increased appropriate social behaviors that prompt more approval from the teacher/tutor. Establishing cycles of reinforcement help students learn how to recruit reinforcement more effectively in the environment for being appropriate, a major shift from recruiting attention for inappropriate behavior. High approval teaching, coupled with high value reinforcers, can change the overall daily operation of a class and the trajectory of individual students from problematic to cooperative and on-task [36]. Once students experience themselves as successful, academically, and socially, students become grittier and display changes from fixed to growth mindsets.

The work of Paul Tough [27] at the University of Texas at Austin offers meaningful insight here. Tough discussed how minority freshmen felt, lacking confidence in their ability as well as in their learning strategies, when enrolling in a rigorous science course. Tough had minority students who had completed this rigorous curriculum record digital messages for students to view. First, the minority students talked about where they came from and their experiences in high school, demonstrating that their experiences and backgrounds were similar to these new freshmen. The videos captured the students’ fears about not fitting in at the University, about not feeling smart enough to succeed when they began, and then highlighted the actions and strategies they used to help them belong and succeed. The digital stories that were most effective emphasized the themes of belonging or growth mindset. Additionally, students read an article on how the brain can grow and change because of practice and new connections made. This directly challenged students who had a fixed mindset and believed intelligence was static. For the students who viewed these digital stories, they were able to complete the rigorous science curriculum and earn more credits than comparison peers. These digital stories helped to develop grit in these freshmen and an implicit theory of themselves as successful learners.

This article, written by Tough about the program at the University of Texas at Austin, connects with a book he authored in 2012, titled How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character [37] and to a more recent book authored in 2016, titled Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why? [38]. In both these texts, Tough argues that overcoming the problems associated with growing up poor requires that students learn the skills associated with character including grit, curiosity, and an embrace of challenges that are linked with opportunities ([4] p. 3).

In essence, developing grit and mindset can lead to success and increased academic, social, and vocational opportunities. Teachers need to create classroom environments that provide children with chances to see themselves differently as learners who can be successful.

8. Conclusion

If you are reading this chapter, it is likely that you were successful in school. Try to identify what helped you to be successful and what motivated you when you were of school age? Chances are that today you have good emotional intelligence and know how to collaborate with peers and colleagues. How was this great skill set that you currently display developed? What elements did you learn in school? What elements did you learn at home or on your block when you played with other children? Can you identify some things your teachers or parents did with you that directly impacts your everyday functioning as a successful person? If you can answer some of these questions, you will get a good idea of what children in school and at home need to learn to be successful and how the topics discussed in this chapter can be useful in developing skills for success.

Emotional Intelligence, Self-Regulation, Grit and Mindset, and High Approval Teaching are building blocks for later life success. Teachers as well as parents have an important responsibility to help children grow and develop these important skills. Peer acceptance and self-efficacy as learners set successful children apart from those who struggle in school. Prisons are filled with adults for whom school was not a place of success. School success is the most important determinant of later life success. What makes someone successful in school and motivates them to do better is not only their academic ability, but their interpersonal skills as well as their desire to fit in.

As teachers and parents, we need to determine what social skills are deficient and how we go about addressing those gaps [31]. While some skills can be trained utilizing a whole class approach, other elements of self-regulation and emotional intelligence will need to be trained on an individual basis. The key here is understanding that acquiring these skills, especially for students who have disabilities, does not happen on automatic pilot. Like reading and writing, these skills require direct instruction, practice, and lots of feedback. Helping children learn to be successful is among the hardest jobs required of teachers and parents but represents the most important work we do!

Acknowledgments

This chapter addresses topics that I have researched across my academic career that examine the impact of positive reinforcement across a variety of applied settings. I have been very fortunate to work with wonderful colleagues as co-researchers on many publications including Dr. Douglas Greer, Dr. Jay Gottlieb, Dr. Larry Dana, and Dr. Sandra Levy. As a faculty member and former Dean of Education at both Lehman College, CUNY, and Kean University, I am grateful for the ongoing support and feedback I have received from colleagues on the faculty from both institutions about my research over the course of my career.

Conflict of interest

The author declares no conflict of interest with respect to this chapter.