S6 E6 - Why Confidence is a Misleading Measure of Capability

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Hello and welcome to Episode 6 of Season 6 of the Structured Literacy podcast. I can hardly believe that we have five completed episodes and now we're in our sixth. If you've been listening to us since the start, thank you so much. The work that we do in this podcast is designed to support, affirm and guide you. If you're a new listener, you have a whole back catalogue of episodes just waiting for you. But for now, I'm Jocelyn and I'm so pleased you've joined me here, recorded in Tasmania, the home of the Palawa people.

In the last episode, we talked about professional judegment and I introduced a couple of phases within my Responsive Leadership Model. So today we're going to dig a little deeper into one of the most problematic assumptions that we make about teacher development: that confidence equals competence. And if you've been with me for a while now, you'll know that I'm passionate about moving beyond surface-level indicators and getting to the heart of what actually drives effective practice.

And you might be forgiven for thinking that maybe I've moved away from talking about literacy, but in fact I haven't. This discussion about how we support the professional capacity building of our teachers is at the heart of getting every student reading and writing with confidence. So it's one thing to know the what and what the lesson needs to look like. It's another thing entirely to be able to think about how we help the adults around us to build their capacity to bring it all to life and make it work. So that's what these episodes are all about. Let's get into the problem with confidence as a measure of capacity.

The Problem with Confidence as a Measure

How many times have you asked a teacher, "How are you feeling about your fluency lessons?" or "How confident do you feel with that phonics instruction?" And we do it all the time, don't we? And then we use the person's response to determine what kind of support to provide. If they say they're feeling good, well, we assume they need less help. If they express doubt, we assume they need more guidance.

But here's the thing: confidence can actually be a terrible measure of capacity. And let's talk about why...

The Dunning-Kruger Effect in Education

I've spoken on the podcast quite a bit about cognitive biases, and one of them is the Dunning-Kruger effect. Now, David Dunning and Justin Kruger found that people with the least skill and knowledge in a particular area note, we're not talking about intelligence, we're talking about skill and knowledge, the people with the least skill and knowledge in a particular area are the most likely to overestimate their abilities (Kruger & Dunning, 1999).

Even more interesting is the inverse relationship - those with the most skill and knowledge are often the least confident to claim expertise.

Think about that for a moment. The teacher who confidently declares "I've got phonics sorted!" might actually be one of the ones who needs the most support, guidance and direction. While the teacher wringing their hands about whether they're doing enough for their struggling readers might actually be demonstrating sophisticated understanding of the complexity of instruction.

How This Shows Up in the Responsive Leadership Model

In the Responsive Leadership Model, we see this confidence-competence mismatch play out clearly across developmental phases. So let me walk you through this.

The first phase of the model is where we are grounding and applying. We're learning the things that we need to learn. We're learning the steps, if you like. We're getting some foundational knowledge.

Then we move into the Achieving phase, where we actually have to use this thing, the technique, the strategy, whatever it happens to be, in our own everyday life. And this is called the achieving phase because teachers do begin to get results in everyday, stable conditions. So they are actually achieving some success, but they don't have enough experience to manage the unusual or the unexpected.

And here's what's crucial to understand about this phase; there's an important clarity shift that occurs when the person gradually moves from making decisions based on principles of correct instruction, or working with fidelity, if you like, to making decisions that are strategic and designed to achieve a specific goal.

This means that someone can look perfectly competent in their understanding of instruction, you do the observation, you see that they're doing the lesson steps, but this competence could be short-lived and not always effective when things move into the space of the unexpected or things shift outside the box. They could also be delivering really solid lessons, but you aren’t seeing the impact in the data. This Achieving phase is where we see overconfidence most dramatically come to the fore in educational settings. With appropriate coaching, with appropriate experience, with being able to make the connections between what was the same, between this context and that context, and what was different and how what we do relates and reflects the research, we move to the discerning phase.

The Discerning Phase Paradox

Now, this third phase is where things get really interesting from a confidence perspective. In this phase, teachers have more experience, they know considerably more, they're effective in understanding a wide range of context pretty automatically, but they still make decisions in a deliberate way, and this need for hard thinking pushes them into the space of vulnerability. They actually do know what they need to, but they doubt themselves. 

This creates this fascinating mismatch between understanding context and feeling confident in our decisions. So the teacher in the Discerning phase might look at a struggling reader and immediately recognise multiple potential intervention points, they see the complexity of phonemic awareness issues, the need for systematic phonics instruction, they see the vocabulary gaps, they see the fluency concerns, and they do actually have the knowledge to address all of this. But they're also second-guessing their own capacity, and that makes them less confident about their decisions, which throws them completely off-kilter.

If the Achieving phase has us feeling overly confident, the Discerning phase can be the complete opposite. We have teachers who are actually quite skilled not taking the action they need to to really bring those results home because they're doubting themselves.

Moving Beyond Confidence to Observable Actions

So what's the answer to all of this mismatching between confidence and skill? Well, one of the things we can do stop basing our decisions on how confident teachers feel and we need to move into the space of what they actually do.

When we're working with someone who might be inclined to overestimate their capacity - perhaps someone in that Achieving phase - data helps us see the reality of the situation. We need to be looking to the student learning outcomes as the evidence of capacity, examining the quality of instructional decisions, and focusing on short-term data that allows us to see reasonably quick wins and areas for growth.

When we're working with someone who's doubting themselves despite actually being quite knowledgeable and skilled - like people in the Discerning phase - data becomes the evidence they need to remind them that all is well. Remember, data is the proof of the job well-done. It's not just about how we feel about our work.

What to Look for Instead

So rather than asking "How confident do you feel?", we can be examining practice through observable actions and through the quality of discussion and the complexity and nuance of the reasoning that happens. And here's some questions we can be asking to figure all of this out:

Observable Instructional Actions:

• How does this teacher respond when a student struggles with this area?
• What decisions do they make about pacing and review?
• How do they use assessment data to inform instruction?
• What adjustments do they make when things aren't working?

Quality of Professional Reasoning:

• Can this person articulate why they've chosen particular instructional approaches?
• How do they discuss student needs and progress?
• What questions do they ask when planning?
• How do they reflect on lesson effectiveness?

Effective beginning reading instruction, and, in fact, all effective reading instruction, requires teachers to make countless micro-decisions based on student response and curriculum demands. The teacher who can do this effectively might feel uncertain about their choices, while the teacher who feels very confident might be missing crucial information about student need. 

Practical Implications for Leaders

There are very real practical implications for leaders here.

If you're supporting teachers, this research has profound implications for how you approach professional development and coaching conversations.

Instead of "How are you feeling about fluency?" try "Tell me about the decisions you made during today's lesson and what student responses influenced those decisions."

Instead of "Are you confident with phonics?" you can try "Walk me through how you determined the pacing for phonics content introduction."

Instead of relying on confidence surveys, spend time in classrooms looking at the quality of instruction and the student engagement. Look at how teachers respond to unexpected moments, how they adjust their teaching based on student needs, and how they use their data to inform their practice.

The Data-Driven Approach

And, of course, it always comes back to the data, doesn't it? Data is of critical importance in decision-making and we need to use this rather than only relying on feelings or assumptions.

Now granted, when we are mastering, that's the fourth phase of our model, when we've been at this for quite a while, we've put a whole lot of our personal energy and time into building our capacity. Our teacher's spidey senses absolutely come into play, because now we're automatic and we have the expertise to work in a more intuitive way. But until we reach that point, data is our evidence.

When we focus on observable teaching actions that are linked to student learning outcomes, we get a much clearer picture of what's actually happening in our classrooms. We can see where support is needed regardless of how confident someone says they feel.

This doesn't mean we ignore the emotional experience of teaching - those rapid shifts from confidence to frustration, and the self-doubt and vulnerability that comes once we're moving into the discerning phase. All of these are very real, they need to be acknowledged and supported. But they can't be the primary driver of professional learning decisions.

A Strategic, Objective Approach to Development

The takeaway message from today's episode is this: confidence can be a misleading measure of capacity. We're better served when we move towards examining practice through observable actions and the quality of discussions, including unpacking the reasoning behind decisions than we are when we just focus on confidence. If people are saying, “I did that because the program said so,” well, that's sometimes a valid answer, but if it’s our only one in every situation, we are in trouble. 

This means being strategic and objective about teacher development. It means using multiple sources of evidence to understand where teachers are in their development journey. And it means recognising that the most confident person in the room might not be the most competent, while the person expressing doubt might actually be able to demonstrate sophisticated professional awareness.

Looking Forward

As we continue to refine our approach to supporting teacher development, let's commit to moving beyond surface-level indicators. Let's get curious about what teachers are actually doing, how they're actually thinking about their practice, and what outcomes their students are actually achieving.

Remember, teaching is complex work that requires ongoing development through our careers. The goal isn't to reach a point where we feel completely confident, if we're mastering in everything, well, we need a new challenge. The goal is to continue growing in our ability to make effective instructional decisions that support every student's success.

Is this work hard? Well, yes, yes it is. There is no doubt that supporting our teachers where they are, and moving them to the place where we need them to go next, when we always have a large range of teacher experience and skill in our teams, is difficult.

And this is precisely why I created Leading Learning Success, my 12-month whole school professional development program that includes knowledge and tools for leaders that help you meet your team exactly where they are up to and respond to your school's context. I’ve been a school leader trying to do all the things. I know how hard it is to have the headspace to put it all together and make it happen, and I also know how important it is to know that you aren’t in this on your own. 

Closing

That's all from me for this episode of the Structured Literacy podcast. Remember, confidence comes from the things we do well, but reflecting on our own feelings as the primary measure of capacity can really be misleading.  

Until next time, happy teaching everyone. Bye.

References:

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-1134.

Seamer, J. (2024). Reading Success in the Early Primary School. Routledge.

Show Notes:

Leading Learning Success

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