I wrote this over a year ago, after having a discussion with a colleague about why I don’t think we should use the term ‘ability’…
I have definitely been wrong in the past by claiming that ability doesn’t exist.
This is an interesting article which sums up current understanding quite well: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-innate-talent-a-myth/. It’s interesting to read some children were taught to acquire ‘perfect pitch’, often cited as an example of pure ability. However, it’s pretty clear that some children are able to learn some things more quickly than others.
So innate talent / ability exists. Why do I think that we should avoid using these terms, as teachers?
Because we can’t measure or judge them accurately.
We can (at least try to) measure / judge a child’s ‘attainment’: how good they currently are at a specific field. But this is brought about by a combination of their innate ability + their prior experiences.
It may be that I am exceptionally talented ballet dancer, but I have never practiced it so my attainment is low! Similarly, I feel that I have low natural language ability, but I’ve worked very hard at learning languages so I can speak a few reasonably well.
In short, we shouldn’t assume that someone is not able, just because they are not currently attaining highly.
This is related to why I think setting can often be unfair. Pupils are set by attainment, so some pupils who are actually very able but have little or no prior experience are placed in low sets. This then compounds their previous disadvantage. Of course, there are advantages of setting too, especially in Maths – being able to tailor teacher-input more precisely to the class.
John Hattie has quite a balanced perspective on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6czhy6kPpc
Further reading…
Dan Nichols Blog on Attainment vs Ability
Claire Taylor on labelling by ability on the Times Higher Education Blog