The Study
When students strive to achieve difficult but reachable goals, the process is a positive one for them; however, when students are not satisfied with merely doing well -- or even better than their peers -- and are satisfied only if they have done the job perfectly, perfectionism becomes destructive. Dr. Jere Brophy, University Distinguished Professor of Teacher Education, and others have investigated the problems of perfectionist students, identified symptoms of the behavior, and outlined strategies teachers can use to work effectively with these students.

The Findings
Perfectionist behaviors in students that are considered destructive may include: (1) focusing on winning competitions against classmates rather than on meeting personal goals; (2) setting performance standards that are impossibly high and unnecessarily rigid; (3) employing a variety of strategies to avoid failure (expressing low aspirations, procrastinating in starting work that will be judged, delaying in completing assignments); (4) being motivated more from fear of failure than from pursuit of success. Perfectionists often show unsatisfactory achievement progress because they are more concerned about avoiding mistakes than about learning and are inhibited in their classroom participation. Teachers can help perfectionist students change their attitudes and learn that errors are normal and expected -- often necessary aspects of the learning process. Teachers can articulate expectations that stress learning and improvement rather than perfect performance; they can assist students in setting realistic achievement goals. Teachers who are ineffective in working with perfectionist students: criticize, nag, threaten punishment for failure to change, deny or try to control the perfectionist tendencies rather than dealing with them.

What It Means to You
Effective teachers take perfectionistic students seriously, communicating understanding and approval of their desire to do well and sympathizing with the students' feelings of embarrassment and frustration. Teachers can learn to support and reinforce the success-seeking aspects of achievement motivation; likewise, they can learn to use strategies that will help change failure avoiding attitudes and behaviors. Effective teachers help perfectionist students to change by: building a friendly, supportive learning environment; establishing the expectation that mistakes are a normal part of the learning process; stressing learning and improvement rather than perfect performance on assignments; reassuring perfectionist students of their interest in and willingness to help them achieve success rather than being concerned primarily with evaluating student performance.

More Information
You can get more information about working with perfectionist students by consulting Brophy, J. (1996), Teaching Problem Students, New York: Guilford.

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