In heading back to school this week, teachers and students will be reflecting on the successes and challenges of remote learning, to gauge their academic progress while in lockdown. This process will be highly subjective, as each individual has had a unique set of factors - personal, familial, material and environmental - surrounding and impacting their efforts at home.

In reconnecting with my form, I will have them do a ‘self-audit’ in response to a question: What did you learn about yourself in lockdown? While there may be personal revelations they won’t want to share, one easily shareable revelation - which may help them reconnect with their classmates and plan forward effectively - will be how they responded to the expectations of school while at home.

A useful framework for this kind of self-audit comes from author Gretchen Rubin, who studies habits, happiness and human behaviour. In her books Better Than Before (2015) and The Four Tendencies (2017), Rubin outlines four tendency types that determine our response to expectations. There are two kinds of expectations, Rubin observes - inner and outer. Inner expectations are the desires we have and the goals we set for ourselves, while outer expectations take the form of external demands and responsibilities. How we respond these stimuli assumes one of the following four tendencies:

Upholder - Upholders meet both outer and inner expectations.
Questioner - Questioners question all expectations.
Obliger - Obligers meet outer expectations, but struggle to meet inner expectations.
Rebel - Rebels resist all expectations.

In Rubin’s experience, most people can tell what they are just from the brief descriptions, but her website features a free quiz, taken by 1.3 million people and counting. Notably, Rubin has found that Obliger is the biggest tendency, for both men and women, and that Rebel is the smallest.

The crucial benefit of students learning their tendency is how the revelation can help them form habits and meet goals. Each tendency has certain strengths and needs:

Upholders are self-motivated, needing order and to learn flexibility;
Questioners are data-driven, needing justifications and to avoid ‘analysis-paralysis';
Obligers are responsible and responsive to others, needing encouragement and to work with partners, teams, clubs and coaches;
Rebels are independent individuals, needing options and to learn cooperation.

In putting this framework to my students, I anticipate it may quell some anxieties over expectations they felt unable to meet in remote learning. Upholders will be few in number and may have been fully productive in lockdown, but the other tendencies will have needed more interpersonal interaction and external accountability, which are essential functions of school communities.

Teachers can find further advice from Gretchen Rubin on how to make use of the four tendencies here. Below are images summarising the attitudes of the four tendencies and considering how to work with them. The diagram, from a design firm called Trig, appropriates the framework to maximise its qualitative customer research - and their guidance strikes me as useful in supporting students with their tendencies.