Helping students to strive for excellence

Chapter 4 provides a range of practical strategies to help perfectionist students strive for excellence, rather than aiming for impossible outcomes. It considers how teachers can help students by promoting healthy, rather than maladaptive, forms of perfectionism. Specifically, it illustrates how teachers can support students to enable them to set specific, challenging goals using helpful plans. Explaining why asking perfectionist students to lower their standards is counterproductive, the chapter instead demonstrates how encouraging students to set process goals, instead of outcome goals, is key to aiming for excellence over perfection. It also considers the importance of the school&s;s culture and how working with parents can also help students overcome perfectionism.