Weekly Teaching Note
April 7, 2008
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
This book is a popular summary of decades of research by Dr. Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University whose work has primarly focused on motivation.
(For a more scholarly or academic compendium, see The Handbook of Competence and Motivation , eds. C.S. Dweck and B.E. London, 2005. For an online article about Dweck and her work, go to The Effort Effect .)
The message of Mindset can be summed up in three or four sentences. There are two basic ways that people see the world: with a fixed-mindset or with a growth-mindset. People with a fixed-mindset believe that they were born with whatever talents they have and can do nothing much to change their skills. People with a growth-mindset believe that they can learn and improve with hard work. Of course, the reality is not this clean; we all have elements of each mindset in different areas of our lives, and nobody is totally one or the other.
You may recognize these mindsets in your students' words. One student says, “What do I need to do to get an A?” The other says, “What do I need to do to make this better?” These questions are subtly but profoundly different. The first student has a performance orientation – his or her identity is wrapped up in being right, getting the grade, making the cut. The student probably has a fixed mindset. The second student has a mastery orientation, or an interest in learning either for the sake of learning or for the sake of the material. This person probably has a growth mindset.
The results of the fixed mindset are things that teachers complain about all the time in their students: avoidance of challenge, resistance to constructive criticism, giving up easily, feeling threatened by other people's success. A pernicious result of the fixed mindset may show up in really talented people: if they're so talented, why should they need to work hard to develop their skills further? Working hard proves they weren't that good after all.
A growth mindset leads to the good things we all want our students, and frankly ourselves, to do, like taking challenges, using criticism to improve, and persisting under pressure.
The rest of the book discusses how we each develop our particular mindset. The bad news is, it begins in childhood. The good news is, we can change any time…if we want to and are willing to work.
The bottom line is this: hammer it in to your students that they can learn if they work hard. Praise them for effort that leads to good results, not for good results without effort.
Don't say: "You're a great writer! You get an A.”
Say: "This paper displayed serious effort, with special attention to detail, the development of the argument, and to correct expression. Future papers can be improved even more by using more sophisticated sources. You earned an A.”
The first one sends a completely unconscious but strong message that only great writers are worthy of praise, and in fact that unless the student always gets A's, there's no point in writing. Although it sounds nice, it's actually demotivating. The second one acknowledges the excellence but focuses on the effort, meaning that with more effort, the student can produce even better work. (It takes longer to write, unfortunately!)
Don't ever say that something is good when it's not, or cut students slack for lack of effort. Say that you know the students can do better and you're there to help. You'll be doing them a huge favor in the long run, and upholding your sense of academic integrity in the short run.
Reference:
Dweck, C.S. 2006. Mindset: The New Pyschology of Success. Random House. New York , NY .
