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August 30th, 2017

You'd Better Believe It!How might your mindset on learning affect your academic achievement?

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How might your mindset on learning affect your academic achievement?

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Should teachers be required to teach their students to have a growth mindset?

Yes. Schools should do everything they can to help students develop a growth mindset.

No. Schools shouldn't be required to do anything. Students should change their own mindsets.

No. Parents should teach kids a growth mindset from a young age. It is not the school’s responsibility.

No. There isn't enough evidence that a growth mindset is better than other mindsets.

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As you start off a new school year, you probably want to do well in classes. But imagine getting a

failing grade. Would it make you want to give up? Or would it make you want to find out where you

went wrong? What if you received the grade, "not yet?" Would that make you feel differently?

In a TED talk, Stanford Professor Carol Dweck talks about a high school in Chicago that gave students

the grade "not yet" when they didn't pass a class. According to Dweck, "If you get the grade ‘not yet,’

you understand that you're on a learning curve. It gives you a path into the future." If you believe that

intelligence is fixed, you’ll never try to improve. Dweck identifies two types of mindsets with regard to

education: a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. Students with a growth mindset think intelligence

can be developed. Students with a fixed mindset think intelligence stays the same. Dweck says a

growth mindset helps students learn from their mistakes and get better over time.

Several studies confirm Dweck’s theory. Students with fixed mindsets were asked what they would do

after a failure. They said they would cheat or find someone who had done worse. But kids with a

growth mindset, Dweck explains in an article for The Week, aren't discouraged by mistakes. Instead,

these students focus on what went wrong. Then, they learn from it. According to one study in Chile,

growth mindsets may actually make you smarter. Students with growth mindsets performed better on

standardized tests than those with fixed mindsets.

What other kinds of mindsets could be impacting learning? According to the Observer, some students

believe that learning is fast or that knowledge is made up of independent facts to be memorized.

These mindsets, the Observer reports, are linked to poor student performance.

Vulnerability to stereotypes can also hurt academic performance, according to the New York Times,

because of a phenomenon called stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is when “members of groups

believed to be academically inferior—African-American and Latino students enrolled in college, or

female students in math and science courses—score much lower on tests when reminded beforehand

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of their race or gender,” according to the Times. These stereotypes are harmful and false, but

research shows that believing them can still inhibit academic achievement.

Another mindset has to do with purpose and relevance. When students believe their schoolwork is

relevant to their lives, they learn more deeply and are able to resist distractions, according to the

Mindset Scholars Network.

Not everyone agrees that different mindsets have significant impact on learning, though. A study by

the Education Endowment Fund trained teachers on how to encourage growth mindsets in their

classrooms. Even still, students of the teachers who were trained did not improve academically when

compared to a control group.

What do you think? Think about the various research studies you’ve read about. Think about your own

experiences. Can you identify your own attitude toward school in these various mindsets? How might

your mindset on learning affect your academic achievement?