Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Carol Dweck Revisits the 'Growth Mindset'

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"Recently, someone asked what keeps me up at night. It’s the fear that the mindset concepts, which grew up to counter the failed self-esteem movement, will be used to perpetuate that movement. In other words, if you want to make students feel good, even if they’re not learning, just praise their effort! Want to hide learning gaps from them? Just tell them, “Everyone is smart!” The growth mindset was intended to help close achievement gaps, not hide them. It is about telling the truth about a student’s current achievement and then, together, doing something about it, helping him or her become smarter.
I also fear that the mindset work is sometimes used to justify why some students aren’t learning: “Oh, he has a fixed mindset.” We used to blame the child’s environment or ability."

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2...683132&cmp=eml-enl-eu-news2-RM&preview=1

This "you can get smarter" claim is my primary objection to Carol Dweck's mindset philosophy.

She has simply not proven that people get smarter when they believe they can get smarter/have a growth mindset. To do that would require before and after IQ testing on three groups of people: kids trained/encouraged to have a growth mindset, kids trained/encouraged to have a fixed mindset, and a control group with no intervention whatsoever. People would have to be matched by age, sex, SES, etc. Everyone gets the same set of daily learning materials in the same sets of schools, with members of each of the three groups divvied out evenly in each school. There would be before and after IQ testing, as well as appropriate power calculations and other statistical methods etc.

THEN and only then will we know if growth mindset makes people smarter.

I think Dweck is admitting here that the "growth mindset" is more of a political movement than a psychological theory.

I don't think you can get smarter as we think of it but you can appear smarter as society thinks of it. After all the kids identified as gifted by teachers are often the smart, complaint and hard working.

You may wish to try this link to read the article:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/09/23/carol-dweck-revisits-the-growth-mindset.html

While the article had several good points, I found some of the ideas to be more extreme than previously stated in mindset and interviews.

For example, more moderate statements have included:
Operative word: some (not all), thereby acknowledging that children may exist who may continue to struggle with math.

Unfortunately, some posters are not addressing the OP's article but are rehashing strongly held viewpoints, discussed in previous threads such as What would you ask Carol Dweck and Against the growth mindset.

It is my understanding that the original research was regarding motivation. On one side was fear of loss of being regarded as "smart", concern over perceived failure, distaste for tasks requiring effort (eventually called fixed mindset). On the other side was what came to be called growth mindset: interest in trying new things, taking on a challenge, experiencing a learning curve (including initial "failure" and effort). The studies on motivation showed that those exhibiting the growth mindset learned more.

While the type of study you describe, conducted by controlling the education of children in a manner which may cap the academic progress and intellectual growth of some children, may be considered unethical and denied IRB approval, others believe the implementation of common core and frequent measurements/assessments/testing are essentially changing US public schools into a lab to study these effects upon our children, in attempt to create equal outcomes for all.

This. I think Carol Dweck was just playing fast and loose with the term smart and confusing ability with achievement.

I think the "growth mindset" under the circumstance of her experiments are indeed a useful concepts. Particular for young kids, who are not expected to understand the true limit of their potential, having a growth mindset may indeed induce more sustained effort in whatever they are doing. The trouble comes when her findings are generalized into some universal truth. It is also one of those concepts that are slightly misleading, could be good for the individuals to have, but harmful when the educators or society in general drink the Kool-aids.

Agreed.

Anything taken to extreme... is extreme.

Dweck's ideas have been very helpful for us as we raise our gifted DS5.

No matter what we do he will likely hear "you're so smart" or some variant on that a lot. We try to balance that with praise for hard work and perseverance (and stories about the same).

I don't think hearing "you're so smart" is bad, unless that is all a kid gets all the time. For us Dweck has been a good reminder to try to keep things balanced.

Agreed, in part: possibly it's more of a marketing movement... taking a research-based and rather broadly accepted motivational theory from the field of psychology from one Stanford professor's work (mindset) and stretching it almost beyond recognition (and apparently beyond the original research) to support the rather dubious assertions of another Stanford professor (Jo Boaler), in the field of educational pedagogy.