Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research The relationship between intelligence and mindset

A recent new spin on the growth/fixed mindset discussion. As always, read and reflect with discretion:
Consumer summary:
https://www.tes.com/news/school-new...predict-academic-achievement-study-finds

Journal article:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028961630280X

Is there any evidence to show which mindset reflects the real state of things? I.e., I'm not asking whether believing in growth or fixed mindset is more *beneficial,* but which is more *justified.* I think of intelligence as a range that varies from person to person: you probably won't exceed your personal upper limit, but you can also never tell for sure whether you've reached it.

If I'm right, then "growth mindset" is appropriate when you're trying to assess or work within the upper reaches of what you can do, but "fixed mindset" is also appropriate because it doesn't imply that everyone's range is equally broad. There's no reason to choose between them because they aren't mutually exclusive.

My daughter recently encountered this mindset discussion at school. I saw the worksheet they gave, and it appeared to me that both mindsets were probably misrepresented. As portrayed, both mindsets were clearly false. My understanding is that the growth mindset was never supposed to be scientifically true, but rather it was intended as a motivational tool for parents and teachers to use to increase effort from the students.

I don't believe anyone knows how to increase our intellectual potential, so I suppose that points to the fixed mindset as being more accurate.

It seems to me that effort and talent both play a role in achievement. If I were trying to simplify the related factors for elementary school children, I think I'd do so in one of the following ways:

Achievement = Support x Effort x Talent + Luck

or

Achievement = Opportunity x Support x Effort x Talent + Luck

I would think the schools would want to accentuate the importance of support, since that's what they offer. Also, there's lessons to be learned there, regarding asking questions when you don't understand something. A student who requests support when needed will achieve more than a similar student who refuses to ask for support.

Thoughts?

Sure you can. Keep raising the bar until you're observing unavoidable failures. Theoretically, everyone will at some point, with the delightful side effect that you might achieve some phenomenal results from the interim exercise!

I've expressed a similar equation to his one, if you consider Luck and Support as subcomponents of Opportunity.

Said equation will work for achieving anything in life, not just elementary school.

Hey Dude - I noticed that you decloaked recently - welcome back.

Interestingly, I read an article that stressed opportunity and support as aspects of Bill Gate's success:-

See story here

This is so true.

Sometimes or maybe most of the time, my role in Support is as simple as making sure ds just shows up. With the slightest bit of Luck, Opportunities will happen.

We have had our share of Very Lucky Opportunities in the last few years.
We try to make sure he understands this. I am not sure he gets it fully, yet.

But how, in practice, do you keep raising the bar? What is "the bar" (i.e., the measure of your intelligence) to begin with? If you mean "keep learning new things until I no longer can," that doesn't sound like a recipe for unavoidable failure so much as a practical life plan for using your mind.

And when you do encounter failure, how do you know for sure that it's unavoidable? I've had some wonderful experiences where, having thought I'd hit a wall, I discovered that the scope of what I was learning was much larger than I thought after I discovered key new pieces of information. I've also been able to improve my overall thinking ability through new areas of research and intellectual practice, but I don't think that's making me "more intelligent" (i.e., raising my upper limit) so much as showing me how to think at that level, which would always have been available to me if I'd known it was there and how to access it. Any of us could have a similar expeirence that we misinterpret as "unavoidable failure." In practice it doesn't seem possible to tell for sure which is which.

If you really want to, the way to increase intelligence is to - pre plan avoiding the errosive. Your intelligence is limited by age, the quantity of meaningful contributions will diminish by time, you peak in your early 20s.
If you really want to then ingest lots of nutritionally rich food. Go swimming.
Take up a meaningful occupation. I entered into a law degree.
Listen to mass quantities of information.
I used https://sensusaccess.com to covert documents into audio.
If you can, do hard maths.

Unfortunately intelligence is hard capped by a different factor that would be great if it were avoidable. Will do a post in the future.

How does final brain development factor in? Your brain has the final stage of development between 14-21. If you have a growth mindset, I thought you can improve your IQ, even 10 points in those years. Or lose it.