Mindset: The Psychology of Learning and Achievement

Background notes for powerpoint presentation for use with young people (secondary school pupils and students)

This presentation can be used to teach secondary school pupils and students about Carol Dweck’s theory of intelligence. There are several main messages to teach; the first is that there are two mindsets which people adopt. These mindsets affect the goals people pursue, the responses they have to difficulties and how they do in school, work and life. Another part of this message is that people can change by choosing to adopt a growth mindset. The brain can change too: teaching people about the brain’s plasticity can help them to change the mindset they adopt and thus how they respond to challenges and feedback. It may be best to teach this in four modules, which are detailed in the headings which follow. If you would like any more information about each of the sections you can find out more on the Centres website at: http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/pp/overview.php?p=c2lkPTEz Email [email protected] for any other queries.

Module 1: Mindsets

This module begins by challenging the notion that people are ‘born, not made’. It is useful to begin with the question ‘Born smart?’ This allows you to explore students’ ideas of whether they believe that people are born sporty, arty, intelligent and so on. The presentation gives examples such as: ‘was Michael Jordan born with a natural ability to slam dunk?’ or ‘was Einstein born a genius?’ You can reply to the questions on the presentation with evidence. For example, Einstein did not talk until he was four and his teacher said that he was ‘educationally subnormal’. Michael Jordan’s coach said that he was not more gifted than the others; the thing that differentiated him from his peers was the ‘hard work and effort he put in’. If students don’t know who these people are you may need to point out the tremendous accomplishments Jordan and Einstein have made. Role models inspire people to look at their own mindset in a positive way and help to facilitate a change in thinking from fixed to growth. It helps them to believe that ‘they can’.

To back up the notion that intelligence is increased through hard work and effort, and to challenge the notion that intelligence is fixed, you can give students evidence from experiments. For example, rats put in a stimulating environment do better on rat intelligence tests and have heavier brains than those in a boring cage, irrespective of their age and how they scored before (this experiment is detailed in ‘the brain’ section). Talking about the changes in brain growth will lead on to the next part of this module, which teaches the students about the two mindsets directly. It is important to explain the difference in beliefs between the two mindsets: GROWTH where intelligence is malleable; and FIXED where intelligence is carved in stone and unchangeable. You can end this module by encouraging people to reflect on the mindset they adopt and by highlighting that they can chose to adopt another mindset and that doing this will have an effect on the brain. This will lead nicely onto the next section.

Module 2: The brain

Carol Dweck has stressed that we need to teach people about the brain and its huge potential. Doing this confronts the, false, assumption that the brain becomes ‘fixed’ at an early age. The evidence from neuroscience challenges this idea because it shows that people’s brains make new connections until the day they die. The brain rewires itself after damage (e.g. people learn to speak again after a stroke). It gets denser when we use it (e.g. musicians have certain areas of the brain which get bigger through practice). To get the message over to your audience it is best to begin with a brief description of the brain giving its weight, size etc. There are four lobes: frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal. These areas do specific things such as help us hear (temporal) see (occipital) feel (parietal) and plan things (frontal). The brain is made up of billions of cells called neurones. Neurones send chemical messages to one another through a small gap between neurones, called the synapse. Each time we learn something the brain makes new connections. The more we use it the stronger connections become. The reason it is important to point out that each area of the brain carries out a specific function is to help illustrate the point that by using these areas, people can make them become more connected. This highlights the fact that practicing certain things not only makes you better at them, but causes changes in the brain. There are many studies you can use to illustrate this point and some of these are outlined below.

Rats of various ages were put in two separate cages: one cage had lots of stimulation while the other didn’t. The rats were given an intelligence test (finding, and remembering, their way around a maze) before and after their time in the different cage environments. The researchers found that the rats in the rich environment became more ‘intelligent’ and their brains were 10 per cent heavier than the rats in the boring environment. Another study looked at the brains of taxi drivers in London, and compared them to non-taxi drivers. The researchers looked at the area of the brain which deals with three dimensional space: the hippocampus. What they found was that taxi drivers had a larger hippocampus than non-taxi drivers. A study of musicians found that the area of the brain that deals with processing sound, was bigger compared to that in non-musicians, and the area which controls fingers was also larger. Module 3: Fail your way to success

This module begins with some role models again. This is because role models are a good way to give evidence for the growth mindset. This time we want to look at the different goals people create and the different responses they display when they meet challenges and setbacks. We want to see how these relate to each of the mindsets. The reason for looking at these components is that changing goals and responses will help to change the mindset from fixed to growth. This module is more interactive. There are questions and activities for the students to participate in. This is because by now the students will hopefully understand the mindsets from module 1 and 2 and can see how the goals and responses related to each mindset.

How people view learning: goals

Because people with a fixed mindset believe that potential and ability can be measured, they tend to create goals which are about demonstrating their ability, e.g. they believe that a grade ‘A’ will show people that they are smart because intelligent people get high marks. People endorsing a growth mindset tend to create learning goals. This is because they believe that intelligence is malleable and can be improved. These people set goals which are about mastery, e.g. ‘how well have I learnt this subject’? People who set performance goals value looking good while people who set learning goals value learning. It is important to note that both goals are normal and in an ideal world people would endorse both. However, when a person focuses exclusively on performance goals this undermines learning, success and enjoyment. See the appendix for a tool to use with people who are working towards learning goals

How do people cope with failure?

Carol Dweck and other researchers have shown that people adopting a fixed mindset tend to respond to failure with a ‘helpless’ response while people with a growth mindset tend to respond to failure with a ‘mastery’ response. If a person believes that intelligence is fixed, something unchangeable which you have a certain amount of and there is not much you can do to change that, and if this person believes that intelligence can be measured, then failure means that they are unintelligent. This results in feelings of helplessness because the person explains the cause of failure as resulting from something deficient in them (i.e. lack of intellect). Studies have shown that the results of this response are:

 lack of effort, ‘what’s the point?’  over-representing past failures  under-representing successes  decreased enjoyment  decreased motivation  increased anxiety. Neuroimaging studies show that people adopting a fixed mindset do not pay attention to learning information when they fail, while those with a growth mindset do. Those adopting a growth mindset seem to show an opposite response. Because people with a growth mindset believe that intelligence is malleable and that people can improve with hard work and effort, they find failure challenging and stimulating because this is part of the learning process. For people with a growth mindset failure is data about how well they are doing. People displaying a mastery response don’t show declines in self-esteem or mood and persevere in the face of the challenge.

Module 4: Mindset and success

In order to strengthen the students’ understanding of what they have learned so far this module begins with a recap of the last three modules. Following this there are several exercises for the students to undertake. We find these exercises are useful as the students are asked to write down their experiences of a growth mindset perspective and by asking them to write down these experiences you will be strengthening their belief in the growth mindset. Another good way to consolidate change, not described in the presentation, is to get the students to argue for why a growth mindset is helpful. A good strategy (taken from social psychology) which creates lasting changes in attitudes is to convince others of your point of view, by way of persuasion. We don’t recommend that you have one group arguing for a growth mindset and another arguing for a fixed mindset. Rather, you could get students to write letters to inspire others to adopt a growth mindset. One study got university students to write to underachieving young people about how they ‘made it’ and in the letter they were asked to convince these young people of their growth mindset. The researchers taught university students to incorporate their own experiences of a growth mindset, learning goals, mastery responses and so on, into a letter. The researchers also taught the students about the brain and asked them to write about this in their letters to these young people. The study just mentioned, reported an increase in the university students’ test scores and motivation as a result of participating in this study. The act of convincing others of their point of view resulted in the university students themselves being convinced of a growth mindset.

Appendix

People can TALK BACK to the fixed mindset (see the Napier University link for ideas http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/pp/links.php?p=c2lkPTEz ) Here are a set of questions which will help people to work on their learning goals.

What do you wish to learn? what Is your learning goal:______

Is it: short term_____ long term_____ challenging_____ big_____ small_____ other______

What are the steps necessary to achieve the goal (e.g. the goal may be very big, so you might want to break it down into smaller goals? Or it may not be challenging enough for you?)

What might stand in the way of you reaching your goal? And what might you do to overcome this?

How will you commit to this goal (e.g. telling someone else what you plan to do, and when you plan to do it by? Write your goal down, and why you want to do it. Visualise achieving it, and so on)

What actions will you take to achieve your goal? (You may want to detail each step you will take on another sheet of paper. This will be your action plan)

Who, and or what else, do you need to be successful? (There may be some steps which require guidance or assistance from others; this should become clear in your actions plan)

______

This sheet has been adapted from Caroline Millers ‘goal success plan’

The Centre would like to thank the Scottish Government for their support in helping to produce this resource.