Carol Dwecker Analysis

Richard Nisbett reports in his book Intelligence and How to Get It, that they were able to convince academic struggling high school students that intelligence is malleable, it can be changed by hard work ,and that they are in charge of changing how they learn. The results were pleasantly surprising, these students worked harder and earned higher grades. 2

When it comes to the topic of having a growth mindset, most of us will readily agree that students who are praised are motivated to learn. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of how they are praised. Whereas some are convinced that praising students for their intelligence will motivate them to learn, others maintain that encouraging them for their efforts has a better impact on their motivation.

Intelligence can be developed through experience and learning. In Carol S. Dweck’s who is in fact a PhD expert in the field of psychology wrote an article, “Transforming Student’s Motivation to Learn,” she states, “Results showed that what students believe about their brains - whether they see their intelligence as something that’s fixed or something that can grow and change – has profound effect on their motivation, learning, and school achievement.” Essentially what this is illustrating is that having a fixed or growth mindset can minimize students from being terrified of failure and in addition faced and embrace their challenges rather than running from them. Students need to understand an intelligent mindset is a paramount pathway in becoming successful, and eventually one needs to not be easily discouraged at the first sight of a challenge, but become motivated and driven by failure, and in turn willing to work harder to accomplish something they want to succeed at. A perfect example of this is through Mike Rose’s school experiences, we can see how he demonstrates the concepts of a growth and fixed mindset.

Many people believe praising students for their intelligence will boost their confidence and  motivation to learn but praising students does the complete opposite. When students are praised about their intelligence, it gives them pride for a short amount of time and stops students from continuing to push themselves to learn more. In a studied conducted by Carol S Dweck in “The Perils and promises of Praise”, Dweck

In lesson three, I read a biography on Carol Dweck. A important quote in the biography was “When we started teaching this idea about the mind being malleable, he looked up with tears in his eyes, and he said, 'You mean, I don't have to be dumb?” This is important because it shows that what Carol and her researchers were doing was helping students increase there IQ.

Employing a growth mindset will allow students to achieve bigger goals and overcome challenges with greater ease. Regardless of which direction a person chooses to take, they will require common skills such as collaboration, responsibility, honesty, or preparation. The purpose of school is to aid students in developing and improving important aspects of their characters, so that they can become well-rounded, productive individuals. In order to successfully navigate through my academic experience, I hope to keep a growth mindset which will allow me to take on new experiences and overcome obstacles. By keeping my options open and having a willingness to always learn from difficulties and mistakes, there will be more benefits in store for me. Nowadays, a great deal of students view their education as brutal competition where their grades are the only thing that matter. Those who struggle or make mistakes are regarded as unintelligent and as a result, students shun challenging situations to avoid the risk of failing. Keeping this kind of mindset in turn restricts and reduces the creativity and enthusiasm students have for learning. To nurture eager and resilient learners, we should be accepting of failure, and consider the learning and working differences each student

Albert Einstein once said "everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole existence thinking it is stupid". There are many students who relate to that fish believing they are unintelligent and useless. Believing that they cannot possibly succeed in the education system. The education system is failing to teach students and bring out their maximum potential. Everyday thousands of students drop out of school because they are failing to succeed. Gerald Graff argues in his article “Hidden Intellectualism” that the educational institution are failing to nurture students. Therefore, Graff believes that some students would be more willing to learn and have better success if they were taught things that interest them rather than subjects that interest the teachers. I agree with Graff because he writes about the misconception of intellectualism and how individuals think that solely the "geeks or the nerds" can have academic success. Individuals are completely forgetting that some students hidden intellectualism is found not in book smarts, but rather street smarts, suggesting that teachers should tap into students hidden intellectualism so that it can no longer be hidden.

The viewpoint I have always pride myself in having is seeing the true intelligence in people. In my mind, I do not measure a person’s intelligence based on the information they are “suppose” to know or on the grades they receive or even how they behave.

The questions of learning and intelligence have long been debated since education has ever existed. That learning leads directly to intelligence is an assumption which has not been subject to adequate scrutiny. Typically, a fixed mindset believes that an "intelligent" student is one who invests less of almost about everything to not only succeed but also to achieve outstanding results. That is, by studying less an intelligent student is expected to know about study subjects enough, which requires the least effort possible of him or her. Talent, moreover, has long been praised as an exceptional gift which one is helpless to develop, let alone initiate. The ideas about learning, intelligence and talent are challenged by prominent psychologists and education scholars Angela Lee Duckworth, Assistant Professor of Psychology at University of Pennsylvania and Carol S. Dweck, Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University.

Rosenthal and Jacobson's (1968) study on self-fulfilling prophecies focuses on the effects of teacher's expectations on their student's performance capabilities and the resulting outcome these implications have on the student's academic improvements. By falsely informing student’s teachers of individual student’s increased potential for knowledge growth at the beginning of the semester, they were able to study both the regular students and the students with supposed increased intelligence throughout the year to evaluate how the teacher’s perception of these students could have impacted the student's academic behavior. While the independent variable in the study was the expectations the teachers had formed of the students, the dependent variable

I would have to agree with Adam Robinson claims, “Attitude is critical difference between smart students and their classmates.” I believe you have to have a positive attitude towards learning to be able to actually learn.

I realized from a very young age that no matter how big or small a gathering is; I have never really been the smartest in the room. I always fall somewhere in the middle, so I never rely on how smart I am. But then, I noticed early enough that no matter how far behind I was, if I was passionate enough about anything I do, I am able to get up through the difficulties and succeed with flying colors. My determination, not my smartness, has always been what makes me see farther than others in the same field as me.

An increment in college drop out rates with the inability to do well in courses has been on the receiving end of many theories as well as research experiments. In “Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement Across an Adolescent Transition” Blackwell, Trzeniewski, Dweck (2007) state that some people believe that intelligence is more of an “entity” while others think of it as “incremental”.

In conclusion I believe people can get smarter when they are encouraged to do their work rather than being down about their test grades. Teachers should let students know when they are in a classroom doing a problem or even before taking a test, remind them that they should be able to make mistakes even if they are not the best in math. Making mistakes has a better outcome for someone who believe in bettering their self after doing wrong before a person who believes everything should be done right the first

Motivation is an ability that cannot be taught in class, but must be acquired through one’s upbringing and experiences, whether they be social, personal, or any other. Intelligence is nothing without some sort of motivation, and teachers such as Angela-Lee Duckworth, a psychologist studying at the University of Pennsylvania, remain “convinced that every one of [their] students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough”(Duckworth). In fact, studies ranging from military academics to spelling bees prove that success can be predicted by one’s grit. The determination and focus of any person in any field is bound to bring him more success than the person who does not exert effort and simply glides along. While there may always be “highly intelligent students...who sleep during class yet manage to ace a test,”(Lasalle) they are not applying themselves and are unlikely to succeed in the future. The lack of resolve shown in early life will most likely persist throughout one’s adult career, limiting the amount of success that he can obtain. It is illogical to use one’s level of education as a sole component of intelligence as motivation is key to utilising intelligence.