Fixed Mindset Research Paper

One of the two central ideas of “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids” is that fixed mind-sets can make an individual less eager to face challenges that would help them grow and improve on their skills. At the University of Hong Kong, Carol

They’re two different beliefs the author focus on, the fixed mindset, and the growth mindset. Fixed mindset students avoid challenges, and ignoring useful feedbacks to improve certain skills. People who are fixed mindset gives up easily or pursue less challenges. While students with a growth mindset accept challenges, learns from criticism, and sees failure as an opportunity to get better. On the two faces of efforts article, it states “students with growth mindset out preforms their classmates with fixed mindsets.” Especially when the article compared two different students confronting algebra for the first time. While the student with a fixed mindset barely pays attention in class, the student with a growth mindset puts the effort to learn the topic.

Debbie Millman once said, "If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve". When you doubt yourself, you have already convinced yourself that you will fail. The problem with this "fixed mindset" is that when things get difficult, kids who have been praised for performing smart, become insecure. They will believe that because they do not know the answer, they are not smart. This causes them to run away from challenges and fail to apply themselves. A person's attitude towards their level of intelligence determines their potential growth. Having a fixed mindset inhibits your intellectual growth, though believing intelligence is a potential, you are focused and motivated to apply yourself to difficult tasks in order to grow.

People who have a fixed mindset usually want something easy and not challenging; they feel scared to lose while growth mindset people tend to love challenges and making mistakes lives within their body as a trait. The author proves when she said that students with fixed mindset will never showed any interest when they found difficulties in completing those assignment. Only when they did well right away, they will feel the enjoyment. In contrast, the harder it gets, the more urges for the growth mindset to grab the knowledge and feel excited to learn something. Carol Dweck also gives an example in Columbia where she met a lot of intelligent med students who always get A’s in their test. It only took a day to make them a failure, when they said

In “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids” the author Carol Dweck says “Our society worships talent” (10). This is followed by the statements of one of the central beliefs of the article that there are two different kinds of learners. These two types are said to be those with a fixed mind-set and those with a growth mind-set. Throughout the article many examples are used by the author of studies and or experiments on student with fixed and growth mind sets.

We learn from Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success, that there are two different mindsets: the fixed and the growth. When you have a fixed mindset you think it is set in stone what your qualities and intelligence are. You usually lack motivation to try again, usually try to avoid challenges, they tend to ignore criticism; even if it’s just constructive, and they often feel threatened by other people’s success. A growth mindset is when you believe you can grow your basic qualities. You usually pick yourself back up when you get knocked down, embrace the challenges that are thrown at you, learn from criticism, and see the success of others as a form of learning.

Carol S. Dweck believes that there is a secret to raising a smart child, having a growth mind-set. Believing this she said not to boost your kids’ confidence or praise them for their good work else it would lower their ability to work harder or get bored of what they are learning because the student thinks they know it all. Though she ran an abundance of trails trying to state whether this was true or not. Dweck labeled two different kind of learners, helpless and mastery. Each person as a different way of learning; helpless believe that they are not in control of their own learning, mastery believe that only you are in control and that you grow in intellectual skills. The mind-set of these learners affect their problem solving abilities,

Carol S. Dweck, a psychologist, filmed one of her lectures in 2012 called “The Power of Believing.” In this video, she points out potential flaws in the education system. She points out that one of the reasons kids fail in school is mainly based on what mindset is put in a child’s mind during early education. Throughout the video, Dweck discussed two types of mindsets that people categorize into —fixed mindset and growth mindset.

The first group, praised for being smart, shifted into what Dweck calls a fixed mindset… When offered a choice of challenges for the next exercise, these students generally chose non challenging tasks, not wanting to bring their intelligence level into question. The second group, which was praised for their effort adopted a growth mindset, and 90% of them chose a challenging task hoping they could learn something new from the process. (Gardiner)

After watching the two videos in class about growth and fixed mindsets I have found out the differences between the two different mindsets. The two different mindsets are growth mindset and fixed mindset. To have a growth mindset you are not afraid to push yourself. If you have a fixed mindset you tend to hide from challenging yourself and you accept the outcome even if it means failure. People with growth mindsets tend to grow while people with fixed mindsets are fixed in the position that they’re in and they are not going to go anywhere because they are afraid to challenge themselves.

In the article “The Secret to Raising Smart Children”, by Carol Dweck there are strong statements about growth and fixed-mindsets. Growth mind-set is important for children with impressionable minds, with the right amount of focus, effort, and praise they can shape their minds for success. Without this they can become lazy and discouraged making them not want to try at all, a fixed-mindset will not let them continue in a progressive manner. Dweck goes on to discuss that talent is worshipped in our society so children often feel that if they do not do exceptionally well they are unintelligent and should not try. Other times students do well in graded school where not much work is required, so when middle school or high school hits they lack the motivation to try harder.

One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves, Dweck found in her research, has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality. A “fixed mindset” is that we assumes that our intelligence, character, and creativity are static traits givens which we can’t change in any way, and success is the allegation of that inborn intelligence, an estimate of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; aiming for prosperity and dodging failure becomes a way of claiming the sense of being smart or skilled. A “growth mindset,” on the other hand, emphasis on challenge and sees failure as evidence of unintelligence but as a positive bounce

Eduardo Briceno described two types of mindsets that can either enhance or hinder a person’s growth. I believe both terms of fixed and growth mindsets hold much validity in today’s society. We can see how children are affected by parents’ praise or how children perform differently from encouragement in the school. The same is true for someone like myself who’s in her 20’s. My beliefs are more consistent with the growth mindset, because my psychology courses have given me bounds of evidence that your perspective can change how you succeed. I know how important it is to have a positive perspective. One example that comes to mind is Jane Elliot’s “Blue eyes-Brown eyes” exercise. This study displayed how children would do poorly in school if they were told people with a different eye color were better. The children that were told they would do poorly did just that because they internalized the information and got stuck in the perspective that they would always do terribly.

However, “When success Leads to Failure” focuses heavily on letting kids fail and learn through trial and error. Jessica Lahey states it is better if kids keep the excitement and curiosity alive in academic expenditures; Spirit of inquiry keeps kids eager for knowledge. “The truth—for this parent and so many others—is this: Her child has sacrificed her natural curiosity and love of learning at the altar of achievement… ”(Lahey) From a different vantage point, Dweck states the solution lies with the adults. “Parents and teachers can engender a growth mind-set in children by praising them for their persistence or strategies (rather than for their intelligence)... ” Through proper praise and encouragement from adults, kids will continue to achieve their potential. Proper praise being, praising them for effort instead of

Changing my outlook on school and life from high school to college has been one of the most difficult but most rewarding change I could have made. The book says that there are two different types of mindsets, fixed or growth, and they both shape a person’s behaviors in every aspect of life (Sellers, Dochen, & Hodges, 2015, p. 148). When a person has a fixed mindset they often feel like their talents and intelligence are unchanging and must be proved over and over (Sellers, Dochen, & Hodges, 2015, p. 148). Fixed mindsets cause people to have anxiety and usually students procrastinate because they fear they won’t succeed, all characteristics I had in high school and the first year of college. If I thought something was too difficult I wouldn’t even try to attempt it, or if my homework was too hard I would just ask someone else for the answers instead of having the willpower to push through to try and figure it out on my own. I gradually improved my way of thinking and transformed my fixed