Overview

last updated:October 2007

Why is the issue important?

Helping students to achieve their potential and motivating them to work hard to do so is a central aim of teaching.

What did the research show?

Students who had a fixed view of their intelligence showed self-defeating behaviours in the face of a learning challenge. They believed that intelligence was innate and that it determined their performance on a task to a greater extent than effort or persistence. Such students quickly lost confidence when they experienced obstacles, gave up and blamed themselves when they performed badly (regardless of any previous successes), avoided challenges and reduced their level of effort.

More resilient students had a 'growth mindset’. They believed that ability on a task could be improved through effort and trying new approaches. They saw encountering difficulties as a natural part of the process of learning and persevered.

It was possible to change students’ self-theory of intelligence and doing so made a big difference to their achievement.

How was this achieved?

Older students with fixed mindsets ascribed their mistakes to an innate lack of ability. When this belief was directly challenged, they became more persistent.  Young children exposed to praise that focused on ability, or to general criticism when they did something wrong, associated success with being 'good’ and making mistakes with being 'bad’. This led them to judge themselves according to how they performed on tasks. The best kind of feedback was task focused, not personal, and praised effort, strategies and outcomes. Teachers also supported students’ persistence by equipping them with problem-solving strategies that were specific to the particular challenge they faced and by explicitly teaching students a) about the need to expend time and effort when learning a skill and b) that initial failure is a healthy sign that a challenge is worth pursuing.

How was the research designed to be trustworthy?

A wide variety of empirical experiments were conducted over 30 years involving a large number of pupils and students of all ages. The experiments were repeated many times with groups from different geographical areas, socio-economic backgrounds and with different age groups. All the experiments were designed to leave the subjects with a positive sense that they had learned or achieved something. Questionnaires were used to measure students’ confidence, goal choices and implicit theories of intelligence and personality. 

What are the implications?

The study showed the importance of:

• helping students develop an incremental view of learning which makes them more inclined to engage with challenge and take risks that enable them to grow
• finding ways of praising students without unintentionally labelling them as 'intelligent’, for example, by discussing the process of how they created something or reached an answer
• helping vulnerable students see that the need for effort does not indicate a lack of ability
• encouraging students to remember and use strategies to help them tackle challenges
• formative assessment that equips students with tools to improve the quality of their work.

What do the case studies illustrate?

The case studies show:

• ways in which students managed or were affected by frustration
• the positive effects of rewarding participation and effort in a 'no blame’ context
• how a primary school teacher found the feedback she gave the girls and boys in her class tended to reinforce gender stereotypes and what she did about this
• ways very young pupils were supported to tackle challenging problems in the context of outdoor education
• the impact on pupils of different types of praise.