Mindset: How we view success and failure
There is no question that our society's ideas about success, praise, and confidence are intuitively appealing. They grow out of the reasonable conviction that if students believe in their abilities, they will thrive. How can that not be true? I am not suggesting that failure and criticism are more beneficial than success and praise. Nor am I arguing that a feeling of confidence isn't a good thing to have, but.....it is not at the heart of motivation or the key to achievement
Carol Dweck, Self-Theories, 1999
Carol Dweck, Self-Theories, 1999
Two mindsets
Based on her empirical research, primarily with young people, Dweck argues that people throughout the world can be divided into two basic ‘mindsets’.
How the mindsets interact with success and failure
For people who have a fixed mindset, success is exceptionally important as it is a way to validate yourself and show how clever and talented you are. It is also a way to prove you are better than others who lack these fixed qualities. Conversely, failure is toxic for those with fixed mindsets as it proves that you aren’t talented or clever. This means that failure, and mistakes, have to be avoided at all costs.
Two goals for learning
People hold different goals for learning which create different behaviour and motivations in students. These goals are directly related to mindsets.
Two responses to feedback
Carol Dweck has shown that half of all students will respond to failure by getting helpless and the other half respond to failure by getting motivated and proactive ( with 15% in the middle who don’t fall into either category), and these responses are directly related to the goals people create.
Mindset and achievement
Achievement is usually a byproduct of having a growth mindset. The main aim for someone with a growth mindset is to learn and grow, they create learning goals. This means that someone adopting a growth mindset will seek to gain a deeper understanding of a subject, rather than shallow knowledge in order to look good or pass a course, for example.
Praise
An even more important conclusion to draw from Dweck’s research is that we have to be very careful about how we praise young people. Dweck quotes research in the USA which shows that 85 per cent of parents think that praise is very important for children’s performance and confidence. She warns that this type of praise could undermine intrinsic motivatiion
The need to challenge young people
Like many psychologists, or educational commentators in the United States, Dweck is critical of teachers and parents for handing out easy praise to young people in the name of building self-esteem and also of lowering standards to allow more young people to ‘achieve’ at school.
Suspending judgement
One of the most compelling aspects of Dweck’s work is that it is essentially arguing that we need to stop judging. The fixed mindset leads to a fixation with labels and judgements – he’s clever, she’s good at sports, she can’t count, he’s a numpty and so forth.
Changing mindsets
Dweck argues that mindsets are ‘an important part’ of a person’s personality and she puts forward the idea that much of our mindset is formed from our early interactions with parents and teachers.
The brain and mindset
Carol Dweck thinks that we need to present people with information on the brain and its huge potential. Doing this will help people to adopt a growth mindset. This is because it provides people with evidence for the process going on in the brain when they learn.
