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"Students' View of Intelligence Can Help Grades"
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A new study in the scientific journal Child Development shows that if you teach students that
their intelligence can grow and increase, they do better in school. All children develop a belief
about their own intelligence, according to research psychologist Carol Dweck from Stanford
University
"Some students start thinking of their intelligence as something fixed, as carved in stone."
Dweck says. "They worry, '
Do I have enough intelligence in this area?" Dweck calls this a fixed
mindset of intelligence. "Other children think intelligence is something you can develop your
whole life," she says. "You can learn. You can stretch. You can keep mastering new things. She
calls this a growth mindset of intelligence.
2 Dweck wondered whether a child's belief about intelligence has anything to do with academic
success. So, she looked at several hundred students going into seventh grade, and assessed
which students believed their intelligence was unchangeable, and which children believed their
intelligence could grow. Then she looked at their math grades over the next two years.
"We saw among those with the growth mindset that math grades steadily increased over the
two years," she says. But that wasn't the case for those with the so-called fixed mindset. They
showed a decrease in their math grades. This led Dweck and her colleague, Lisa Blackwell from
Columbia University, to ask another question. "If we gave students a growth mindset, if we
taught them how to think about their intelligence, would that benefit their grades?" Dweck
wondered.
So, about 100 seventh graders, all doing poorly in math, were randomly assigned to
workshops on good study skills. One workshop gave lessons on how to study well. The other
taught about how intelligence can be grown over time. The students in the second group
"learned that the brain actually forms new connections every time you learn something new, and
that over time, this makes you smarter." Basically, the students were given a mini neuro-science
course on how the brain works. By the end of the semester, the group of kids who had been
taught that the brain can grow smarter had significantly better math grades than the other group.
"When they studied, they thought about those neurons in the brain forming new
connections," Dweck says. "When they worked hard in school, they actually visualized how their
brain was growing." Dweck says this new mindset changed the kids' attitude toward learning
and their willingness to put forth effort.
Duke University psychologist Steven Asher agrees. Teaching children that they're in charge
of their own intellectual growth motivates a child to work hard, he says. "If you think about a
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