For them, it’s not about looking smart or grooming their image. “In the growth mindset, people believe that their talents and abilities can be developed through passion, education, and persistence. People in this mindset will actually pass up important opportunities to learn and grow if there is a risk of unmasking weaknesses.” They become over-concerned with proving their talents and abilities, hiding deficiencies, and reacting defensively to mistakes or setbacks-because deficiencies and mistakes imply a (permanent) lack of talent or ability. Many years of research have now shown that when people adopt the fixed mindset, it can limit their success. They have a certain amount and that’s that nothing can be done to change it. “In the fixed mindset, people believe that their talents and abilities are fixed traits. Students who believe their intelligence can increase typically have more positive attitudes, greater enjoyment of academic tasks, and stronger learning goals.Ĭonsider these characterizations of fixed and growth mindsets from Carol Dweck, a Stanford University professor who has conducted 30 years of research into self-beliefs and mindsets: When students are taught about the malleability of intelligence, they can come to see intelligence as increasing with effective effort and hard work. Research shows that students can learn more with persistent effort from those who educate them-and indeed from the sheer conviction of adults that their capabilities can grow.
Teachers who are unaware of the advances in neuroscience regarding malleability of intelligence often believe students’ intelligence is fixed, and thus they view struggle as failure instead of a critical part of learning.
If intelligence is fixed, it is impractical and unproductive to keep trying to educate students when they struggle. When students with a fixed view of intelligence encounter a concept that they do not immediately and effortlessly understand, they typically believe that they are incapable of mastering it and thus expend less effort to learn.Ĭonsider, for a moment, the effect of a belief in fixed intelligence on educators. Students who believe intelligence is fixed typically think that needing to expend effort to learn indicates low intelligence. How people view the malleability of intelligence matters a great deal in education. We know that people regard intelligence either as being fixed-something that is unchangeable and characteristic-or being malleable-something that can be changed.
While intelligence has been much studied within the fields of biology, genetics, psychology, and the learning sciences, there is no universally accepted definition of what exactly constitutes “intelligence.”īut we now know much more about what shapes intelligence. Malleability of intelligence refers to beliefs about the nature-and particularly the flexibility-of intelligence.
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