Effort, not superior intelligence, is the key to success, writes psychologist Carol Dweck in Scientific American. Telling children their success is a result of their ability leaves them “vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn,” she writes.
- Teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, produces high achievers in school and in life.
- Parents and teachers can engender a growth mind-set in children by praising them for their effort or persistence (rather than for their intelligence), by telling success stories that emphasize hard work and love of learning, and by teaching them about the brain as a learning machine.
Dweck and colleagues followed junior high students for two years. “Growth” believers said learning was more important than getting good grades and believed that hard work would pay off.
Confronted by a setback such as a disappointing test grade, students with a growth mind-set said they would study harder or try a different strategy for mastering the material.
The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with little regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests.
Students in the two groups started with similar test scores, but the students who believed in effort were more persistent when the work got harder. They soon forged ahead in achievement.
“believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability.”
Is there the educational equivalent of “The Peter Principle?”
If you continue your education eventually you will rise to a level where it becomes too difficult, for some folks this is ninth grade algebra, but for others that’s graduate school.
I forwarded this post to my principal–and he’s already forwarded it to the entire faculty. Guess he found some value in it
“Praising” children by telling them that they are smart or clever etc. leads to fear of failure and low tolerance of failure. It gives them no credit for achievement (it’s what you are not what you’ve done) and no tolerance for failure as a lack of success at something means you aren’t good at that thing and should avoid trying again to cover up for your weakness.
Much more beneficial is to praise effort or technique when things go well which then leaves space when things don’t go well to increase effort or continue trying or modify techniques or strategy without diminishing the child’s sense of self.
The article by Carol Dweck is good, but leaves me a little dissatisfied. As a math teacher I am painfully aware of the limitations imposed by what seems to be innate ability. I have a few years of experience that leads me to the conclusion that in a normal class of 30 college freshmen there will be perhaps two or three students who can learn the math very easily. They don’t work hard because they don’t have to. On the other end there may be several students who just can’t do it. They hit a brick wall. They just can’t understand, or they just can’t remember, or in yet some other way they just can’t do it. Sometime they put forth heroic efforts, but to no avail. For these people an admonition to try harder is more cruelty than assistance.
What Dweck does not expressly state, but that I think is very important, is that for everyone, at any level of talent, effort is absolutely necessary to maximize achievement. This is important for people of both high ability and low ability. The issue can be obscured because it is easy to confuse achievement with maximizing achievement. A student who achieves a lot may or may not be anywhere close to his maximum achievement. The same can be said for a student who achieves very little.
But to say that effort is required to maximize achievement is very different from saying that effort can bring the achievement of a low ability person up to the achievement of a high ability person. Dweck’s article may not specifically say this, but it seems to be something we are invited to infer.
I agree 100% that mind set is important. The right mind set can maximize achievement and the wrong mind set can sabotage achievement. And Dweck stresses this. However I think I might have quite a different idea on how to achieve this mind set.
I would argue that a good mind set comes from having considerable experience in a situation in which efforts yield results. This is different from saying that we should work directly on getting a good mind set. To work directly on getting a good mind set can be interpreted as giving a pep talk, which gets perilously close to raising students esteem by praising them indiscriminately. My view is that both self esteem and a good mind set about effort come from being put in a situation in which effort is required, but in which that required effort is productive. When this situation is provided (which is what good teaching is all about), praise and good self esteem will be naturally forthcoming because results will be naturally forthcoming, because the situation is designed so that effort brings results. When this situation is achieved, and I think it very often is, I am skeptical that Dweck’s “brainology” can add much more.
“…for everyone, at any level of talent, effort is absolutely necessary to maximize achievement.”
This is the only worthwhile idea in the whole article. The rest of it is pap - but hey! psychologists excel at that.
Our piano teacher has a poster on her wall:
The more you practice, the better you play.
The better you play, the more you enjoy making music.
The more you enjoy making music, the more you practice.
The more you practice,….
Time on task matters a lot. But you need a good teacher using a structured piano curriculum to direct your efforts to the next step to take to improve your piano playing. You can’t skip several steps and expect that your efforts will be rewarded.
Atheist Mom nailed it…No matter how hard you try you’ll never exceed your ability. Pragmatic educators live the philosophy “The smart ones get it, the dumb ones don’t, the lazy won,t.” The Little Engine That Could will eventually realize that one can’t spin straw into gold.
As a high school teacher I agree that effort, not intelligence, is the main deciding factor for success in elementary and secondary education for general students. Almost nothing in the New York State curriculum for high schools could not be taught in middle school with the right preparation and effort.
My school recently held an awards ceremony for 1st quarter results (honor and merit roll). A colleague noted, and I agree, that the primary difference between those on the merit roll (85+) and those who are not was whether they do the work in class and at home.
I hope Atheist Mom and Mike Curtis don’t spend much time around kids! And please, never come into a school!
“No matter how hard you try you’ll never exceed your ability.”
???? Really? ??? Is that what you tell YOUR kids?
And no doubt, the next brilliant axiom is: the so-called “pragmatic educator” knows exactly what that “ability” is. We call that sentiment: LOW-BALLING.
I’m just wondering why Atheist Mom and Mike Curtis are so comfortable assuming they’ll know when the ability maximum is reached? Do they both have a gadget like one of those non-contact thermometers that allows them to determine when the physiologically maximum ability has been reached by pointing the sensor at a kid and pressing the trigger?
If they don’t have such a gadget, or some defensible rationale, then they’re making predictions based on inadequate information which, fortunately for them and people comfortable making similar judgments, they are not liable.
No doubt, Atheist Mom and Mike Curtis have gifted and talented children. It’s everyone else’s kids that have limited ability that should never be fostered. How lucky of them!
It’s a tautology to say that you can’t exceed your limits, since we can’t teach horse to play a piano or teach calculus to a dog. But I agree with the comments about not knowing what those limits are. I have a cousin who is very intelligent, but who did poorly in school, because her mother harped on the idea that if you are really smart you shouldn’t have to work hard. Well, my cousin didn’t work hard, and instead of getting a good education in high school she got a mediocre one, and had terrible study habits when she got to college, where she did a little worse. She was smart enough to get a degree, and later she got an MBA, but while she was in biz school she complained to me about the years she had wasted in high school and college working just hard enough to get by.
I’ve worked around and with several Nobel-caliber people in my life (2 with the actual prize, 3 with Fields Medals, etc.), and they had two things in common: they were very smart, and they worked really, REALLY hard. And all of the ones who have expressed opinions in my presence said that working hard was the most important part. In any event, whatever any given person’s limits are, the strategy that maximizes their chances is to try and keep trying.
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. — Calvin Coolidge 1872
This is another one of those who-you-going-to-believe-the-article-or-your-own-lying-eyes articles. Colleges aren’t full of the dim but persistent kids or the smart, but lazy ones either. No, colleges are full of bright and persistant kids. Effort plays a big role in education outcomes, but so does IQ.