Teaching a Growth Mindset - Carol Dweck

Stanford University. (APPLAUSE)

Hi.

We are born

to learn,

to develop our skills,

to have an impact on the world and if you don't believe me just take a look at this.

This is a colleague's 5-month-old nephew

who just turned on the computer for the first time.

But that's old.

Even at birth,

we learn an amazing amount

much more

than we ever suspected.

But

just a few years later we start seeing this,

and this.

My work is about why this happens

and what we can do about it.

In my work,

we find that

students can have different perspectives

on their intelligence,

talents,

and abilities.

When they're more and more of a fixed mindset

they believe their talents and abilities are just

these fixed traits they have a certain amount

and that's

it.

This makes them

afraid of learning.

They're so worried about looking smart and not looking dumb

that they back off from challenging learning.

But when they're in more of a growth mindset,

they can forget about smart and dumb.

They can focus on developing their abilities. As a result,

they take on challenges,

they are more resilient in the face of setbacks,

and they learn more.

This

was writ large in a recent study we did

with all of the 10th graders in the country of Chile,

160,000 students.

We were able to

assess

their mindsets

and we had access to their achievement test scores

in language and math.

And what we found

was that every at every single level of family income,

the students who endorsed more of a growth mindset

substantially outperformed

the students who endorsed more of a fixed mindset.

And what was really remarkable

was that many of the poorer students who had a growth mindset

were performing at the level of much,

much,

much richer students

who had

more of a fixed mindset.

What's really exciting to us

is that we're learning more and more

about how to teach students a growth mindset.

In one of our early studies,

we took

a bunch of students making that really difficult transition

to seventh grade.

Many of them were already showing declining scores,

especially in math.

Half of them were taught terrific and useful study skills,

but the other half

was taught a growth mindset

with those study skills.

They learned

that when they stepped out of their comfort zone

to do hard things and they stuck to them.

The neurons in their brain could form new connections,

stronger connections,

and over time

they could get smarter.

This message was thrilling to the kids.

And when we checked in on them at the end of the year we found that

the students who had just learned

the useful study skills were continuing to show declining grades,

especially in math,

but those that had learned

the growth mindset with their skills

caught fire

and showed a sharp rebound in their grades.

Recently,

we

developed growth mindset modules for

university students who were taking computer science.

We found

that women

who

went through the modules compared to the control group

felt a much greater sense of belonging in computer science.

They

performed better

in computer science and they intended to take it again

in the future.

And by the way,

the males benefited from that growth mindset message as well.

Thinking really big about learning this fall

headed by

David Yeager—a

former Stanford PhD student—

we launched a nationwide study.

We have delivered growth mindset

computer-based modules

to high school students across the country.

And we will now learn

for whom it works best,

when it works best,

and for whom we need to improve our programs,

tailor our programs,

so that more and more students around our nation

can become effective learners again.

Also thinking big

about learning,

we teamed up with computer scientists

at the University of Washington.

To create a new kind of math game

for elementary school students.

In the typical game,

students rack up points for zooming through the game and getting right answers,

but not in our game,

not in brain points.

In Brain Points,

they got points for sustaining their effort,

for

trying many strategies,

and for making progress.

They did all those things.

But the most exciting finding for us

was that

in the regular game it was really the high achievers who loved

playing it, who played a long time and stayed until the end,

but in the Brain Points version,

many,

many,

many more of the lower achievers stayed in,

played a long time,

stayed till the end.

They immersed themselves in this learning

because everyone can win

at this game.

This kind of training

changes the meaning of difficulty

for students.

In a fixed mindset

as you see on the right,

when students are in that mindset,

difficulty

is a bad thing.

They want out.

And what you see on the left is a student who just made an error

and nothing is happening in their brains they are avoiding that error,

running from it,

but on the right

you see a student in a growth mindset

who just encountered an error.

They are processing it deeply

and correcting it on the next trial,

that's called

learning.

Now so far I've talked about individuals

having a mindset.

But

what about a whole school or a whole community?

Stephanie Fryberg,

who got her PhD at Stanford and is now a professor

at the University of Washington,

went back to her Native American community

where she grew up,

and she created a whole growth mindset environment.

She trained the teachers all summer

how to teach kids, their brains can grow,

how

to

tailor

their practices

to convey that message.

She made a TV show for the community's parents and worked with them as well.

And when the kids showed up

in the fall,

they were told every day

because we care about you,

we're gonna spend 6 hours today growing your brain.

They were immersed in the setting

where everybody was committed to, devoted to

growing their brains.

Now this school on the reservation

was traditionally

at the bottom of the district.

After a year to a year and a half of immersion

in a growth mindset environment,

the kindergartners and first

graders in that district

went to the top of the district,

which,

by the way,

included affluent sections of Seattle.

The older kids,

the third through fifth graders,

many of them

were gaining a year and a half to two years

per year.

It's exciting to think of

what students are capable of,

and these were students who are not thought to be capable of much.

In the end,

they were capable of almost anything.

Now in today's world,

learning doesn't stop at school. It doesn't stop

in the classroom.

In a recent study,

we looked at a group of Fortune 500 companies

and what we found

was that people were very easily able to say whether they were in a growth mindset

company that valued everyone's development

or a fixed mindset company which was

focused on talent. And what we found

was that people in the growth mindset companies

said they felt empowered to learn,

innovate, and create.

And the managers told us

they saw much more potential

among their young workers

for learning,

rising,

becoming stars within the company.

The irony is that in the fixed mindset companies,

they're identifying the talent,

buying the talent,

grooming the talent,

but a few years later

they didn't see those people blossoming to the same extent.

And thinking

very,

very big,

we have a whole program of research in the Middle East,

we are finding

that when we teach Israelis,

Jewish Israelis,

or Palestinians

a growth mindset about groups,

the idea that groups aren't fixed,

they have the capability

to grow and develop.

When they learn this,

they want to learn more about each other

and they're willing to entertain

compromises

for the sake of peace.

This is a very,

very small beginning to a very,

very big problem,

but we may just have found a take-off point for learning.

Recently

we've encountered a mystery. We always thought

adults with a growth mindset

would create kids with a growth mindset.

It was so nice to think that

those

were the days,

but we're wrong

and it turns out

that many adults with a growth mindset

are not passing it on.

And in one study,

Cathy Luston working with Jo Boaler in the ed school found

that many math teachers in middle school had a growth mindset.

They even said the words "growth mindset"

in their classroom,

but unless they were teaching for conceptual understanding,

unless they were giving feedback

to students that deepen their conceptual understanding.

And unless they gave kids a chance to revise,

to show their growing understanding,

those kids did not develop a growth mindset about math.

In my lab,

Kyla Haimovitz

(my graduate student) and I

are finding that many parents

endorse the growth mindset,

but if they react to their kids'

failures or difficulties

with anxiety, concern,

those kids are not developing a growth mindset,

but when they

react to the kids

setbacks or failures as an interesting platform for learning,

let's see what you did,

let's see what we can do now, those are the kids who are developing a growth mindset.

Putting it all together

we are thinking really, really big and working

really, really hard

so that everyone

children, adults, no matter what age

can look like this again.

Thank you. (APPLAUSE)

For more,

please visit us at stanford.edu.