Tag: Mindset

The field of education often races to extremes, and the field of Growth Mindset has been an especially good example of this trend.

Back in the 2006 when Carol Dweck published her book, schools rushed to be as Growth Mindset-y as possible. Posters adorned walls; Janelle Monaie made a Sesame Street video reminding children about “the Power of ‘Yet’.”

All those enthusiasts felt quite a shock in 2018, when two mega-meta-analysis crunched all the numbers and found that

a) mindset doesn’t really have much of an effect on academic performance, and

b) all those mindset interventions don’t really do anything anyway.

In some academic quarters, loud praise gave way to ridicule and — in some cases — snark. (The loaded claim that “all the research showing a positive effect was done by Dweck herself” simply isn’t true.)

Since then, competing camps wave conflicting studies to support their pro/anti Growth Mindset position.

I’d like to advocate for an alternative approach. I believe Dr. Dan Willingham said something like this:

“Some studies suggest that a growth mindset helps some students; other studies suggest that creating the conditions to develop and enact that mindset is REALLY TRICKY.

We shouldn’t simply abandon this approach. We should focus our efforts on finding when it does and doesn’t help which students, and how to foster those conditions for them.”

In other words: a growth mindset won’t promptly and easily cure all motivation problems. But let’s try to find where and how and whom it benefits.

With that goal in mind, I want to explore a recent study. My goal is NOT to say “this team is right; that one is wrong.”

Instead, I want to show how this study gives us reasons to be hopeful and curious — but should still not return us to the days of A Poster in Every Classroom.

Best Case Scenario

In this study from 2022, roughly 80 children aged 7-10 had 2 fMRI scans separated by four weeks.

They also filled out a mindset survey, agreeing or disagreeing with statements like “I can get better at math if I work hard to solve problems,” or “people are born smart or not smart, and there’s not much they can do to change that.”

For half of those children – the control group – that was that.

The other children — during the intervening four weeks — went through a specially designed math tutoring program.

This tutoring program emphasized progress and understanding, not simply scores or comparisons to others. If you know from growth mindset, you know the terminology here: the program emphasized “mastery/learning goals,” not “performance goals.”

So, what did the research team find after four weeks?

Several important findings jump out from all the data and charts:

First:

BOTH GROUPS saw an increase in their growth mindset “score.” For instance, they were likelier to disagree with the statement that “people can’t do much to change their math ability.”

However – and this is an important however – the GROUP IN THE TUTORING PROGRAM saw a bigger change. If you think having a growth mindset is good, you’d interpret these data to say that the tutoring group “made more progress.”

In other words: contrary to that big-news meta-analysis from 2018, this study found that — under these conditions — growth mindset training did help students develop more of a growth mindset.

Second:

We care about mindset because it should motivate students to learn more. To say the same thing in different words: if students who do have a growth mindset learn as much as those who don’t, why would we focus so much energy on developing that mindset?

The research team wanted to know if students who had a more of a growth mindset before the tutoring program learning more math during the tutoring program.

The technical answer to this question is: “yup.”

Third:

When the research team compared changes in fMRI scans after four weeks, they found that the changes in growth mindset correlated with specific changes in neural regions and networks.

If you want to get your neuro-geek on: in the scans of children with higher mindset scores, they found

• greater activation at the top of the front of the cingulate cortex (“dorsal ACC”)
• greater activation in the top of the right striatum
• greater activation in the right hippocampus

They also found that changes in the circuitry connecting these regions “emerged as the strongest predictor of growth mindset gains.”

Recapping the Best Case

Yes: we have had reasonable doubts about the importance of mindset. (Reasonable doubts = that 2018 meta-analysis, among other studies.)

But, this study arrives at three striking conclusions:

a) a well-designed math tutoring program can foster a growth mindset,

b) growth mindset before the tutoring program results in greater math learning during that program, and

c) we see brain regions both activating and connecting differently in conjunction with growth mindset self-report.

Even for skeptics, that’s an impressive combination!

Pushing Back

I can see at least two reasons this study isn’t a slam dunk for Team Mindset.

Reason A:

When researchers compare two groups — as they did in this case — we want those groups to be as much alike as possible.

While these groups did resemble each other in lots of important ways (average age, average mindset score, average IQ, etc.), they differed in a crucial one: one group got something; the other group got nothing.

That is: one group received four weeks of tutoring. The control group simply went about “business as usual.”

They did not — for instance — get a different kind of tutoring that did NOT focus on a growth mindset.

We can therefore wonder if these students developed a growth mindset not because they got a special kind of tutoring, but because they got any tutoring. Maybe the tutoring, not the mindset ingredients, made the difference.

Reason B:

If you read this blog often, you know that I’m very wary of people who make strong claims based on neuroscience research.

Lots of people make claims like these: “when teachers do X, students get a hit of oxytocin. So everyone has to X!”

Here’s my argument: until we test X with actual students doing something in actual classrooms, we don’t know whether or not extra oxytocin does anything beneficial in these circumstances. (Yes, someone is ACHING to call oxytocin the “love hormone.” No, it’s really not.)

So, can we think of other reasons these students’ brain structures and networks might have changed?

Here’s a possibility: perhaps their brains responded to extra math tutoring.

Because they had different experiences for four weeks, it’s not wholly shocking that their brains developed differently from those in the control group.

In other words: just because this study includes complicated brain terminology does NOT mean that we must be persuaded by its conclusions. LOTS of people make strong claims about neuroscience; not all of them hold up well.

(To be fair: an earlier study with college students found the dorsal ACC to be an important part of the growth mindset network. This reduplication clearly makes the current neuro-claim more plausible.)

A Final Verdict

Now that I’ve made arguments both championing and questioning this study, you might reasonably want a clear answer.

Rather than provide false certainty, I’ll go a different direction.

As Dan Willingham (I think) said: we’re trying to figure out where, when, and with whom mindset interventions work.

Based on this study, we can say: “it seems likelier that youngsters given a particular kind of tutoring develop more of a growth mindset; it also seems likely that this mindset helps them learn math.”

That’s not a universal claim; it’s quite a narrow one.

To develop a more complete and persuasive understanding, we will need all sorts of incremental steps:

One research group will work with 5^th graders in science classes.

Another will focus on the neuroscience of mindset in high-stress situations.

A third will turn its attention to adults who return to school to pursue a second career.

And so on.

Piece by piece, study by study, we will gradually accumulate a clearer mental model. In a few decades, we will probably be saying: “we used to talk about mindset in this crude, outdated, and puzzling way. But now that we understand this mental phenomenon so much better, we know that…”

And the advice that follows will be granular, targeted, and perhaps surprising to us who got our start making mindset posters.

---

Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mind-sets important to academic achievement? Two meta-analyses. Psychological science, 29(4), 549-571.

Chen, L., Chang, H., Rudoler, J., Arnardottir, E., Zhang, Y., de Los Angeles, C., & Menon, V. (2022). Cognitive training enhances growth mindset in children through plasticity of cortico-striatal circuits. npj Science of Learning, 7(1), 30.

Mangels, J. A., Butterfield, B., Lamb, J., Good, C., & Dweck, C. S. (2006). Why do beliefs about intelligence influence learning success? A social cognitive neuroscience model. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 1(2), 75-86.

Let’s start with some quick opinions:

Flipped classrooms…

… can transform education and foster students’ independence, or

… are often a waste of time, and at best just rename stuff we already do.

A growth mindset…

… allows students to learn and become anything, or

… is just an over-hyped fad with little research support.

Multiple-choice questions…

… help me see what my students already know (and help them learn), or

… reduce knowledge to trivia, and enforce an authoritarian view of learning.

It seem strange that our profession can contain such starkly contrasting beliefs about core practices.

But if your experience is like mine, you know that debates among teachers can quickly arrive at these extremes. (If you hang out on Twitter, you probably see these clashes at their fiercest.)

Resolving Conflict with Research (?)

When we come across such vehement debates, we might propose an obvious way to settle them: research.

If the science shows X, well then, we teachers should believe X. And, we should run our classes and our schools the X way.

Obviously.

Alas, this solution might not work as well as we would hope. A recent essay by Brendan Schuetze (Twitter handle, @BA_Schuetze) helps explains why.

As Schuetze outlines, Mindset Theory lives in a strange place in the world of education.

On the one hand: research suggests that specific growth-mindset strategies offer some students modest benefits under particular circumstances. (Better said: they sometimes or probably do.)

On the other hand: lots of teachers and school systems think that…well…a growth mindset means that “anyone who tries can succeed at anything.”

How can it be that researchers (often) have one view of an educational theory, and teachers (often) have such a dramatically different understanding of that same theory?

The Values We Hold Influence the Beliefs We Adopt

To answer this question, Schuetze focuses on “values-alignment.” That is: we (teachers specifically, people generally) are quick to endorse research that aligns with values we already hold.

If (and this is my example, not Schuetze’s) we value innovation and the transformative power of technology, we’re likelier to think that flipped classrooms will radically improve education.

We might even come across research supporting this value-aligned position.

If we value tradition and the transformative power of face-to-face conversation, we’re likelier to think that this flipped-classroom nonsense will fail quickly and spectacularly, and we’ll go back to the methods that have always worked.

We can easily discover research supporting this position as well.

In his essay, Schuetze takes the example of growth mindset.

In a well-sourced recap, Schuetze explains:

Teacher education programs tend to endorse transformative constructivist pedagogy (as opposed to more traditional pedagogy), where social justice and the socio-emotional needs of students are increasingly seen as legitimate educational concerns…

In line with this affective turn, teachers are encouraged to be concerned not only with intellectual development, but also with molding, inspiring, and caring for their students–or what might be summarized in one word as the “growth” of students.

Because teacher training programs encourage us to value students’ “growth” quite broadly, our profession tends to believe any research that holds up growth as an outcome.

And we might not ask hard questions before we embrace that belief.

More Concerns, Possible Solutions

In fact (I’m inferring this from Schuetze’s essay), we’re likelier to over-interpret the plausibility and effectiveness of that theory.

Imagine a modest, research-based suggestion aligns with our values:

Researchers say, “X might help these students a bit under these circumstances.”

We teachers hear, “X transforms students — it’s almost magic!”

In my experience — and here I’m going WAY beyond Schuetze’s essay — our hopeful beliefs then call up the very “evidence” we need to persuade ourselves:

Well-meaning teachers write hopeful books that extrapolate substantially from the research they cite.

Blog posts — in an effort to make complex research clear — gloss over the nuance and uncertainty that researchers typically highlight.

Edu-Tweeps with thousands of followers simplify complex ideas into 280 characters.

Suddenly, it seems “everybody believes” that “research shows” what we already value.

To face this problem, I think we need to combine several steps.

Too Good

In the first place, I think it helps to focus on Schuetze’s troubling insight. We might find, someday, that a teaching practice BOTH helps our students learn AND contradicts our values.

Perhaps flipped classrooms really do help students (for the most part), even though we value tradition and face-to-face pedagogy.

Or, to reverse the case,

Perhaps growth mindset strategies don’t really help, even though we value students’ overall growth above their narrow academic achievement.

In these cases, we should honestly accept the tension between research and values. If we act as if they align when they don’t, we won’t make decisions as effectively or thoughtfully as we should.

That is: we can quite appropriately say:

This intervention might not help students learn more. But it aligns with a core value in our community, so we’ll do it anyway.

In the second case, I think we should hone an odd kind of skepticism:.

If a research-based teaching suggestion sounds deeply good — that is, if it aligns with our values — then we have an extra responsibility to assume it’s too good to be true.

Does “authenticity” sound good to you? You should BEWARE a pedagogical strategy called “authentic exploration.”

Does “mindfulness” sound uplifting? You should BEWARE mindfulness initiatives.

Have you (like me) always enjoyed being outdoors with the trees? You (like me) should BEWARE any teaching initiative with the words “woods” or “nature” or “wilderness” in the title.

Of course, when you warily undertake a review of the research literature, you just might find that it does in fact support this core value. (Quick: let’s all study in a forest!)

But we owe it to our profession and our students to admit: the values we hold dear might lead us into too credulous acceptance of the next new thing.

I (hope I) value my students’ development too much to let that happen.

Most teachers know about Mindset Theory: the idea that students’ beliefs about intelligence shape their success in learning.

Specifically:

If I think that intelligence (whatever that is) can’t change, I learn less.

If I think that intelligence can change, I learn more.

Once widely believed and championed, this theory now faces real doubts — especially following two meta-analyses by Sisk and Burgoyne showing that mindset strategies produce (on average) negligibly small effects.

Alas, Mindset debates often fall into two extreme camps:

“Tell students about growth mindsets — they’ll learn more!” or,

“Mindset research is nonsense; skip the whole thing.”

Ugh.

Perhaps we can do better?

Doing Better

Dan Willingham (I believe) has argued that contrary findings about growth mindset don’t exactly “disprove” Mindset Theory. Instead, they remind us that getting mindset strategies right takes precision and care.

We shouldn’t blithely think: “I’ll just do some mindset stuff now.”

Instead, we should think: “I need to ensure my mindset strategy aligns with research, and with my students, quite precisely.”

For instance: I’m skeptical that simply telling students about mindset — the most common strategy I hear about — has much enduring effect.

Instead, I think we need to have quiet and consistent classroom policies and procedures that re-enforce Growth Mindset messages.

Obviously, if we tell our students that intelligence CAN change and act as if we believe it CAN’T, our actions reveal what really matters to us.

One Recent Example

One research group from Washington State wondered if the syllabus of a college course might be enough to communicate a professor’s mindset.

They created two mindset versions of a Calculus syllabus.

The Fixed Mindset Syllabus, for instance, said:

“If you have not mastered these concepts, you should consider dropping the course.”

“I do not take attendance in class [because] I do not penalize students with strong math abilities.”

It also had one heavily-weighted final exam.

The Growth Mindset Syllabus, by contrast, said:

“I you have not mastered these concepts, you should see me or a teaching assistant and we will provide resources.”

“All students will learn something new and attending class is the best way to learn.”

This syllabus had many exams, equally weighted.

Sure enough: both men and women assumed a) that the professor who wrote the FM syllabus indeed had a fixed mindset, and b) that this professor probably assumed that women are “naturally worse at math” than men.

And, women (but not men) who read the FM syllabus did worse on a subsequent math test than those who read the GM syllabus.

Beyond the Syllabus

These perceptions, it turns out, influenced learning beyond the syllabus.

This research team had students rate their professors’ mindsets.

In 46 courses across the university, students — both male and female — rated their STEM professors’ mindsets similarly. That is: some professors rated strongly at the fixed mindset end of the scale — and the students’ gender didn’t matter in that rating.

And, both male and female students assumed that fixed-mindset professors believed that “women struggle to do well in advanced math.”

Sure enough: men had higher average grades in classes taught by FM professors. Women had higher average grades in classes taught by GM professors.

In other words: those syllabus policies — combined with other classroom factors — influence students’ learning.

It might be hard to identify exactly what causes this effect, but mindset certainly seems to be an important part of the equation.

What Should K-12 Teachers Do?

Few pre-college teachers have a syllabus with the gravitas of a college syllabus.

We do, however, have about policies and procedures. We talk about policies and procedures with our students. This study (and many others) encourages us to rethink those policies with their mindset implications in view.

For instance: does our rewrite policy suggest we think that students can get smarter? (I say to my students: “If you say to me you want to work harder and learn more, why would I say no to that? OF COURSE you can revise the essay!”)

Do we have different policies for “smart students” than “other-than-smart students”?

Do we — heaven help us — have a program for students we call “Gifted”?

In brief: we should not think of mindset as a topic we discuss once in a special program.

Instead, we should consider — bit by bit, day by day — what signals we send to our students. If the language we use, the policies we communicate, the procedures we follow all demonstrate “I think you can get smarter,” our students just might believe us.

If we think they can, they will.

For a few years now, I’ve been in the Mindset wilderness.

Three years ago, I spent lots of time tapping the brakes.

“Yes,” I’d say, “we do have plenty of good research behind this strategy. HOWEVER, let’s be realistic. A wall covered in upbeat slogans (“YET!”) just isn’t going to revolutionize education.”

I got a lot of side-eyes.

In 2018, several careful scholars published a blockbuster pair of meta-analyses, throwing doubt on the whole mindset enterprise. Their grim conclusions:

First: students’ mindset has little effect on their academic performance, and

Second: mindset intervention programs don’t provide much benefit.

Suddenly, I started sounding like a mindset enthusiast.

“Yes,” I’d say, “a focus on mindset won’t revolutionize education. HOWEVER: incremental increases in motivation can add up over time. We have SO FEW strategies to help with motivation, we shouldn’t ignore the ones that provide even modest benefits.”

I got even more side-eyes.

The Stickiest Wicket

In these conversations, one point has consistently created the greatest difficulties for my position.

Several mindset researchers have championed the efficacy of “one-shot interventions.”

That is: if students experience one carefully designed mindset-reshaping experience — a webinar, a presentation, an exercise of some kind — that “one shot” alone can help them transform a fixed mindset into a growth mindset.

I gotta say: I just don’t believe that.

My doubts stem not from research, but from experience. Having taught high-school students for thousands of years, I don’t think it ever happens that telling them something once meaningfully changes anything.

I don’t doubt the integrity of the researchers or the process they use. But their conclusion defies too much of my experience (and common sense) for me to take it on board.

Rarely do I use the “my experience trumps your research” veto; in this case, I’m really tempted.

What’s That? “A Beacon,” You Say?

A soon-to-be-published study — run by several of Team Mindset’s leading scholars — offers some support for this skepticism.

These scholars asked a perfectly sensible question: “can a one-shot mindset intervention help students whose teachers demonstrate a fixed mindset?”

That is: must the classroom context echo the explicit message of that one-shot intervention?

Or — in the words of the study — can the mindset “seed” grow in inhospitable “soil”? Are students (on average) independent agents who can overcome implicit classroom messages and act on their explicit mindset training?

To answer this question, the authors reviewed data from a very large study with more than 9000 high school students.

This study takes great procedural care to get the details right: students are randomly assigned to groups; teachers don’t know which student is in which group; teachers don’t know the hypothesis of the study — and so forth.

After a one-shot intervention at the beginning of 9th grade, researchers tracked students’ math grades at the end of the year.

The researchers also asked questions to learn about the teachers‘ mindsets. They wanted to know: did the teachers’ mindset shape the students’ response to the intervention?

The results?

Context Always Matters

Initially, no.

Immediately after the one-shot intervention, students who saw the growth-mindset messages expressed higher degrees of growthiness. Those in the control condition did not. And the teachers’ mindsets didn’t influence those early results.

However — this is a big however — at the end of the year that final sentence wasn’t true.

Students who BOTH heard the growth-mindset messages AND had growth-mindset teachers saw higher math grades.

Students who heard the growth mindset message BUT had fixed-mindset teachers did not.

And, to repeat, those results came months after the intervention itself.

To me, these results make perfect sense. A one-shot message won’t help if the daily classroom routine constantly undermines it; that message might sink in if classroom routines reinforce it.

After all, as the authors wisely write, “no psychological phenomenon works the same way for all people in all contexts.” *

Next Question

This research suggests that teachers’ classroom work can sustain explicit mindset interventions.

Here’s my question: do students need that intervention in the first place? Is the teacher’s classroom practice enough?

I do share LOTS of research with my students: research into retrieval practice, and multitasking, and spacing. I DON’T even mention mindset research, or exhort them to embrace their inner growth mindset.

Instead, I simply enact the mindset strategies.

The classroom rewrite policy encourages and rewards multiple drafts.

I frequently comment on the benefits of cognitive struggle. (“Good news! If you got some questions wrong on that retrieval practice exercise, you’re likelier to learn the answers in the future. The right kind of practice will help you learn.”)

I regularly emphasize what I don’t know, and am excited when I learn something new. (I recently told my sophomores that I have NO IDEA how to interpret the symbolism of Tea Cake’s rabies in Their Eyes Were Watching God. One of my students promptly offered up an explanation; I’m genuinely enthusiastic to have his insight — and the class knows that!)

As I see it, growth mindset isn’t something to talk about. It’s something we demonstrate: quietly, un-fussily, daily.

I’m hoping that — someday — research will support this belief as well.

---

* Although most psychology studies can put off even the most determined reader, this one has been written (it seems) with a lay reader in mind. Although the technical sections are indeed quite technical, the early sections are easy to read: clear, logical, straightforward. If you’re interested in the topic, I recommend giving these early sections a read.

Few theories in education have had a more dramatic story arc than Carol Dweck’s “Mindset.”

Based on research she started in the early 1970s, Dweck published her sumptuously-titled book Mindset, The New Psychology of Success: How We Can Learn to Fulfill our Potential in 2006. By the time I entered this field in 2008, it had gone beyond “must read” status to the “what do you mean you haven’t read it?” pantheon.

Like millions of other teachers, I read it. (In fact, I wrote my own book about Mindset: Learning Grows.)

Across the country, Growth Mindset posters went up on classroom walls. Grading standards changed to include the words “not yet.”

Like any big target, Dweck’s work attracted detractors. Doubts reached their pinnacle in 2018, when Sisk and Burgoyne published two meta-analyses. Their findings:

Growth mindset doesn’t really make much of difference for student learning.

Programs designed to enhance growth mindset have little meaningful effect.

Other large-scale studies, including this one from Argentina, reported similarly doubts.

Mindset’s potential, contrary to Dweck’s subtitle, remained unfulfilled.

Fresh Plot Twist?

Since the Sisk & Burgoyne meta-analyses, it has become fashionable to say “Successful mindset interventions have one variable in common: Carol Dweck did them.”

This critique is both untrue — lots of other researchers have found positive results — and unprofessional: it implies (without directly accusing) that Dweck either has been sloppy or has cooked her data.

And yet, anyone who reads Dweck’s research over the years would hesitate to throw such shade.

A freshly released heap o’ data, in fact, might restore some interest in Mindset.

Every three years, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests 15-year-olds in science, math, and reading. They gather all sorts of data and publish those results.

In fact, recently released data from the 2018 sitting connects a Growth Mindset with higher academic achievement. (You can read a summary article here, and see the full chapter here.)

As Sarah Sparks summarizes the data:

After controlling for students’ and schools’ socioeconomic differences, students with a strong growth mindset scored significantly higher on all subjects—31.5 points in reading, 27 points in science, and 23 points in math—compared with students who believed their intelligence was fixed.

Unsurprisingly, Sparks reports, teachers matter:

Students with supportive teachers—for example, those who show interest in every student learning and a willingness to provide extra help and explanation until a student understands—were 4 percentage points more likely to have a growth mindset than those without a supportive instructor.

In other words: when we look past the shade and the snark, we find that growth mindsets might help learning, and that teachers can help foster them.

Stop the Pendulum

Our profession, alas, tends to extremes. We might embrace Mindset Theory as our school’s shining mission; we might reject it as fashionable pseudo-science.

I hope this time we can aim for a modest middle ground. A few points to keep in mind:

First: the PISA data show correlation, not causation.

Second: they come from self-report.

Third: they show wide differences across country and culture. (For instance: this graph caught my eye.)

Rather than put all our energies into this one strategy (or, into denigrating this one strategy), I think we can adopt a sensible logical chain:

A: Motivated students learn more, but teachers can struggle to motivate students. (Let’s admit it: much of what we study in schools isn’t intrinsically motivating for most students.)

B: On average, a growth mindset offers many students a motivational boost.

C: On average, specific teaching practices make it somewhat likelier that students will adopt a growth mindset.

D: If we can easily adopt — and easily maintain — culturally-appropriate teaching practices that enhance a growth mindset, our efforts will help some students learn.

E: Therefore, let’s do so.

Do I think a one-shot mindset intervention will help? Probably not. (I don’t think a one-shot intervention of anything will help.)

Do I think that Mindset strategies — consistently and modestly applied — will help? I do.

Should those strategies be accompanied by many other research-supported approaches (retrieval practice, metacognition, cognitive-load monitoring, attention-fostering, stress-reduction)? Indeed they should.

A True Story

I did some consulting at a summer camp two years ago. When I went to the archery department, they asked if I wanted to try my hand with a bow.

NO, reader, I DID NOT.

As a camper at this very camp decades before, I had experienced repeated humiliation; I only rarely hit the target, and often missed comically/catastrophically. Honestly, it was dreadful — one of those experiences that, 40 years later, can STILL make me blush.

After a moment of terror, I said to myself:

“Okay, Andrew, you talk about Growth Mindset all the time. Give it a try. Your goal shouldn’t be to get a perfect score. Just try to learn a bit and improve. That’s what you tell your students. Practice what you preach.”

What happened next was an archery miracle.

It turns out that I am right handed, but I sight with my left eye. I had been humiliated all those years ago because I was shooting with the wrong bow.

Once they got a lefty bow into my hand, taught me the stance and a few breathing tricks, I found that I’m a passable archer.

I’m no Robin Hood, but I felt like I hit the bullseye.

Since I first published this post a year ago, there’s been an important change to its argument: the study I’m writing about now HAS been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

As the Mindset skepticism movement gains further steam, I was struck by a comment on this study from the invaluable Dan Willingham. If I remember this correctly, he tweeted (roughly): “The mystery is that we haven’t been able to make this theory work in the classroom.”

Note the elegant middle ground this comment finds. Willingham acknowledges both the decades of scrupulous work that Dweck and her colleagues undertook, and that classroom interventions haven’t had the effect we’d like (for most students).

He doesn’t say (as others mean-spiritedly imply) that Dweck is a fraud. He doesn’t say (as others blithely imply) that we don’t need to worry about the rising number of classroom non-replications.

Instead, he says: “this intervention works under some circumstances, but not under others. We don’t yet know why. If we did, that would be SUPER helpful.”

I myself — as I argue below — think that we went too far thinking that upbeat posters on the wall would radically change students’ motivation, and now we’re going too far in arguing the whole Mindset thing is bunk.

OF COURSE one-time interventions don’t work. Are we truly surprised by this? PERHAPS creating a different school climate will work. Is that so preposterous an argument?

In any case: here’s what I wrote in July of 2019…

---

Mindset theory has faced increasing skepticism in recent years.

For four decades — literally!–Carol Dweck and other researchers ran thoughtful studies with thousands of students. Over and over, they found that students who think about about their work in particular ways (shorthand, “growth mindset”) do better than those who don’t (“fixed mindset”).

Like other areas of psychology (think “power poses”), Mindset Theory has been caught up in the “replication crisis.”

In brief: if Mindset theory is true, then a mindset intervention should help no matter who does the intervening. It should work when Dweck’s team does it with her students, and when I do so with mine.

If it works only for Dweck, well, that doesn’t really help the rest of us.

And, several researchers have found that various strategies didn’t replicate.

A much publicized meta-analysis, published last summer, suggests that Mindset interventions had very small effects. (I myself think this meta-analysis has been over-interpreted; you can see my analysis here.)

Today’s News

Researcher and NYU professor Alejandro Ganimian has published research about a large-scale mindset intervention in Argentina.

Ganimian had 12th graders at 100 (!) schools read a passage arguing that “persisting through difficult challenges can develop the brain.”

The 12th graders then wrote “a letter to a classmate of their choice on the three main lessons from the reading and how they might help him/her.”

To keep the growth mindset message fresh, those letters were posted in the classroom.

He compared these students to 12th graders at 102 other schools that had not used this intervention.

The results? Nada. Nothin’. Bupkis.

Specifically:

This intervention had “no effect on students’ propensity to find challenging tasks less intimidating.”

It didn’t increase the likelihood that they would pay attention in class.

By some rough/indirect measures, it didn’t have an effect on the participants’ academic success.

As Ganimian sums up his results:

In nearly all outcomes, I can rule out even small effects. …

This study suggests that the benefits of growth mindset interventions may be more challenging to replicate and scale in developing countries than anticipated.

What Should Teachers Do?

First: two clarifying points. a) Ganimian’s research hasn’t been peer reviewed and published in a journal. It is currently a working paper, hosted on his website. [Ed. 8/2020: Ganimian’s research now has been published: see link at the top of this post.]

And b) I myself am not a neutral source in this debate. I’ve written a book about mindset research, and so I read Ganimian’s work through that lens.

Second: I think mindset strategies are likeliest to have an effect when used all together as a consistent, unified approach to student motivation.

That is: I’m not at all surprised that a “one-shot” intervention doesn’t have big results. (Some research has found success with “one-shot” interventions; I’ve always been skeptical.)

So, if you want to use mindset research in your classrooms, don’t do just one thing, once. A motivational poster really won’t accomplish much of anything.

Instead, understand the interconnecting strategies that promote a growth-mindset climate, and use them consistently and subtly. Heck, I can even recommend a book that will show you the way.

Third: Here’s what I wrote last October:

We should not, of course, ask mindset to solve all our problems. Nor should we ask retrieval practice to solve all problems. Or short bursts of in-class exercise.

No one change fixes everything.

Instead, we should see Mindset Theory as one useful tool that can help many of our students.

We’ve posted frequently about the Mindset Controversy in recent months.

The short version goes like this:

After several decades of enthusiastic reception, Dweck’s work on fixed and growth mindset has come under increasingly skeptical scrutiny.

A well-publicized meta-analysis showed only small effects — both of mindset itself, and of growth mindset interventions.

And, some non-replications have recently added new voices to the mindset-skeptical chorus. At the beginning of this month, for example, I wrote about a non-replication in Argentina.

During these months, I’ve been wondering: when would Dweck herself respond? And, what would she say?

The TES Interview

Dweck recently gave an interview to TES in which she started to answer some of these questions.

The article they’ve published is worth reading in its entirety, and I encourage you to give it a look.

I’ll mention two highlights.

First — unsurprisingly, to me — Dweck is open to the criticism she’s reading:

We have produced a body of evidence that says under these conditions this is what happened. We have not explored all the conditions that are possible.

Teacher feedback on what is working and not working is hugely valuable to us to tell us what we have not done and what we need to do. [emphasis added]

In other words: if people are trying mindset interventions and they’re not working, she wants to know about that. She’s not pretending those concerns aren’t real.

What Should Teachers Do?

Second, Dweck emphasizes that mindset interventions should not be one-time events.

Anything that happens just once — “a chart at the front of the room, a lecture where you define the two mindsets” — isn’t likely to work.

Instead, we should focus on “the policies and practices in the classroom. It is not about teaching the concept alone, it is much more about implementing practices that focus on growth and learning.” [emphasis added]

That is: if we tell students about the perils of fixed mindsets and the benefits of growth mindsets, we might feel like we’ve set them on the right path.

But: if our own language, classroom methods, and grading policies imply fixed mindsets, then that mindset mini-lesson won’t help very much.

A Brainy Analogy

Regular readers know that I’m writing several posts about working memory: what it is, why it’s important, how to use that information.

I do NOT think that teachers should tell students about working memory. If we do — ironically — we’re just using up their scarce working-memory resources.

Instead, we should use our knowledge of WM to modify and hone our teaching practices.

So, too, with mindset. Our students don’t need us to tell them the theory. They need us to act on our own knowledge of the theory — to modify and hone our teaching practices.

That approach will take more sustained effort. It might not have a dramatic, immediate effect. But, given Dweck’s four decades of research, it’s much likelier to yield the subtle, long-term benefits that enhance learning.

---

Full disclosure: I’m not a neutral observer in this debate. I’ve just published a book on Mindset. Your opinion about my opinion might reasonably be swayed by that knowledge.

If you’re interested in such a book, you can see Rebecca Gotlieb’s review here.

Mindset theory has faced increasing skepticism in recent years.

For four decades — literally!–Carol Dweck and other researchers ran thoughtful studies with thousands of students. Over and over, they found that students who think about about their work in particular ways (shorthand, “growth mindset”) do better than those who don’t (“fixed mindset”).

Like other areas of psychology (think “power poses”), Mindset Theory has been caught up in the “replication crisis.”

In brief: if Mindset theory is true, then a mindset intervention should help no matter who does the intervening. It should work when Dweck’s team does it with her students, and when I do so with mine.

If it works only for Dweck, well, that doesn’t really help the rest of us.

And, several researchers have found that various strategies didn’t replicate.

A much publicized meta-analysis, published last summer, suggests that Mindset interventions had very small effects. (I myself think this meta-analysis has been over-interpreted; you can see my analysis here.)

Today’s News

Researcher and NYU professor Alejandro Ganimian has published research about a large-scale mindset intervention in Argentina.

Ganimian had 12th graders at 100 (!) schools read a passage arguing that “persisting through difficult challenges can develop the brain.”

The 12th graders then wrote “a letter to a classmate of their choice on the three main lessons from the reading and how they might help him/her.”

To keep the growth mindset message fresh, those letters were posted in the classroom.

He compared these students to 12th graders at 102 other schools that had not used this intervention.

The results? Nada. Nothin’. Bupkis.

Specifically:

This intervention had “no effect on students’ propensity to find challenging tasks less intimidating.”

It didn’t increase the likelihood that they would pay attention in class.

By some rough/indirect measures, it didn’t have an effect on the participants’ academic success.

As Ganimian sums up his results:

In nearly all outcomes, I can rule out even small effects. …

This study suggests that the benefits of growth mindset interventions may be more challenging to replicate and scale in developing countries than anticipated.

What Should Teachers Do?

First: two clarifying points. a) Ganimian’s research hasn’t been peer reviewed and published in a journal. It is currently a working paper, hosted on his website.

And b) I myself am not a neutral source in this debate. I’ve written a book about mindset research, and so I read Ganimian’s work through that lens.

Second: I think mindset strategies are likeliest to have an effect when used all together as a consistent, unified approach to student motivation.

That is: I’m not at all surprised that a “one-shot” intervention doesn’t have big results. (Some research has found success with “one-shot” interventions; I’ve always been skeptical.)

So, if you want to use mindset research in your classrooms, don’t do just one thing, once. A motivational poster really won’t accomplish much of anything.

Instead, understand the interconnecting strategies that promote a growth-mindset climate, and use them consistently and subtly. Heck, I can even recommend a book that will show you the way.

Third: Here’s what I wrote last October:

We should not, of course, ask mindset to solve all our problems. Nor should we ask retrieval practice to solve all problems. Or short bursts of in-class exercise.

No one change fixes everything.

Instead, we should see Mindset Theory as one useful tool that can help many of our students.