The title of this post seems to go against everything we’ve been led to believe about supporting our children and students to be the most successful they can be. We want them to believe in themselves. We want them to feel capable of taking on challenges, but a growing body of research tells us that we may be doing just the opposite with this kind of praise.
The title of this post was the title of an op-ed piece written by Salman Khan, creator of Khan Academy, published in the Huffington Post some time ago. In that piece Salman goes on to give an overview of a concept in education called the “Growth Mindset”. In short, having a “growth mindset” means believing that intelligence, and ability to learn, aren’t purely genetic, or fixed. That the brain is a muscle in many ways like all the others, something elastic, that when exercised can strengthen and grow.
Khan Academy, which many G4 students at IST have an account with, has been experimenting with this concept and attempting to apply this research through little experiments like placing growth mindset statements next to math problems. A statement might read: “When you learn a new kind of math problem you grow your math brain!”. According to Carol Dweck, the Stanford University researcher who’s published widely on the topic, “Students who saw these growth mindset statements solved more problems correctly, took more units and mastered them, and got more problems correct in subsequent units, even when they weren’t seeing the statements.”
Khan Academy last year launched their #YOUCANLEARNANYTHING campaign in support of cultivating growth mindsets in students. This video is a nice introduction:
The big question for us at IST, of course, is what are we doing with our students to promote this clearly powerfully important idea? Are we telling students they’re smart? That they’re not smart? Or that, they can learn anything…