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Kids come like this.
Infinitely curious, always experimenting,
always learning, and attacking the most difficult
tasks of a lifetime with tremendous gusto.
And yet, just a few years later, many of the same children look like this.
Or this.
We have discovered that children's mindsets
can lay at the heart of this problem.
The wrong mindset can make them afraid of challenge,
afraid of effort, afraid of setbacks.
The important thing is this.
We have discovered where these mindsets come from,
how they work, and how to change them.
So that's what I wanna share with you today.
In my work, we find that some case for the fixed mind set.
They think that their basic talents and abilities are just these fixed traits,
they have a certain amount of intelligent and talents and that's that.
As you'll see, this is the mindset that saps children's motivation and
stunts their minds, but other students have a growth mindset.
They believe their most basic talents and abilities can be developed
through practice, learning, good mentorship From others.
They don't think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but
they understand that even Einstein wasn't the man he became
before he put in years and years of dedicated labor.
What I'm gonna talk about is, how do mindsets work and how they can be changed?
We did a study of hundreds of students making a very difficult
school transition to seventh grade, which is about 13, 14 years old.
In my country, this is when the work gets harder,
the grading gets more stringent and lots of kids turn off to school.
At the beginning of seventh grade, we measured students mindsets and
then we monitored their grades over the next two years.
Look what happened.
The students with the fixed and
growth mindsets entered seventh grade with identical past math achievement.
But by the end of their first term of seventh grade,
their grades jumped apart and continued to diverge over the next two years.
Why did that happen?
First, we showed that
the kids with a fixed mindset only care about looking smart.
Look smart and never look dumb.
Therefore they avoided challenging learning task and
they didn't study deeply in order to learn.
But those with the growth mindset, there was no risk.
They weren't showing how smart they were.
They just dove into challenging learning tasks with gusto like the babies.
The second thing was that
two mindsets created very different beliefs about effort.
And this is critically important.
In a fixed mindset, effort is a bad thing.
Students believe if you really have ability, you shouldn't need effort.
And if you have to apply effort, it means you are not very smart.
They subscribe to Homer Simpson's motto.
Trying is the first step towards failure.
But in the growth mindset, kids understand that hard work and
practice, that's what makes you smarter, and they also understand
that even genius' have had to work hard for their great discoveries.
So they enjoy effort.
It makes them feel like they're learning,
rather than making them feel like they're dumb.
And the third thing we found was that the mindsets
created completely different attitudes towards setbacks.
In a fixed mindset, setbacks have a really negative meaning.
They mean you're not smart.
If you were smart, you wouldn't be making mistakes or having failures.
So their tendency is to get defensive, to hide mistakes, to conceal deficiencies.
But in a growth mindset, there's this realization
that set backs are an actual part of learning.
And that you need to confront your mistakes and deficiencies and
learn from them.
I have to say with the way I got into this field was that I was testing
some kids and they were reached some problem they couldn't solve.
And one of them said, I love a challenge.
Or another said, I was hoping this would be informative.
And so
here were these ten year olds having these exuberant reactions to setbacks.
Ultimately I understood they had a growth mindset.
We asked our seventh graders what they would do after a poor
score on the first exam in a new course.
Here's what they said.
Those who endorsed a fixed mindset said,
I'd spend less time on this subject from now on.
I would try to cheat on the next test.
Well, think about it.
This set back meant that weren't smart at it and
effort isn't something they enjoy or value.
What are their options?
But in a growth mindset, they'd said I'd work harder in this class from now on.
I'd spend more time studying for the test.
Let me show you how this works in the brain, in this study
the researchers monitored from
the brain as students worked on a task and made errors.
You see this red hot brain on the right, those are growth mindset students
detecting the errors, processing them and correcting them.
On the left, you have that fixed mindset brain looking so
cool, fleeing, running from the errors as quickly as possible.
The good news is that when students were taught a growth mindset,
they looked like that.
So a fixed mindset doesn't give students a way to handle difficulty.
They give up, run away, become defensive.
When you see students acting bored or acting out or blaming the teacher,
it is often trying to hide the fixed mindset of fear, of not looking smart.
How are these mindsets transmitted?
The most interesting way that we've studied is how they are transmitted
through the praise parents, teachers, adults give to kids.
We undertook this research at the height of the self-esteem movement.
When the gurus were telling everyone, just praise kids lavishly,
globally, praise their talent, praise their abilities.
In 15 or more years of research, we have shown
that praising children's ability backfires, it harms them.
It does not create growth in young minds.
Here's how we found this out.
In some studies, we brought ten year olds into a room in their school.
And we gave them initially ten problems from this non-verbal IQ test.
Then after the ten problems, we gave each child one form of praise.
Some children were praised for their intelligence.
Wow, that's a really good score, you must be smart at this.
Some were praised for the process they engaged in, like their effort.
Or their strategies that could be in other studies or
their focus or their persistence.
Wow, that's a really good score, you must have tried really hard.
And a third group was told, wow, that's a really good score.
But we won't talk much about them, they were right in the middle.
What happened?
First, we found that praising intelligence
did indeed put students into a fixed mindset.
It said, I can look inside of you and measure how smart you are.
Whereas praising the process put them into more of a growth mindset.
But to me, the most astonishing thing was that praising
intelligence turned kids off to learning.
When we gave them a choice after the praise, hey,
what do you wanna work on now?
Something hard, you might make mistakes, but you'll learn something new.
Or something you're good at, so you're sure to do well.
Most of the kids praised for
intelligence chose the easy task where they were sure to do well.
I like to say they didn't wanna risk their newly minted gifted label.
But those praised for
the process overwhelmingly chose the hard task they could learn from.
Later, we gave everybody a hard set of problems to work on.
And those who were praised for their intelligence,
after these hard problems, when we went back to the easy ones,
showed deeply undermined performance.
They did not recover from the difficult problems.
Telling them that they were smart made their IQ lower on that test
when they encounter difficulty.
But the kids praised for the process really flourished.
We just two months ago published a study,
where we looked at mothers' praise to their babies.
The babies were one to three years of age.
And we showed that the mothers' praise to these babies predicted the child's
mindset and desire for challenge five years later.
So it starts young.
It can always be changed, but it starts young.
And now when I hear a mother telling her baby in the airport
that he's a genius, I stop her.
>> [LAUGH] >> Other research also
showing parents' praise to their older kids too is predicting
that child's mindset and desire for challenge over time.
I've fallen in love with a new word, yet.
And I think that's another way we can convey mindsets to kids.
I learned of a high school in Chicago, where when students didn't pass a unit,
instead of getting a failing grade, they got the grade, not yet.
And I thought, isn't that beautiful?
If you get a failing grade, you're nowhere.
You're dumb, you're at the starting gate.
But not yet means, hey, you're on that learning curve,
maybe you're not at the finish line, but you're on that curve.
So, if a student says, I'm not good at, same as, yet.
I can't do it, yet.
Get back on that learning curve.
I tried, but it didn't work yet.
It tells them, we have faith in their ability to learn over time,
and we expect them to.
When we saw that a growth mindset had so many benefits, we asked,
could we teach it to kids?
So in our original study, we took seventh graders, again,
that difficult transition, many of whom were already showing declining grades,
especially in math, and we broke them into two groups.
One group, the control group, got eight sessions of fantastic study skills.
Skills that teachers told them, told us, would really help them that year.
But the other group, the growth mindset group,
got eight sessions of study skills, plus growth mindset.
The growth mindset sessions kicked off with this article,
You Can Grow Your Intelligence.
New research shows the brain can be developed like a muscle.
And what they learned was this.
There were these neurons in their brain, and every time they pushed
out of their comfort zone to learn something new and hard,
these neurons form new connections, and over time, they could get smarter.
Kids love this message.
We'll never forget the boy who looked up at as and
said, you mean I don't have to be dumb?
And look what happened.
The students who just got the study skills continued to show declining grades,
but the students who learned the growth mindset have the, whoop, here we go.
Have the motivation to put those skills into practice to grow their brain.
And they showed a big rebound in their grades.
Is it ever too late, we wanted to know are there ever students
who are too far gone to benefit from a growth mindset?
So we recently completed this study, 13 high schools in the US.
And we focused on the lowest achieving students.
Half of them learned, half of them were in the control group.
They just learned about the brain and how they could enhance their memory.
But the other half received online lessons on the growth mindset.
And, again, it's how the brain grows through learning when they work on new and
difficult things.
The first thing we found was that just three months later,
Those who had learned the growth mindset lesson already had higher
grade point averages and the second thing we found
was that those who did not have the growth mindset training were
failing more and more courses, but those who did get the growth mindset
messages were failing fewer and fewer courses over time.
We're doing a lot of new work now showing that the growth
mindset learning the growth mindset, keeps the student in school.
Fewer drop outs helps them make that transition to university
and we're also doing a whole new line of work with bullying and aggression,
and showing that teaching a growth mind set about personal qualities
lowers students tendency to react with aggression.
So we're very,
very excited about these new places that we're taking the growth mind set.
So, is the growth mindset for everyone?
Does everyone wanna get smarter?
Well, I know when I was a kid, we would have done anything for
a few more IQ points.
In fact, my sixth grade teacher seated us
around the room in IQ order and you could not.
It was already the highest IQ class in the school.
But if you weren't the highest IQ person in that class,
you were not allowed to erase the blackboard or
carry a note to the principal or carry the flag In the school assembly.
So if someone said, hey, do you want more IQ points?
Yes, tell me how.
But in a really fascinating new study,
Stephanie Fryberg took the growth mindset
concept into Native American culture and
she went back to her Native American reservation where she grew up and
she brought the growth mind set with her.
At first, it didn't take.
The kids weren't that excited about getting some
more neuro connections in their brain.
But when she made it culturally relevant,
relevant to the tribal values, it could fire.
When she said, you can grow your brain.
And when you grow your brain, you can really help your family and
community thrive, it caught fire.
She also instructed parents and teachers in how to promote
a growth mindset and how to teach kids that every day,
six hours of school were devoted to growing their brains.
And if a child didn't pay attention or cut up or misbehaved,
they stayed in from recess and teachers said, because we care about you,
we want you to have six hours a day to grow your brain.
This was an elementary school on a Native American reservation.
90% minority and
the school had been in the bottom 5% of the state.
Where are they now?
After a year to a year and a half of this immersive growth mindset,
the kindergarteners and first graders now lead their district and
it's an affluence surrounding district in oral reading fluency.
95% of the kindergarteners and
80% of the first graders are proficient or above in reading.
Third grade literacy.
68% of third grade students met or were within ten points of the standard.
The previous fall, most of them had been more than 100 points below standard.
Third to fifth grade, 60% of all students
were showing more than a year of growth in math and
literacy and at least half of those students were
showing 1.5 to 2 years of growth each year.
Most important, children now believe that their
potential as native students was unlimited.
What I want you to take away from here today
is this idea that within a fixed mindset,
effort and difficulty make you feel dumb,
make kids feel dumb.
But within a growth mindset, effort and difficulty,
that's what gives you neural connections, new connections and make you smarter.
Do you feel that difference?
So in summary, a growth mindset allows students to embrace learning and
growth, to understand the role of effort in creating
intelligence instead of making them feel if they were smart.
They wouldn't need effort and
it allows them to be resilient in the face of setbacks.
And best of all, it can be taught.
I'd like to end with this proposal.
The more research shows us that human abilities
can be grown, the more it become a basic
human right for children to exist
in environments that help them to grow those abilities,
to live in environments that help them fulfill their potential.
Thank you.
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