Professor Carol Dweck 'Teaching a growth mindset' at Young Minds 2013

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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.

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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