An enduring criticism of growth mindset theory is that it underestimates the importance of innate ability, specifically intelligence. If one student is playing with a weaker hand, is it fair to tell the student that she is just not making enough effort? Growth mindset – like its educational-psychology cousin ‘grit’ – can have the unintended consequence of making students feel responsible for things that are not under their control: that their lack of success is a failure of moral character. This goes well beyond questions of innate ability to the effects of marginalisation, poverty and other socioeconomic disadvantage. For the US psychiatrist Scott Alexander, if a fixed mindset accounts for underachievement, then ‘poor kids seem to be putting in a heck of a lot less effort in a surprisingly linear way’. He sees growth mindset as a ‘noble lie’, and notes that saying to kids that a growth mindset accounts for success is not exactly denying reality so much as ‘selectively emphasising certain parts of’ it.
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—Carl Hendrick, in a 2019 article on growth mindset
As a teacher, I have encountered plenty of teachers who believe something along the lines of, "some students are just smarter than others," and don't look at intelligence as malleable.
I think something Willingham and Turkheimer get at is that what we think of as intelligence is really an emergent property. It is a combination of genetics, environmental variables we understand (poverty, trauma, nutrition), environmental variables that we don't, prior knowledge, motivation, and more. It's important not to be essentialist about this because it's so complex.
I don't think it's fully accurate to say "some students just learn faster than others." Learning speed is a function of teaching. If we give students a strong program of synthetic phonics, gaps in learning speed will be smaller than if we teach through balanced literacy nonsense. Again, let's not get essentialist. With high-quality teaching, we can influence the interaction between intelligence and learning.
Thanks for your response. I agree that all of those factors matter, and it is complex.
But I don't see the value in obscuring the central point—the key way in which student intelligence really does matter in K-12: Some students DO learn faster than others. This is totally beyond dispute, and shouldn't be downplayed or something we're not allowed to say out loud.
Yes, there are lots of factors like teaching quality and environment, but all else being equal—in other words, if we optimize everything we can—some students still learn faster than others, and we need to plan for how we'll respond to this.
Addressing the "meh, whatcha gonna do?" response is my whole point here—we must provide extra time if we want all students to learn certain essentials.
Related:
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An enduring criticism of growth mindset theory is that it underestimates the importance of innate ability, specifically intelligence. If one student is playing with a weaker hand, is it fair to tell the student that she is just not making enough effort? Growth mindset – like its educational-psychology cousin ‘grit’ – can have the unintended consequence of making students feel responsible for things that are not under their control: that their lack of success is a failure of moral character. This goes well beyond questions of innate ability to the effects of marginalisation, poverty and other socioeconomic disadvantage. For the US psychiatrist Scott Alexander, if a fixed mindset accounts for underachievement, then ‘poor kids seem to be putting in a heck of a lot less effort in a surprisingly linear way’. He sees growth mindset as a ‘noble lie’, and notes that saying to kids that a growth mindset accounts for success is not exactly denying reality so much as ‘selectively emphasising certain parts of’ it.
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—Carl Hendrick, in a 2019 article on growth mindset
https://aeon.co/essays/schools-love-the-idea-of-a-growth-mindset-but-does-it-work
A few random responses:
As a teacher, I have encountered plenty of teachers who believe something along the lines of, "some students are just smarter than others," and don't look at intelligence as malleable.
I think something Willingham and Turkheimer get at is that what we think of as intelligence is really an emergent property. It is a combination of genetics, environmental variables we understand (poverty, trauma, nutrition), environmental variables that we don't, prior knowledge, motivation, and more. It's important not to be essentialist about this because it's so complex.
I don't think it's fully accurate to say "some students just learn faster than others." Learning speed is a function of teaching. If we give students a strong program of synthetic phonics, gaps in learning speed will be smaller than if we teach through balanced literacy nonsense. Again, let's not get essentialist. With high-quality teaching, we can influence the interaction between intelligence and learning.
Thanks for your response. I agree that all of those factors matter, and it is complex.
But I don't see the value in obscuring the central point—the key way in which student intelligence really does matter in K-12: Some students DO learn faster than others. This is totally beyond dispute, and shouldn't be downplayed or something we're not allowed to say out loud.
Yes, there are lots of factors like teaching quality and environment, but all else being equal—in other words, if we optimize everything we can—some students still learn faster than others, and we need to plan for how we'll respond to this.
Addressing the "meh, whatcha gonna do?" response is my whole point here—we must provide extra time if we want all students to learn certain essentials.