Carol Dweck Explains the False Growth Mindset | Hacker News Reader

Carol Dweck Explains the False Growth Mindset

theatlantic.com

88 pointsjrs23544 comments

I was incredibly fortunate in that I had a high school teacher yank me back from cutting classes, getting further behind in math (her class) with a mixture of "you can do this, Mark" and "let's go through the problems together."

I believe it was geometry leading into trigonometry, and since these classes were very susceptible to incremental learning and almost impossible without it (new work is based on older work/learning) it saved my bacon.

It served to switch me back from "I can't get this" to "I can figure this out" again.

I now see that much of my life's successes are due to growth mindset and perseverance.

Thanks Mrs. Brown...

After reading the article, I think I still don't understand what a false growth mindset is. Could someone explain?

I think the clearest answer is Dweck is saying that misunderstanding her concept of the growth mindset leads to a "false growth mindset" rather than strictly defining the term.

FTA:

  But Dweck recently noticed a trend: a widespread 
  embrace of what she refers to as “false growth mindset”—
  a misunderstanding of the idea’s core message. 
  Growth mindset’s popularity was leading some educators 
  to believe that it was simpler than it was, that it 
  was only about putting forth effort or that a teacher
  could foster growth mindset merely by telling kids to 
  try hard.

The larger concern seems to be that well-meaning educators have co-opted the growth mindset terminology and warped the idea in ways that are directly problematic or directly fixed-mindset in nature.

I hated the way the Dweck's explanations really didn't clarify what it is either. The Growth Mindset is making sure students understand that their brains are plastic and that we can grow smarter through effort. This understanding has been shown to improve student efforts and get better academic results.

The old way of doing things was to tell kids they are "smart" or "gifted," which resulted in many of those students simply giving up when they failed because smart and gifted are static qualities. So when a smart or gifted child fails, they simply weren't smart or gifted enough. I know many "gifted" students who never amounted to anything because they failed to work at life and simply expected their "gift" to bring them everything.

Based on this article, the "false growth mindset" appears to be rewarding effort for effort's sake. "Effort" is replacing "gifted" as being associated with inevitable success. Just because you put effort into something doesn't mean you will succeed, and we must be careful not to, as Dweck provides as example, praise a student who failed a test on their "effort." If a student fails, they should be motivated to work harder. I try to do this with my kids. When they fail, I do praise their effort, but I stress the fact that they must now put more effort in to overcome their failures.

>Just because you put effort into something doesn't mean you will succeed, and we must be careful not to, as Dweck provides as example, praise a student who failed a test on their "effort."

Is is safe to say that a good way to instill and convey the growth mindset would be to respond with something like: "Billy, I know you put in a lot of effort in an attempt to learn this material and subject. Putting in effort in an attempt to achieve positive results is a good thing. However, unfortunately the effort doesn't appear to have worked out this time. What might we be able to change or do differently with our effort(s) to achieve our goal of passing this test?"

That last bit of the above response is attempting to instill that effort alone isn't enough and rather than working harder find a way to work smarter; growing in our ability to think about the problems and challenges we face.

Thoughts?

Absolutely. We have to constantly evaluate our efforts for their effectiveness. When we coach our children, we should coach them to be mindful of how they spend their time on their effort and not just the effort itself.

> If a student fails, they should be motivated to work harder.

Or rather, especially assuming they already work hard, they should be motivated to try different approaches (i.e. new techniques for studying or approaching exercises), and ask for help or guidance if they're stuck. Just working harder does not magically solve anything, in fact it may just mean you double down on a wrong/harmful method.

(edit: this also means teaching people they should not fear asking questions)

> they should be motivated to try different approaches (i.e. new techniques for studying or approaching exercises)

Thank you. This is what my sister comment was trying to convey.

Thank you both. I think the reason myself and others had a hard time with Dweck's explanations is that meaningful effort is a much more complex concept than just being "smart." You not only have to try, but also evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts. Both of your comments are insightful on this point.

> Or rather, especially assuming they already work hard, they should be motivated to try different approaches (i.e. new techniques for studying or approaching exercises), and ask for help or guidance if they're stuck. Just working harder does not magically solve anything, in fact it may just mean you double down on a wrong/harmful method.

Deliberate practice: it's not just the 10000 hours that make a master, it's the quality of those hours.

> The old way of doing things was to tell kids they are "smart" or "gifted," which resulted in many of those students simply giving up when they failed because smart and gifted are static qualities. So when a smart or gifted child fails, they simply weren't smart or gifted enough. I know many "gifted" students who never amounted to anything because they failed to work at life and simply expected their "gift" to bring them everything.

I was one of these "gifted" children, although the end results weren't exactly the same: when you're told "you're gifted", and things seem easy, you get used to coasting. I was a mediocre college student who didn't even have to try, and made it through college without really studying, but a low GPA. I never had to take a class twice to pass, even the ones that everyone else had to. It used to be, when I would find things challenging, I would get frustrated and give up. I honestly can't remember working hard towards long term goals, and therefore didn't feel very accomplished at much of anything. Most of my motivation was from the pure pleasure of doing things, another area that is oft neglected, to our detriment.

Now, I try to not to get frustrated, to try working things out, especially things I'm not good at, even if I'm not enjoying it at the moment. This is one reason it's important to get outside your comfort zone and push yourself. The focus on not just praising effort, but praising correct effort and offering corrective actions to improve when failure occurs feels very much to me like parts of the deliberate practice method, another area that fascinates me and helps me to try and break complacency.

Thanks for your openness.

I assume you've already done so based on a few of your word choices, but if you haven't already, I recommend checking out Peak [0], the latest (2015) work by Anders Ericsson. He's the researcher who came up with the "10,000 Hours Rule" as popularized by Gladwell. I thought the book had useful suggestions such as how to make sure you're achieving deliberate practice, how to get better when you don't have a coach, or what do for yourself (or as a parent for a child) when considering quitting an endeavor. Ericsson also shares reflections on what folks mistake about his research (i.e. 10K hours was merely the mean for one of his studies.), while clarifying the approach you SHOULD take as supported by his research.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise/dp...

That's really interesting, thank you. Did you find his techniques to be effective in practice?

Yes. In particular, I feel like I gained an improved set of questions to ask myself when learning and others when coaching that have led to better results.

So what college degree did you get? Just asking because I never would have been able to coast through Electrical Engineering courses. It was not necessarily that they were hard, but rather that some professors and books seemed to get a thrill out of obfuscating knowledge to make themselves feel smart, even if not intentionally. It didn't matter that I was willing to do the work, they just made it difficult to learn.

I had the bad luck of taking my first Electronics course with a really bad professor and really bad book. Normally I rely just on the book if the professor is bad but this time the book was also bad. I dropped the class and tried with a different professor. He was a god send. He was a good teacher and the book he picked was so good that the professor was not needed. I was able to learn just by doing the example problems. I got an A in his class.

This is waaay too common. Hence (shameless plug): studyswami.com

So, "10,000 hours" as the be all and end all of success?

Yeah, I can see the BS in that.

I think it get's slightly confusing since growth mindset is something that can exist in both the teacher and the student.

So, growth mindset is the belief that you can get better at things. The idea then is that the teacher should embrace this, because then the child will learn from that and embrace it as well. This would be true growth mindset in the teacher.

This led to the suggestion to praise effort rather than results. With the idea that effort will increase learning, which will increase results.

The problem then is that the teacher might not understand this connection, but only understand that you should praise effort, this would be a false growth mindset. This would lead the teacher to give positive feedback to any effort put in, even if it does not improve learning/growth.

In other words, you could call this false growth mindset a "effort" mindset. While the true growth mindset would have a process focus, where you praise the proper application process and give help if the process is ineffective for growth.

Fixed mindset: "Great job getting A" "You might not be made out for math, try painting"

Growth mindset: "Great that you try to practice the parts you fail often at" "Maybe you should try to understand the underlying logic rather than just guessing the answer and getting it wrong?"

False growth mindset: "Great that you keep trying even though you fail!" "You should not feel bad about failing, you put your best effort into it and it's fine!"

Same with behavioral analysis.. praise the result/behavior you want.

I think the key to the growth mindset is to help in maintaining the feedback loop: work & effort -> reach your goal -> feel happy. The "fixed mindset" breaks the loop in a way that no matter how hard you'd work you'd never reach that goal because only "gifted" reach it and you are not gifted enough.

Another extreme is "false growth mindset" that also breaks the feedback loop but in a different way: no matter the results, you will still get praise for "effort", so there is no point in trying harder.

"Growth mindset" is helpful but it is not a magic replacement for hard work and learning to deal with frustration.

What a lot of GM proponents seemingly don't want to admit is that the loop can also be broken when people repeatedly don't reach their goals despite putting in more effort than people who do reach those same goals. I'm not sure conventional educational methods and institutions have a method or mechanism to respond constructively to that situation.

So part of the idea isn't just putting in raw effort, it is about trying alternate methods and strategies. Figuring out why the goals weren't reached, and determining multiple different strategies for achieving those goals. If they just put more effort into the same failing strategy, it just doesn't work.

Do the same thing a different way, in essence.

I guess what I'm getting at is that to do that for children in school implies that the schools themselves have to either become more adaptable and less rigid or cede some of their authority over education to give students space to try other approaches. It's presumably a much better sell at an institutional level if you can just say "look, we have Growth Mindset worksheets and posters and pamphlets that you can slot into your lesson plans".

The way I understand it makes it seem like a principle applied at the teacher/classroom level. The material that needs to be learned is the same either way. The important part is having the teacher teach and inspire their students in a way that encourages a growth mindset. The ideal case for physical material is in training teachers to effectively encourage the growth of that mindset.

Summary: False growth mindset is praising the effort that doesn't lead to successful learning. We don't want to encourage people to redouble their efforts on strategies that aren't working. Growth mindset strategy replaces the failed strategy of heaping praise on everyone equally regardless of outcome. And praising effort that's leading nowhere isn't much better.

> Students need to know that if they’re stuck, they don’t need just effort. You don’t want them redoubling their efforts with the same ineffective strategies. You want them to know when to ask for help and when to use resources that are available.

> So, with praise, focus on “process praise”—focus on the learning process and show how hard work, good strategies, and good use of resources lead to better learning.

Agree it's a bad metaphor.

Essentially, it's the idea that when one is confronted with failure, one believes they can either 'improve' or rather, be 'resigned' to the fact they are not good at whatever it is.

I believe this perspective is valid, and that it exists, and that it's one of the fundamental elements of character that shapes our lives.

I was always good at math and music. I would never, ever detract from a math problem. I would attack it.

I was a poor athlete. (Bad cardio, always). I firmly and resolutely believe that I could not run a long distance. 5K would kill me. It was very painful. But I was out of shape and didn't realize what it meant to improve.

I joined officer corps in the Army and was eventually forced to go some pretty long distances, always extremely anxious and at the tail of the pack, but I got through and eventually did a marathon distance. I can assure you my mind was completely blown. It was though I had learned to fly. I firmly believed I could not do it, but I did ... so if I could do a marathon, what else could I do? I saw the relationship between training and outcomes, and realized that being 'out of shape' simply means you have to do some things to 'get into shape'. Obviously, it's not so easy to do, but the relationship is clear.

That, and some similar things, completely changed my life.

I believe many, many people are trapped in a limited view of themselves.

Conversely - the opposite exists - we sometimes believe we can 'do anything' if we just try enough, which is obviously not the case. I'm working with a startup non-technical CEO who believes they can bang together a solution with almost no resources, in almost no time, for something that is better than even Google' cutting edge solution. I appreciate the audacity ... but it's unrealistic.

http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/how-i-rewired-my-brain-t...

Barbara Oakley's take on how she became fluent in Math as an adult is pretty interesting.

Thanks for helping me find this again. One of my favorite articles on anything ever.

She was on NPR recently.

http://www.npr.org/podcasts/456706345/innovation-hub

I know a lot of adults who live with the assumption that they can never learn anything anymore because they are adults. It's not just kids that suffer from the idea that they cannot grow their abilities and knowledge. Some adults even revel in a static brain and view learning with suspicion.

I wonder if the big challenge here is showing someone just how much they can learn. Like, put them in a well managed language course, or in yoga (or something), and see if it changes their perspective.

Aren't there articles already that clearly explain practice doesnt make perfect? I never properly understood what Carol Dweck is actually proposing. Can somebody clarify if there is a 3 step methodology here?

1. Your ability to perform a skill is dependent on both how much you work on it and how much innate ability you have

2. Kids often get frustrated and lose motivation to work on improving when they think their work doesn't matter

3. Instilling a "growth mindset" means that they don't end up with a skewed view of how much innate ability matters because their frustration prevented them from putting in the work, and ultimately allows them to perform more skills better

Thanks. So, what do we tell our kids? Focus on skills they are passionate about instead of getting bogged down with skills they are not good at?

Perfection is a pretty high bar! Most researchers who argue that practice isn't sufficient for being the best at something still view meaningful practice as extremely useful in a broad range of circumstances.

(see an article on Brooke Macnamara's work here: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/becoming-a...).

I'm not sure what a 3 step methodology is, so I can't answer that way.

From what I know about this subject, she is proposing communicating to children that they have the ability to alter their own abilities. This is in contrast to the attitudes like "I am just not good at math" or "They did it easily because they're gifted". These attitudes are undesirable because challenges (things that you cannot currently do) are avoided rather than attempted.

How many times will we circle around this before realizing that people have different aptitudes?

We make a mistake when we evade that fact. We do it because we haven't created a culture where people are respected independently of their aptitudes.

Even if everybody does not have the same aptitude, that should not mean that the people who might have more difficulty with certain subjects should avoid them.

Sure, it might be more difficult for me to learn to play the piano than for some virtuoso, but my life will still be richer after I learn it, instead of giving up because it is difficult. No?

Only in a vacuum: there might be something besides piano more in line with your aptitudes that, for the same effort, will give you more reward (or the same reward with less effort).

This isnt to say I don't believe we should do things we're bad at -- I think broadening our aptitudes is good for us -- but you do have to consider the opportunity cost of piano versus another option.

That's the tragedy of 'everyone can do everything' thinking. And it's why growth-mindset has to be tempered with recognition of aptitude. If it isn't it can derail lives.

> Sure, it might be more difficult for me to learn to play the piano than for some virtuoso, but my life will still be richer after I learn it, instead of giving up because it is difficult. No?

The very process of working to improve at something you're not good at (or have any natural aptitude for) is a wonderful way to learn how to adapt, compensate for weaknesses, and overcome adversity. I know I'll never be a weightlifting champion, but aside from the health benefits, I lift because it's something I'm not good at.

Exactly, we should encourage attacking adversity. It is the only way to get resiliency.

I've been told in the past I'm good at solving complex problems I've never encountered before. I just show them my notes on how I solved it and say I'm not good at all, just persistent and willing to learn as I go. I notice a lot of people give up at the first sign of adversity. I might too depending on the criticality but that doesn't mean I accept defeat.

Have you tested this hypothesis?

Yeah, I find it frustrating that educators take this facile model seriously. My belief is that "growth potential" is a complex function of the skill being trained, inborn aptitudes, training methods, and social support, with the weight of each factor varying wildly depending on the skill. Where does that fit on the "growth mindset" vs. "fixed mindset" axis?

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