Rethinking Mindsets in Education

Today it’s a real honor to have Carol Dweck on the podcast. Dr. Dweck is a leading researcher in the field of motivation and is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford. Her research examines the role of mindsets in personal achievement and organizational effectiveness. 

Dr. Dweck has also held professorships at Columbia and Harvard Universities, has lectured to education, business, and sports groups around the world, has addressed the United Nations, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, and has won 12 lifetime achievement awards for her research. Her best-selling book Mindset has been widely influential and has been translated into over 25 languages. 

In this episode we discuss:

• Carol’s earliest research on “incremental” vs. “entity” beliefs
• Carol’s dream of “bottling” the mindsets that lead people to persevere
• The limitations of Carol’s earlier studies 
• The two big developments in studying growth mindset
• Growth mindset exercises
• The “Big Mama” of growth mindset studies
• The underwhelming effect size of educational interventions
• How lower-achieving students benefit more from growth mindset interventions
• The conditions under which growth mindset interventions don’t work
• The role of teacher mindset on teaching effectiveness
• The relationship between growth mindset and other outcomes in life
• How growth mindset doesn’t invalidate the existence of giftedness
• Why every child should be challenged
• Why we shouldn’t cut out gifted and talented programs
• How praising gifted students for effort can backfire
• The relationship between mindsets and IQ
• How having a fixed mindset can sometimes lead to increased performance
• Cross-cultural differences in mindsets
• Criticism that growth mindset claims have been overblown
• Carol Dweck’s dream of improving the sustainability of growth mindset interventions (Dweck’s “next big Mount Everest”)
• Why mindset is not a “miracle maker”
• What Carol Dweck is most excited about in terms of future directions

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