学进去

Think back to when you were in a maths classroom, and the teacher set a difficult problem. Which of the two following responses is closer to the way you reacted?

A: Oh no, this is too hard for me. I’m not even going to seriously try and work it out.

B: Ah, this is quite tricky, but I like to push myself. Even if I don’t get the answer right, maybe I’ll learn something in the attempt.

Early in her career, the psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford University gave a group of ten-year-olds problems that were slightly too hard for them. One group reacted positively and loved the challenge. She says they had a ‘growth mindset’ and are focused on what they can achieve in the future. But another group of children felt that their intelligence was being judged and they had failed. They had a ‘fixed mindset’ and were unable to imagine improving. Some of them looked for someone who had done worse than them to boost their self-esteem.

Professor Dweck believes that there is a problem in education at the moment. For years, children have been praised for their intelligence or talent, but this makes them vulnerable (脆弱的) to failure. They become performance-oriented, wanting to please by getting high grades, but they are not interested in learning for its own sake. The solution, according to Dweck, is to lead them to become mastery-oriented (i.e., interested in getting better at something). She claims that the ever-lasting effort over time is the key to outstanding achievement.

Psychologists have been testing these theories. Underperforming school children on a Native American reservation were exposed to growth mindset techniques for a year. The results were nothing less than incredible. They came top in regional tests, beating children from much more privileged backgrounds. These children had previously felt that making an effort was a sign of stupidity, but they came to see it as the key to learning.