Last year, Carol Dweck received the Yidan Prize of nearly $4 million for her work on “growth mindset.”
Were these bold choices? Safe choices? Relevant choices? Choices likely to change the life chances of millions of children around the world?
What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Many others deserve a prize, certainly Diane for her heroic long-term opposition to privatization, testing, and the destructive policies of the billionaires. I would also mention the Zinn Education Project and Rethinking Schools, two remarkable projects which show progressive educators what can be done even in the worst of times.
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The world’s biggest prize in education goes to the people that privatizers want to see win, a guy that claims he has the formula to quantify what works in education and, yes, another computer platform. We seem to be going around in circles. Stop the merry-go-round I want to get off!
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Look at who is funding the prize and you will have your answers. I haven’t reviewed the funding this year, but I know last year’s prize was funded at least in part by Tencent, which is a major financier in China that is smack in the middle of the “social credit score” scheme that tracks everything about a person’s life, including not only financial transactions but social interactions, internet posting, etc. All of that gets boiled down to one numerical score that determines one’s access to financing, jobs, housing, etc.
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Yikes! Good to know.
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Who funds the prizes … billionaires, the same billionaires funding the privitization of the entire public sector and the end of the US Constitutional Republic?
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*Larry Hedges has given us new glasses for seeing what works in education. It’s hard to improve what we cannot see and measure, and Prof. Hedges provides researchers with the tools and methods to better understand how we can help students learn better, teachers to teach better and schools to become more effective. It provides a way to base educational improvements on scientific evidence. *
It’s the same BS we heard about VAM.
Pretend science from pretend scientists
If they give an award to anyone, it should be someone like Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Mercedes Schneider, Moshe Adler or Cathy O’Neil who have been exposing the snake oil and charlatans selling it.
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Yes.
Professor Larry V. Hedges works in applied statistics. Applied to what? “Effectiveness” research, as in helping to shape the idea of “what works” in the field of education and scientific approaches to improving education.
In 2002 he served as chair of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of the US Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse, a new joint venture with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Campbell Collaborative, then contractors for USDE.
At the time of the first meeting, Grover (Russ) Whitehurst, director of the department’s Institute of Education Sciences, which sponsors the clearinghouse said “TAG will serve an indispensable role as the conscience of the What Works Clearinghouse, validating the scientific integrity of its review processes and reports of evidence about what works in education.” http://distance-educator.com/what-works-clearinghouse-technical-advisory-group-holds-first-meeting/
For more on the Campbell Collaborative, a policy shop, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1120915/
Hedges is now an AIR Institute Fellow and one of the principal investigators for a new five-year AIR contract for the What Works Clearing House and related training activities. AIR (American Institutes for Research) is one of the world’s largest contractors for behavioral and social science research, including K-12 testing and program evaluations.
If you love evidence based on “interventions” to improve test scores (especially in reading, math, and science) the What Works Clearing House is for you.
https://www.air.org/news/press-release/air-awarded-what-works-clearinghouse-statistics-website-and-training-contract
AIR provided research reviews of “student learning objectives.” Most of these reviews focus on research provided by the marketer-in-chief of SLOs, William Slotnick
Click to access Art-and-Science-of-Student-Learning-Objectives-April-2015.pdf
Carol Dweck’s research has been roundly criticized. Like some others, she is hooked on equating statistical significance with educational significance. You can see that confusion here.
http://mindsetscholarsnetwork.org/carol-dweck-responds-recent-criticisms-growth-mindset-research/#
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Laura, I should have included you on the prize list, because you are right up there with Mercedes and the others debunking the nonsense.
Here’s an interesting thought.
I bet if Larry Hedges used his What works in education model as input for his What works in education model, he would get a null output showing that his model doesn’t work.
Ha ha ha .
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Last year, Carol Dweck received the Yidan Prize of nearly $4 million for her work on the bank account growth mindset.”
Fixed.
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🙂 🙂 great catch
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This guy was given the prize for developing a MOOC, an online class using big data. Seriously?!? That’s pitiful. Combined, Dweck with her unscientific theory blaming students and teachers for test scores and Agarwal with his creation of a weak online education product show that the Yidan Prize is, like the Kochs’ fake Nobel for Economics, an empty award for pseudoscience in the area of destroying public education and further enriching the moneyed class.
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Even the real Nobel for economics is fake.
See The Economics Nobel isnt really a Nobel
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-economics-nobel-isnt-really-a-nobel/
And
There is no Nobel Prize in Economics
https://www.alternet.org/economy/there-no-nobel-prize-economics
It’s a lie and even calling it a Nobel unwittingly furthers the lie.
The worst part is that many winners of the fake Nobel use it to bolster their credibility and get the ear of Presidents and others who are the position of enacting policies that affect the lives of millions of people.
The people who proudly display Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics on their CV so that they get interviewed on the TV news shows are deeply dishonest.
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I know liberals love him, but Paul Krugman is among those who never miss a chance to parade their (fake) Nobel credential in order to dismiss out of hand the arguments of anyone who disagrees with them.
Unfortunately, Krugman may actually be the worst of the bunch in the latter regard. Unlike the arrogance of some real Nobel prize winners, Krugmans arrogance is unfounded, but nonetheless seems to know no bounds. He was completely wrong in his rosy predictions about the impact of globalization on American workers and also in his 1998 prediction about the impact of the internet:
*By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s”
Krugman has written some sensible things over the years but his pretense to being an Oracle based on his possession of a Nobel prize in Economics is just a joke — and a lie.
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Write my name in the “skeptical” column.
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Are these concepts “sticky,” will they actually embed themselves in the teaching/learning process – the previous prize when to a aspirational concept that is highly speculative …
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Looks like Dweck got her $4million 2017 Yidan prize just in the nick of time. Haven’t been able to get linked details, but the wikipedia article on Dweck says, in July 2018 Dweck’s research of fixed & growth mindset results were exposed as “embellished” by Columbia U’s Research Review of Ethics and Facts (RREF). Also, in May 2018, Science Daily reports that a new study by Mich State / Case Western found that “‘growth mindset interventions’, or programs that teach students they can improve their intelligence with effort — and therefore improve grades and test scores — don’t work for students in most circumstances.” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180522114523.htm
On the other hand… In looking for related neuroscience, I found an nih study that identifies ‘growth mindset’ pedagogy as “students are encouraged to develop, produce, and evaluate knowledge using inquiry and scientific skills… An autonomy-supportive environment facilitates autonomous learning, and fosters self-determined motivation in students.” It’s one of those ‘meta-analytic studies’ [thanks, 2018 Yidan winner Hedges] which includes pedagogic innovations like adapting video games to lesson content to develop self-motivation, & makes [unsurprising] connections to dopamine levels [which, duh, rise when you’re doing something you want to do as opposed to responding to externally-imposed motivations].
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5836039/
So: I’m all for ‘growth mindset’ theory regardless of evidence if it results in moving away from our current govt-imposed highly prescriptive externally-motivated methods toward encouraging self-motivation, learning from your errors etc. Which would doubtless move the needle back toward professional autonomy for teachers, & innovative curriculum developed by groups of teachers [just like in Finland!]. But cynical me, I expect that instead this theory is being translated on the ground into yet another layer of mindless, results-free data input/output ppwk for teachers.
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Sounds like “grit,” but I think both term are copyrighted.
I think I can, I think I can…
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!
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Yuh, that seems to be the ‘mindset’ operating in the shadows behind ‘growth mindset.’ Kind of outrageous that such a 19thC Horatio Alger retread could get so much traction. Lots of research sound & fury signifying little or nothing.
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We could crowdsource a little handbook of sayings and market them as a new education theory
“Every day in every way, I am getting better and better.”
“I think I can, I think I can.”
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
If we gathered about a hundred such bromides and illustrated them colorfully, we would have a best seller.
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It makes me sad that we can’t just help kids figure out what they’re good at & encourage pursuing it w/o reference to its grade/ score/ income potential, in the interests of helping them learn to enjoy learning & enjoy their lives. Instead, via such euphemisms as ‘grit’ & ‘growth mindset’ [& constant testing], we implant a voice in their head that says ‘that’s of little value because it’s not ‘success’ – doesn’t raise grades/ test scores/ income’… We can also be teaching that honest work of any kind to pay one’s way is of great value. Both lessons are important in a world which increasingly offers low-pd service jobs regardless of ed level.
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Growth Mindset sounds more sciency than The Little Engine that Could mindset.
Grit doesn’t sound sciency.Just stupid.
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Diane, why do people think GRIT is a good thing? It’s just DIRT. All these words used by the deformers have “got to go.” Makes me ILL.
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The journalist Paul Tough popularized the idea tha “grit” was the magic ingredient that enabled poor children to overcome trauma and need.
His book is called “How Children Succeed.” https://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/how-children-succeed-paul-tough/1111439953/2677173714362?st=PLA&sid=BNB_DRS_New+Marketplace+Shopping+Textbooks_00000000&2sid=Google_&sourceId=PLGoP164989&gclid=Cj0KCQjw_vfcBRDJARIsAJafEnGIBfASo2RY55y9xK9W544Jz39dH7aGza-yBgTsoECoHHzCbfyZJdYaAq_sEALw_wcB
Reformers love the idea that there is a simple, cost-free fix to everything.
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It’s about creating a problem and offering a solution in order to justify your own existence and importance (and salary) within a system you’re not familiar with, imo.
“Grit” is an infantile expression and and even more simplified “solution” to a much bigger problem.
I’d love to see these reformers try to gain the “grit” that’s necessary to survive in any of the NYC inner city neighborhoods, lived in by so many of our “lower achieving” students. Set them up in one of the projects for a year.
Spreading warm butter over hot toast is easy. Let’s take it out of the freezer and try putting it to a slice of Wonder Bread and see how that works out.
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Someone named Tough was pushing grit.
What a surprise.
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Seriously…?
If so: you really can’t MAKE this stuff up.
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…also do not leave out the ‘low expectations’ mantra that is the favorite of TFA…
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Personally, I feel Carol Dweck has a long term of history of research, and is well deserving.
There are some other names which come to my mind as well, though all are US-based: Pedro Noguera, now at UCLA, Victor Rios, at UCSB, Linda Darling-Hammond, formerly at Stanford, and James Comer, at Yale. I’d also lobby for Jonathan Kozel, whose works are often mandatory reading in teacher preparation programs and opened my mind to a world I’d never seen. And I’d certainly consider Paulo Freire for a posthumous award.
But if I could pick someone this year, Diane, I’d pick you.
Not just for your research and prolific written work, but also for your tireless advocacy.
Thank you.
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Apologies; it’s Kozol.
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Thank you, I think this prize is meant to be bland and non-controversial
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Yet another institution corrupted. Used to use the What Works Clearinghouse when it was useful to educators, & could refer us to what actually…worked.
As opposed to what ed. reformers repeatedly tell us works (&, of course, does not & never will).
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“In the past 10 to 15 years, however, Hedges pointed to a “reawakening” to the importance and value of quantitative research, particularly in the field of education. This interest has been embodied by the creation of the Institute of Education Sciences in 2002, the research wing of the Department of Education that was modeled after the National Institutes of Health, and to whose board President Barack Obama appointed him in 2012. ”
“NCLB has been much reviled for a lot of things are wrong with it, but it also did some really good things,” Hedges said. “With the stroke of a pen, it created a demand for high-quality research to support efforts to improve education.”
“The enactment of NCLB, the establishment of IES, and the increased flow of funding for more quantitative education research created a demand for a new kind of “education scientist” and forever “changed the world of education research,” Hedges said.”
“The importance of meta-analysis, Hedges explained, is that it pulls together many studies, each of which meets certain methodological requirements in its own right. By providing more results than any one study could have by definition, he continued, it also “smooths out” the particular eccentricities of the combined studies, making a meta-analysis more reliable than a single study.”
“Hedges work helps policymakers, educators and the general public to see the evidence for “what works” in the field of education, and makes it possible to take a scientific approach to improving education for future generations.”
IF HEDGES HAS DISCOVERED “WHAT WORKS” WHY ISN’T IT?
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How is it that I seem to be one of the only people ever bringing up the issue of social impact investing in speculative human capital data?
Of course that is what both prizes are about. They are creating innovative financial tools to support Social-Emotional Learning in schools (Dweck) that can enrich global financiers while they conduct digital learning engineering experiments on vulnerable children (see Uncapher, Neuroscape, NIH, and Santa Clara County elementary students subjected to precision video games designed to “fix” their executive function). While folks in MA are pitching social impact bond concepts that they can use to track children indefinitely and gamble on the outcomes of their lives. HORRIBLE. Dweck, Duckworth, Uncapher-all in the same boat here. Qualify children according to the Big 5 OCEAN traits to throw them away or slot them into the gig economy.
The deal with this year’s prize is again measuring engagement with online platforms. They will use that data to make predictions on human capital futures. MIT developed and spun out the company Learning Machine to create a mechanism to destroy real education and turn it into a poke-mon go process of badge and micro credential collection (including “mindsets”). They have partnered with SNHU and now have the first working model of a blockchain credential. If you have not yet watch the Institute for the Future video “Learning is Earning,” do it now. Sit down. The future is now.
People, open your minds to what is coming. It will take us to dark places, and we need to be prepared. Dig deep. I need more people to dig deeper. Thank you Laura for being willing to do that digging.
Here is the post on SNHU’s blockchain transcripts. Everyone needs to read it and fully grasp what the implications are for “lifelong learning” on Blockchain. https://wrenchinthegears.com/2018/08/13/edu-blocks-arrive-in-new-hampshire/
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“How is it that I seem to be one of the only people ever bringing up the issue of social impact investing in speculative human capital data?”
Your points are, in my mind, on point and valid.
I’d say, however, that you’re not the only one on this forum (or others) that sees what’s going on here. Education Deform has been an ongoing project reaching it’s 2nd decade and we’ve been discussing it and it’s many ramifications from the gitgo.
It’s just not been mentioned on this post, directly, though I glanced on it with my reference to the concentration of $$$ among a select few.
I know that the technology is there to track eye movement/focus on text as well and have little doubt that it will be used in the classrooms of the future, in all of it’s data driven glory. It will stifle the creative mind that much more. I don’t believe it’s been deemed “acceptable” to this point…but, then again, I’m not in the driver’s seat, here.
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I did a little digging.
The award was initiated in 2016. The unveiling took place at MIT’s Office of Digital Learning in October of that year:
http://news.mit.edu/2016/yidan-prize-for-education-research-and-development-announced-1031
The two winners for the 2017 year included a down to earth, hands on educator and a psychologist “nose to the grindstone” educator:
http://news.mit.edu/2016/yidan-prize-for-education-research-and-development-announced-1031
In December of 2017, a Yidan Prize summit was held which, from what I’m reading, seems to clarify the founders’ philosophy and his parameters necessary for achieving the prize:
https://www.iie.org/Why-IIE/Events/2017-Yidan-Prize
Which brings us to this years’ winners…
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Another example of how a concentration of wealth among a select few can so effect the direction in which our nations turn.
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TRUE, gitapik. Sickens me.
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They must have had some infidels among their ranks that first year.
Good to know they have since purified the Digital fold.
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Not “infidels”, good Poet…
Simply uninformed, lesser minds in need of clarification and purpose.
All is well now, in the land of virtual Legos.
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And this years’ prize for clueless wonkishness goes to. . . .
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the Yidan Prize committee
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