A new study published in PsycNet, the bulletin of the American Psychological Association, reviews the research on “growth mindset” and whether it improves students’ academic achievement. The meta-analysis was conducted by B.N. Macnamara and A.P. Burgoyne.
I was particularly interested in reading this review because one of my grandchildren spent what seemed to be an inordinate amount of time in middle school reading about and discussing “growth mindset.” It reminded me of the book I used to read to my children when they were very young about “The Little Engine That Could.” As it struggled to go up a steep mountain, it said to itself, “I think I can, I think I can.” I didn’t realized at the time that I was teaching my children to have a “growth mindset.”
Here is the abstract:
According to mindset theory, students who believe their personal characteristics can change—that is, those who hold a growth mindset—will achieve more than students who believe their characteristics are fixed. Proponents of the theory have developed interventions to influence students’ mindsets, claiming that these interventions lead to large gains in academic achievement. Despite their popularity, the evidence for growth mindset intervention benefits has not been systematically evaluated considering both the quantity and quality of the evidence. Here, we provide such a review by (a) evaluating empirical studies’ adherence to a set of best practices essential for drawing causal conclusions and (b) conducting three meta-analyses. When examining all studies (63 studies, N = 97,672), we found major shortcomings in study design, analysis, and reporting, and suggestions of researcher and publication bias: Authors with a financial incentive to report positive findings published significantly larger effects than authors without this incentive. Across all studies, we observed a small overall effect: d¯ = 0.05, 95% CI = [0.02, 0.09], which was nonsignificant after correcting for potential publication bias. No theoretically meaningful moderators were significant. When examining only studies demonstrating the intervention influenced students’ mindsets as intended (13 studies, N = 18,355), the effect was nonsignificant: d¯ = 0.04, 95% CI = [−0.01, 0.10]. When examining the highest-quality evidence (6 studies, N = 13,571), the effect was nonsignificant: d¯ = 0.02, 95% CI = [−0.06, 0.10]. We conclude that apparent effects of growth mindset interventions on academic achievement are likely attributable to inadequate study design, reporting flaws, and bias. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
I draw the conclusion that reading “The Little Engine That Could” is as effective as growth mindset.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reading The Little Engine That Could is more effective than teaching growth mindset or SEL because at least that way you’re reading a memorable book with your grandchild. Teaching psychology theory to middle school students is ridiculous.
Agree! Especially when it’s being used to bump up scores on a stupid standardized test (Algebra I seems to be the subject). Why not just teach the kids the subject matter and call it a win.
Teaching psychology “theory” to adults is also ridiculous because most of it is ridiculous.
SomeDAM: “Teaching psychology ‘theory’ to adults is also ridiculous because most of it is ridiculous.*”
Certainly some, but I would argue, not most. It still is missing its philosophical foundations, but I still think we need more, not less of it. CBK
The Reproducibility Project:Psychology assessed the reproducibility of 100 psychological studies and found that fewer than half were reproducible.
https://osf.io/ezum7/wiki/home/
Reproducibility is at the very core of science. If results can not be reproduced, they don’t mean much (if anything).
But id guess that most psychologists would probably deny that the problem even exists.
LeftCoast Teacher,
I love this line: “…you’re reading a memorable book with your grandchild.”
Could we add “… you’re reading a memorable with your teacher.” – I hope so! In every school including middle schools.
Hello Diane: A screaming YES! about Little Engine that Could, and a wealth of other age-appropriate children’s literature . . . It’s how they learn how to be human. And the human range of development is wide, deep, and high. Let them languish and that’s what they probably will do: languish or worse.
The other thing is the not-so-subtle assumption that such development is FOR academic achievement alone OR it’s not worthwhile for our schools; or that it’s not a good thing to pay for children to develop in the kinds of ways that such stories convey.
This attitude has been pervasive for years and comes from a deep problematic thread in the movements of particularly western civilization and the scientific revolution. But to maintain and adopt a growth mindset is a good thing for all of us in part because its opposites are naivete, dogmatism, and ultimately the demise and even death of the human spirit. It’s about how.
The idea of growth mindset probably has its feet in some branch of the social sciences. The problem is that they seem to still be slavish to the methods and expectations of the physical and natural sciences rather than having adopted their critical methods and expectations to the nuances and differences of their own data field: human beings and what we already know about our own (and our scientists’) developmental movements.
Children Learn How to be Human From Hearing and Reading Stories, as well as watching what other people do and don’t do. If our social scientists understood that fact, they could realize the right way, place, and time of “academic achievement” and direct teaching about “open mindsets”.in the order of things and persons in the world.
The other thing is that personal developmental factors don’t necessarily show up on tests but do manifest in our lives, throughout our lives. What possible good could come from enveloping such developmental factors in our schools regardless of “academic achievements”. . . especially when we cannot test for them? CBK
And, once again, policy is implemented before (more)findings come in. “Reporting flaws,” is a polite way of saying “cherry picked.”
We have four district led professional development days devoted to growth mindset this year. Admins expect to see it in action in classrooms. Buy in and fidelity are required.
Policy before findings” is called “Gross Mindset” (aka Deformer Mindset, aka Economist Mindset)
Aka Empty Mibdset
Empty Mindset
Aka Cancerous Growth Mindset”
The Harvard Mindset”
“The Harvard Mindset”
The Mindless Mindset”
Sorry for all the redumbdancy
That’s “The Hahvud Mindset”
The Hahvud Mudset
The Hahvud Swingset
I “love” it when some administration bigwig informs me that my “buy in is required.” Since I have no choice, I haven’t “bought in.” But I guess that sounds better than, “you will do this if you know what’s good for you.”
Kind of like the IRS telling you your Buy in is required” on taxes
Exactly!!!
I read it as an optional mandatory buy in. That way one can legally claim they gave people a choice.
Threatened It’s ironic because, on principle, you can read “Little Engine” etc., to the right age group and still be “buying in.” CBK
“We have four district led professional development days devoted to growth mindset this year.”
My condolences!
“Buy in and fidelity are required.”
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!
I prefer Hi Fidelity with quadraphonic sound…
“Growth mindset” is representative of a catalogue of semantic horseshit that so-called educators adopt so they can seem sophisticated when sipping craft cocktails at seminar happy hours. It takes the obvious and decorates it with pseudo-scientific jargon to sell a book or get a speaking gig.
tt is self-evident that small humans do better with encouragement and do worse if told they are stupid. Ironically, Little Engines will pull trains at the same speed regardless of the engineers’ exhortations. Go figure.
Lump Growth Mindset in there with Grit (to satisfy the tiger moms) and Empathy training and you have the trifecta in data collection and test prep for CC. No lie! All the SEL in public schools is what led us to take child #2 out an put him into private HS 5 yrs ago. Sorry, but it was the best decision and best $$ we ever spent on that kid.
Steve Nelson I think you are completely right about “Little Engines;” but that your first paragraph is extreme and waaaaay off course.
You might try a little dialectic in your examinations, explanations, and judgments? And if I smell anti-teacher and anti-theory, then you’d better leave civil society and go live in the wilderness by yourself (if you can) or with the other troglodites; or at least trash your cell, computer, cars, airplane rides, books, and all that stuff that came with ALL of the sciences and humanities since the scientific revolution. CBK
Gee whiz! I’m delighted that you think so highly of me, or at least my mindset. Spare me.
“. . . but that your first paragraph is extreme and waaaaay off course.”
No, not at all. It’s spot on!
I did not read Steve Nelson’s “so-called educators” as “teachers.”
I should have added that it may not be coincidental that Dweck rhymes with “dre(c)k.”
When Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck became all the rage among education circles, I bought a copy and started to read. As I worked through the book the ongoing examples she cited seemed, if not hyperbolic, profoundly cliche’d. I couldn’t finish the book because it just seemed to be another pop-psychology event. When I coached sports, I found that cheering my athletes on paled in comparison to preparing them for the competition through meaningful preparation, what we call drills. I discovered the same thing in the classroom. Success with the little things leads to accomplishment with bigger challenges. Yes, the “Little Engine that Could” adequately covered the topic well.
“We conclude that apparent effects of growth mindset interventions on academic achievement are likely attributable to inadequate study design, reporting flaws, and bias.”
In other words, “Growth mindset is bullshit”
We conclude that mindset interventions
continue to be the prerequisite
of conformity, as the
“free thinkers”, the thought
“outliers” are not
conducive to group-think.
Bringing them into the
“fold” by projecting a
symetery of interests or
goals, is a must. The
metering of approval is
the key to oversee cultural
relevance. Self approval-
worth-reliance, MUST be
aquired from the approval
of “others”…CONFORMITY.
If the obvious lack of
symetery in the distribution
of the “benefit”, rears
it’s ugly head, create a
debate, centered on who
is “right” in the world
we think we know, by
defining who is wrong,
while thr rich get
richer…
No surprise. But education for poor and minority kids has always featured a lot of victim blaming. This is just the most recent example. It’s like blaming teacher burnout on a lack of self care and mindfulness.
Why would we even study such a thing? Of course belief in possibility leads to more successful accomplishment than resignation to failure.
We must be careful, however, to frame this support of possibility in ways that just restate the reverse Social Darwinism thesis: If I have succeeded, then it must be that I have been trying harder than my competition. You failed because you did not believe hard enough. One does not extend from another.
As an example of this, I would like to point to a tendency in some instructors to suggest that the failure of their students is due to lack of effort. That becomes an easy out for teachers, especially since there quite a bit of truth i it. But it is a dangerous out for those who do not wish to study and observe what they are doing in class in order to improve it. It is equally dangerous for administrators and political leaders in education to suggest that the problem with student success comes from lazy students or teachers. It takes the burden off society.
If you put the little engine that could in front of a modern train, his boiler would blow before he got out of the station. Let us be reasonable.
The problem with “Growth mindset” is the same as the problem with do many other “education strategies” (grit comes immediately to mind) is that they are essentially vacuous in the absence of legitimate education.
It’s like the idea that you can teach “critical thinking skills” without teaching knowledge.
It just makes no sense.
SomeDAM I think that critical thinking skills are needed, especially in our time, as an avenue to gaining knowledge. It’s more about method than about knowledge content yet; and it’s about heading off naivete (believe anything we are told) and dogmatism (closed minds) and other kinds of mental slippages that are common to just being human. I doubt many in education, if anyone, thinks that it’s a shared plane, or an either/or situation.
My guess is that it’s the same with growth mindset. I’ve not read Dweck’s book, but have read several reviews and excerpts from it; and that’s what my reading left me with. CBK
How can one engage in critical thinking without knowledge?
Even using the scientific method requires one to first know what tge method is.
And to app!y it to a specific case, one has to have a knowledge of the relevant context.
As far as I can see, “critical thinking skills” without knowledge is a vacuous concept.
Dweck’s Growth Mindset makes perfect sense — from the perspective of an oligarch.
I used to love watching Detroit and Dallas NFL football all day on Thanksgiving. I still watch, but my love of the tradition has been tempered a great deal by the death of Junior Seau and others. Seau sadly and prematurely ended his life because he was haunted in retirement by the ghosts of too many injuries during his playing days. It’s becoming difficult to watch American football, like the World Cup in Qatar.
I was watching on Thanksgiving a few days ago, and during a pregame, players were interviewed about and lauded for seeing sports psychologists. Keep in mind that billionaires own them. One comment stuck out. He said that he hoped more players would seek counseling, not to heal themselves, but to get them to play at their “peak performance” on the field, to be unafraid to sacrifice their bodies and brains to entertain the viewers. That reminded me of Carol Dweck.
The object of Growth Mindset is not to help students, but to make them achieve peak performance. Billionaires want students to work night and day and perform for them. Grit, resilience, and growth are the qualities billionaires want young people to have no matter what is thrown at them: huge class sizes, constant data surveillance based testing, temp teachers… low wages, long hours, no benefits, Amazon working conditions…
Growth Mindset is the psychology of oppression.
“Rollerball” becomes prophesy…
SomeDAM Knowledge is incremental . . . new questions always are based in some understanding of some content, but our questions as questions are still open and, by definition, desirous of further knowledge . . . we in fact “quest” for more from our basis in what we already have experienced and know. So you are right if you are implying that method and knowledge are interrelated and overlapping. But they are not either or, and . . .
. . . we can teach critical thinking skills that, in turn, can be applied to any knowledge content, like remaining open to new input and meaning before jumping to judgment (closing one’s mind to further meaning, regardless, which is a common human foible). Such understanding of HOW to train one’s own mind (method) is not knowledge-specific but can be applied to any content knowledge. Also, the basic rules of logic are other examples of this. But in either case, it’s not “either/or” or mutually exclusive by any means. CBK
It is very much like the “grit” fad. It added “you’re not gritty enough” to the “you’re not smart enough” excuses for failing to serve children.
I had to be “gritty”to survive Officer Candidate School. Kids shouldn’t need “grit” unless in a KIPP school or an Eva Moskowitz platoon.
It’s the adults who need to understand mindset (which may be an oxymoron) – particularly on their mindset and public education.
Recently, working with a group on (my term) what it means to truly be “the village” raising the child – following the lead of James Comer – understanding community schools – – –
it became apparent that a major impediment is that “learning” and “school experiences” are not on the minds of the majority of the people (institutions, business, agencies, etc.)
Those leaders and employers are the ones where being intentional about teaching mindset pays off for kids. Not just “partnerships” but a mindset about public education and their policies and practices (respecting their employees who are parents and caregivers, too). And, maybe a corporate book group reading the Little Engine…
“Despite the popularity of growth mindset interventions in schools, positive results are rare and possibly spurious due to inadequately designed interventions, reporting flaws, and bias.”
People often operate in a large loop of confirmation bias. They often tend to find what they all looking for instead of where the information leads. This explains a lot of the early voucher studies and “The New Orleans and Texas Miracles.” Biased data leads to biased conclusions.
Authors with a financial incentive to report positive findings published significantly larger effects than authors without this incentive”
That’s called the “Monetary Mindset”, aka the “Prostitution Mindset”, aka the “Think tank wanker Mindset”, aka “Tne Gates Foundation Mindset” , aka “The Harvard Mindset”
I’m skeptical. Sounds suspiciously like bootstraps and grit to me.
I think the concept of “growth mindset” may be useful for assessing growth already achieved, as measured by real benchmarks met, but generates little inspiration: mere tiresome dogma when preached at students who are better served by hands-on engagement. Theory, yes, but mostly as a way of explaining what’s already been practiced.
Psychometricians (with the emphasis on Psycho) have used yes scores to supposedly gauge “intellectual that Growth” of students from one year to the next and even used that information to supposedly gauge teacher quality.
It’s a lot of BS.
But school districts were nonetheless using it to fire teachers .
Test scores
This article points out to me two problems in education. One is the bandwagon effect and the other is valid studies with unbiased data. The bandwagon is always the next great fix, like block scheduling and now the science of reading for example. “Authors with a financial incentive to report positive findings published significantly larger effects than authors without this incentive” is not limited to education of course, but it is difficult to find scientific studies that are truly objective. NEPC does have some, but those seem to be ignored by the education establishment.
Well said. The media are a large part of the bandwagon with their skewed messaging like the economy will collapse because of Covid “learning loss.”
The privatization of public education marches on without any evidence it benefits most students. The reason the forced march continues is from the impact of billionaire behind it.
I call it “advocacy research,” instead of “null hypothesis” research… cynically monetizing research, either through selling a “product” or self promotion leading to promotion on the job, or reputation
Advocacy “research” is the opposite of real (null hypothesis based) research because rather than starting out by assuming an effect is NOT real and gathering evidence to determine whether there is sufficient reason to reject that (
null) hypothesis, it assumes at the getgo that the effect IS
real
.
The latter is the very antithesis of science.
SomeDAM: Regarding null hypotheses and advocacy:
Of course collapsing them together is the death of science as scientific (or as you say, its antithesis).
However, sciences are human beings too, and have a political and moral side to us just like everyone else. Being a scientist does require us to make clear distinctions about such things, including being aware of the potential for bias, but does not require us to trash our moral or political obligations.
If that’s the case, then the question is whether scientists can fulfill their humanness and walk and chew gum at the same time. Or more to this point, they can do their science well (as I assume you could) and then consider the political and moral implications of the their findings. . . and then act on it if they think it morally and politically important to do so.
Your point only exposes the need for a clarity of understanding, and having, solid principles to go by, and staying with them, and in the fields, good protocols. It doesn’t mean that scientists have to toss the fullness of their responsibilities as human beings. CBK
I don’t disagree that scientists should not abdicate their moral responsibilities.
And one can actually be an advocate for something based on sound science.
One can be an advocate for climate change mitigation based on climate science, for example.
But too many pseudoscientists pretend that advocacy “research” is actual science
It’s not, because it involves taking a stance for purely political or ideological reasons and then coming up with “support” for that stance, which almost always involves cherry picking “facts” or simply making them up.
It’s the difference between advocacy based on research and research based on advocacy. (Aka advocacy research)
.
SomeDAM: I think you are right in your “parsing” of which comes first, research or advocacy. But I am also thinking that it gets even more complicated when, in many cases, scientists get into their fields precisely to find a cure or solve a particular problem they are identified with, or even obsessive about; and sometimes for some very personal reasons. So in that sense, even the best kind of science is already a kind of advocacy. The question, then, becomes their ability to discern.
It’s just that the protocols of the sciences (not to mention the law) were long in coming, didn’t happen in a vacuum, and conscious discernments of individual scientists were never NOT a part of the scientific picture (so to speak).
But like “welfare moms” or “bad teachers and schools” as a part of the GOP playbook, we cannot define the whole by the worst of a few of its parts in order to clip its funding or gain control of it. There are moral hazards, and there are those who are able to avoid them, no matter where we go and what we take up as our life’s work. CBK
You make a good point about scientists choosing to work on something because they believe in it.
But the good scientist would still not pretend to herself or others that something works when the evidence indicates otherwise or before there is any evidence to speak of.
But they have to be extra careful because as Richard Feynman said “above all you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
And I would equate widespread use of VAM for firing teachers before it had been proved effective and reliable to injecting a large number of people with a vaccine that had not been tested for safety and efficacy. In my opinion, the use of VAM to fire teachers was just inexcusable, but no one who pushed that particular policy paid any personal price.
Same as it ever was. The only people who pay a price are the teachers. People should have gone to jail for using VAM to fire teachers, especially after they had had all he problems pointed out to them.
The problem with this quasi-esoteric back and forth is that the legitimacy of the research is quite beside the point. The “mindset,” “grit,” and other ed school or psychologist claptrap is not good for children. The research may be infallibly designed and executed, but the results are based on purported student achievement on standardized assessments. Even if one stipulates to the cause and effect, it doesn’t mean it is good educational practice. While admittedly not exactly analogous, it is like researchers testing steroids on little runners, proving that it makes them faster, and then making it standard phys ed routine – when the healthy thing would be for them to run around in aimless joy. The other thing missed by the woman who called me a troglodyte, is that my original pithy comment was mostly about the self-satisfied “leaders” who are like small-minded sheep, conforming to the latest Duckwoth, Dweck or Paul Tough “theory” without any critical analysis.
LeftCoast “Growth Mindset is the psychology of oppression.”
Like all such works, allot has to do with who is reading and interpreting it.
The first thing I thought of when I read your note was to equate it with the idea that waking up to new ideas and one’s own biases (is that what they mean by “woke-ness”?) is a bad thing. CBK
The year I retire, I will have a tee-shirt made. On the front will be the word- big and bold- “RIGOR”, with the NO Symbol on top (a circle and diagonal line through it).
On the back will be the word data with the same NO symbol on top of it.
I’d love to work in “growth mindset “. What a bunch of garbage.
Hopefully my tee-shirt will be a conversation starter and I will be happy to talk to people about my experiences in the kindergarten classroom. I will explain that rigor is developmentally inappropriate and the desperate attempt to shove rigor into the heart and mind of kindergartners (and every other grade level student) can only hurt them. As for data- the obsession is destructive on so many levels. What’s worse, it’s meaningless.
Diane, why does this insanity persist? Why are true best practices and proven methods of success in education completely dismissed? I have been shaking my head (and my fist) for 20 years. Nothing changes. It’s just getting worse. What will it ever take to shift this train wreck that is education?
Thank you. Fully agree!
Why does the insanity persist?
The same reason dead people sometimes sit up in funeral homes.
Rigor mortis
By the way, you could include an image of a flower with a slash across it to indicate “no growth”
More seriously, it seems to me that the folks at the top of the food chain (eg, Hawvid education and economics professors and Superintendents) in education are always looking for a way to make a name for themselves. So they push all sorts of nonsense on teachers, knowing full well that it is nonsense.
The “disruption” idea is a perfect example. It originated at Harvard business school and someone thought they could boost their career by applying it to schools — because as everyone at Harvard k kws, throwing a monkey wrench into a machine is the best way to make it work better.
VAM was yet another brilliant idea that came from economists trying to make a name for themselves (and of course, trying to get a fake Nobel prize)
What makes the problem almost intractable is that very few of the colleagues of folks like Hsnushek and Cherry are willing to challenge their nonsense. So it gets picked up by presidents and other people in high places and used as the basis for national policy.
Our universities have really been remiss in NOT challenging all the junk ideas.that are largely coming out of a just a few places and individuals.
Hanushek and Chetty.
But Cherry works too cuz he likes 🍒.
Not incidentally, Chetty thought his VAM study would get him a fake Nobel for sure. No such luck. The poor fellow.
I suspect that after seeing what a disaster VAM has been for American schools, the Sveriges Bank that awards the fake Nobel in econ wouldnt touch Chetty with a 100 foot pole.
They have simply gotten too much crap for previous choices.
Chetty has had more than his fifteen minutes of fame but I suspect it is over.
Grit is yet another nonsense idea that came from a Harvard grad (or at least Angela Duckworth made a name for herself based on it, even if she didn’t originate it)
This stuff will persist until the universities actually start doing their jobs to challenge it.
For example, where were the professors of statistics and mathematics at Harvard and other universities when it came to the whole VAM policy?
The American Statistical Association came out with a report on VAM that pointed out the serious problems, but that was a day late and a dollar short. They never really said what should have been said: VAM should not be used to evaluate individual teachers and certainly not to make firing an tenure decisions. That should have been categorically stated at the very beginning. And they should have stated it before Obama had touted Chetty,’s study in the state of the Union Address.
The funding of university departments by billionaires and corporations plays a huge role in ensuring that the colleagues of those pushing the nonsense don’t say a word about it.
A perfect example is the funding of the MIT media lab by Jeffrey Epstein and the funding of Harvard evolutionary biology by Epstein.
Despite widespread knowledge at those universities, very few professors poke out (until after it was all over the newspapers, of course)
If Harvard and MIT had been serious, they would have fired the Presidents who allowed the funding to continue.
But instead, they whitewashed the whole thing. Nothing to see here. Move along.
And corporate and billionaire funding of universities and university professors is completely corrupting academics to the point where one can no longer trust the stuff coming out of many departments at some places.
University officials at places like Harvard and MIT are so hell bent on bringing in money that they will do virtually anything to make sure that no one in the university community can say a negative word about it.
Brava or Bravo, depending on your gender. As a head of a school I enjoyed pointing out that “rigor” was most often paired with “mortis.”
The profligation of “edu-speak” is the result of the false flag of leadership as a character trait. From the corporate set to those who attain education leadership from the district up, there is this mythology that they have attained their high status through determination, individual skills, and hard work, not through communal support. I almost puke every time I read some pithy slogan about raising leaders. Growth mindset, grit, the overuse of resilience all are promoted by a girth of individuals who think only their perspectives are legitimate while ignoring the input of teachers. It’s time we understood that the goal of public education should be to raise discriminating followers who can parse through this BS. Until then, people like Dweck will continue to profit from her misguided endeavors.
I think we can find remarkably positive notions in grit, growth mindset, etc., etc., if we read with that in mind. Finding what’s missing is more difficult, however, than recognizing and criticizing what is already formed. What’s missing at the deeper level is a correct (and verifiable) way to gauge intelligence and its development that is far, far, from merely testing the results of it.
And so I also think that much of the time the problem is not in what is positively offered in these kinds of books, but in what goes missing from writers’ ideas of the whole.
For instance, STEM is not bad a bad thing, but when we leave out all of the other humanly developmental aspects of education, like age-appropriate literature that includes history, regular expression in human and adult connections, arts projects, field trips, personal interviews, sports, and generally the humanities, a STEM-only education is a prescription for at least an abiding psychological, moral, social, and spiritual shallowness and, at worst, the “development” of monster-people. CBK
The problem with this quasi-esoteric back and forth is that the legitimacy of the research is quite beside the point. The “mindset,” “grit,” and other ed school or psychologist claptrap is not good for children. The research may be infallibly designed and executed, but the results are based on purported student achievement on standardized assessments. Even if one stipulates to the cause and effect, it doesn’t mean it is good educational practice. While admittedly not exactly analogous, it is like researchers testing steroids on little runners, proving that it makes them faster, and then making it standard phys ed routine – when the healthy thing would be for them to run around in aimless joy. The other thing missed by the woman (you) who called me a troglodyte, is that my original pithy comment was mostly about the self-satisfied “leaders” who are like small-minded sheep, conforming to the latest Duckwoth, Dweck or Paul Tough “theory” without any critical analysis.
Steve: Well, I guess there’s just no connection between legitimacy of research and what’s best for children. Sorry . . . I don’t buy it. And the teachers I know are not exactly “small minded sheep” in their “good educational practice” which is rooted in daily self-reflection and self-correction, and in knowing how to discern, adapt, and integrate new research to their abundant experience in the classroom.
(Why do we so often overlook the consciousness of the writer or classroom teacher who is committed to their professional excellence? . . . and broad brush all with the worst case scenario? Reminds me of Trump and all those rapists crossing our southern border.)
And thanks, but I’ll stick with the troglodyte description, at least as indicated in your paragraph in question (copied below). I do hope it is beneath you. Maybe you were tired when you wrote it. But if you need to clean up your writing and reflection act before you push the “Post Comment” button, don’t blame the messenger when someone mentions it. CBK
QUOTING: “’Growth mindset’ is representative of a catalogue of semantic horseshit that so-called educators adopt so they can seem sophisticated when sipping craft cocktails at seminar happy hours. It takes the obvious and decorates it with pseudo-scientific jargon to sell a book or get a speaking gig.”
Thanks for the quote. I rather like it. And I said nothing about teachers. It is mostly administrators who bleat. I should know. I was one and taught for many years. How much time have you spent with delightful small humans?