Charles Darwin was regarded as an ordinary student. According to reports, his father told him he wouldn’t amount to anything. Tolstoy was written off as uninteresting. One of the most well-known athletes in history, Michael Jordan, was cut from his high school basketball team. These myths don’t make you feel good. They are known beginning points for individuals who went on to become exceptional—not because they were naturally gifted, but rather because of how they handled difficult situations.
Carol Dweck, a psychologist, spent decades researching that pattern. Her research, which was mostly conducted at Stanford, distinguishes between two ways that students perceive their own intelligence. A student with a fixed mindset feels that their aptitude is basically predetermined and that they either possess it or they do not. A growth mindset holds that aptitude can be increased via hard work, planning, and perseverance. Dweck discovered that the distinction between those two ideas influences nearly everything, including how students respond to failure, whether they look for challenges, and how far they eventually go.
For a student sitting through a challenging exam or staring at a paper they are unsure how to begin, it is worthwhile to consider what that truly means. When things go wrong, a student with a fixed mindset often sees it as a reflection of who they are. They pull back. Because trying and failing is worse than not trying at all, they shield their self-image by simply not trying again. A student with a growth mindset interprets the same challenge differently, viewing it as a challenge to overcome rather than an assessment of their value. That seems like a minor difference. In reality, it isn’t.
This is more difficult than it seems because of a cultural quirk. Western education fell in love with the notion of natural talent at some point. Hard work, which is what you do when you are not naturally gifted, was coded as a consolation prize. Students who persevere through classes are even referred to as “grinds,” a derogatory term that implies effort is something to be ashamed of. Students absorb that mindset at a young age, and it negatively impacts their approach to learning for years to come.
Articles about growth mindset for students have attempted to address this in a variety of ways and to differing degrees. Some reduce the idea to a motivational poster with the words “believe in yourself” repackaged in scholarly terminology. The more beneficial ones, such as those from Stanford’s Teaching Commons, Khan Academy, and Greater Good in Education, deal with what the research actually demonstrates.
One recurring observation is that complimenting a student’s intelligence usually backfires. The earlier praise turns into a liability when the student hits a wall later on because struggling now feels like evidence that they were never as intelligent as everyone claimed. On the other hand, praising effort keeps the door open. It asserts that the process is just as important as the outcome.
For educators in particular, there is something else to be aware of. The development of the growth mindset is not isolated. According to neuroscience research, the brain’s amygdala may react with either courage or comfort in response to a learning challenge. A student’s choice is influenced in part by their surroundings, such as whether taking risks is encouraged in the classroom or if errors are viewed as facts or catastrophes.
This implies that teachers bear a significant portion of the blame, which is something that detractors of the growth mindset framework occasionally point out. It is crucial to look at how institutions and teachers perpetuate fixed-mindset thinking rather than putting all the responsibility for changing a student’s mindset on them.
Reading the research makes it difficult to ignore the fact that the majority of students arrive at the fixed-mindset position because they were taught it, frequently unknowingly, by a parent, teacher, or grading system. It’s not an easy problem to solve. However, it does imply that for many students, motivation and willpower are not the first steps. Simply put, they are being informed early on that the ceiling they have imagined for themselves is not real.
