Can a “growth mindset” help students achieve their potential? With David Yeager, PhD

Speaking of Psychology

Kim Mills

Health & Fitness, Life Sciences, Science, Mental Health

4.3 • 781 Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In recent years, research on the power of growth mindset has made the leap from the psychology lab to popular culture. Growth mindset is the belief that a person’s intelligence and abilities can grow and improve with practice, and researchers have found that brief exercises that increase growth mindset can help keep students motivated when they face challenges, improve their grades, and even increase college graduation rates. But scaling up those interventions from the research lab to diverse real-life settings is challenging. Dr. David Yeager, an associate professor of developmental psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, discusses the science of growth mindset and how it could help close academic achievement gaps. Are you enjoying Speaking of Psychology? We’d love to know what you think of the podcast, what you would change about it, and what you’d like to hear more of. Please take our listener survey at www.apa.org/podcastsurvey. Links David Yeager, PhD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:28.5	Club, T&C's and Exclusion Supply. Are you good at math or stumped by basic algebra? Hopeless at
0:34.5	spelling, but a great test taker? You may have a sense, perhaps instilled early on at school, of your academic ability as a fixed and immutable trait,
0:43.3	something that you were born with like the color of your hair or eyes.
0:47.3	But over the last several decades, research has suggested that thinking of intelligence this way can sap
0:52.3	students' motivation in school
0:54.3	and contribute to racial, gender, and socioeconomic achievement gaps.
0:59.2	After all, a kid mind think, if I'm bad at math, why should I sign up for an advanced class?
1:04.0	Or if I'm not really smart enough to be in college, what's the point of trying?
1:08.2	In contrast, having a growth mindset, a belief that intelligence and ability can
1:13.1	develop and increase with practice can help keep students motivated when they face challenges.
1:19.0	The concept of a growth mindset has made the leap from the psychology lab to popular culture
1:23.8	and even become something of a buzzword in education. But it's also attracted controversy over how much of a difference growth mindset really makes
1:31.4	to student achievement.
1:33.3	So where is the research now?
1:35.3	Can relatively simple interventions, which are exercises really, that reframe students thinking
1:40.9	about their own abilities, help close achievement gaps.
1:44.8	Whom do these interventions help most and how can they be deployed effectively?
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