Even Geniuses
Let’s give students learning tasks that tell them,
“You can be as smart as you want to be.”
Carol S. Dweck
We can all agree that meaningful schoolwork pro- motes students’ learning of academic content. But why stop there? I believe that meaningful work can also teach students to love chal- lenges, to enjoy effort, to be resilient, and to
value their own improvement. In other words, we can design and
present learning tasks in a way that helps students develop a growth
mindset, which leads to not just short-term achievement but also
long-term success.
Why Foster a Growth Mindset?
During the past several decades, my colleagues and I have con-
ducted research identifying two distinct ways in which individuals
view intelligence and learning. Individuals with a fixed mindset
believe that their intelligence is simply an inborn trait—they have
a certain amount, and that’s that. In contrast, individuals with a
growth mindset believe that they can
develop their intelligence over
time (Blackwell, Trzesniewski,
& Dweck, 2007; Dweck,
1999,;2007).
These two mindsets
lead to different school
behaviors. For one thing,
when students view intel-
ligence as fixed, they tend
to value looking smart
above all else. They may
sacrifice important opportu-
nities to learn—even those that
are important to their future
academic success—if those
opportunities require them to risk
performing poorly or admitting
deficiencies. Students with a growth
mindset, on the other hand, view
challenging work as an opportunity
to learn and grow. I have seen students
