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Research

The following studies outline research performed by Carol Dweck and her colleagues. These studies linked self-concept, self-esteem and beliefs about intelligence with academic achievement.

Study:  Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement Across an Adolescent Transition: A Longitudinal Study and an Intervention

 

Purpose: This study was designed to assess how a student's inherent belief about their intelligence impacted their academic acheivement.

 

Reaserachers: Lisa S. Blackwell, Kali H. Trzesniewski and Carol Sorich Dweck

 

                                                          Methods

Participants:  373 students (198 females and 175 males). Rising 7th graders. The sample was varied in ethnicity, achievement, and socioeconomic status (SES). The participants were 55% African American, 27% South Asian, 15% Hispanic, and 3% East Asian and European American.

 

Procedures:  The 5-year study followed students as they progressed through the seventh and eighth grades. Participants filled out a questionare in the beginning of the Fall Term. It was a motivational questionnaire  that assessed theories of intelligence, goals, beliefs about effort, and helpless versus mastery-oriented responses to failure. Trained research assistants were involved with administring the questionaire.

 

Measures: Achievement (baseline and outcome).  The scores on a standardized mathematics achievement test was used.

 

Motivational Variables: A scale to measure key motivational variables:

  • Implicit theories of intelligence

  • Goal orientation

  • Beleifs about effort

 

Results: Based on the results of this study, an incremental theory of intelligence was positively associated with positive effort beliefs. This lead researchers to beleive that an incremental theory of intelligence, learning goals, positive beliefs about effort, non helpless attributions, and strategies in response to failure formed a network of interrelated variables that attribuded to the students overall performance.

Study: Children's beliefs about intelligence and school performance.

 

Purpose: Researchers wanted to determine if their was a link between performance, effort and beliefs about intelligence in students.

 

Reaserachers: Stipek, Deborah and Gralinski, J. Heidi

 

                                                          Methods

Participants: The study included 319 children (165 boys and 154 girls); 66 third graders, 119 fourth graders, 75 fifth graders, and 59 sixth graders. Demographic information indicated that 45% were self-identified as Latino, 15% as European American, 15% as African American, 9% as Asian American, 17% as of Portuguese descent (all in Grades 3 and 4), and 0.6% were from a variety of other ethnic backgrounds. 

 

Procedures: Participants were asked to complete  written questionnaires within the first 4 months of the school year. The questionare was repeated in the months of May and June. The administrator, who was not known by the children, explained that she was interested in children's thoughts and feelings about school and some school subjects. She reassured children that their answers would not be shown to their teachers, and she encouraged them to respond to the questions honestly.

 

Motivation Measures: A primary purpose of this study was to explore associations among beliefs about intelligence, effort, and performance. The measure originally included 12 items that assessed the beliefs that

  • Ability is stable and unaffected by effort

  • Performance is stable and only modestly affected by effort

  • Intelligence is a specific and global cause of academic performance

  • Effort is a cause of academic performance

  • Effort increases intelligence

 

Results: "The results revealed that beliefs about intelligence and academic performance. Specifically, children who claimed that one cannot do much about intelligence  also believed that levels of intelligence and performance are stable over time and that intelligence facilitates or limits success in all academic subjects. Moreover, their beliefs about intelligence and performance were themselves relatively stable over the course of an academic year, and they were associated in theoretically meaningful and practically important ways with other motivation variables and achievement."

Carol Dweck Disscusses her Research Findings

Carol Dweck: The power of believing that you can improve

Carol Dweck: A Study on Praise and Mindsets

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