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Eva Keiffenheim

Learn Letter: Is Growth Mindset a Myth? Plus the four-step process to enhance your self-directed studying.

Published over 2 years ago • 2 min read

34th edition l Artwork by Dids

Hi learners,

can a growth mindset fuel your learning?

Few learning theories have a more drastic story arc than the "Growth Mindset."

Carol Dweck, former Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford researcher, explored introduced the concept 2006 in Mindset - the new psychology of success.

The psychologist suggested you can navigate through life either with a "fixed" or with a "growth" mindset.

Created by Eva Keiffenheim based on "Mindsets" by C. Dweck

Dweck's work says people with growth mindsets enjoy many positive outcomes—including higher academic achievement and better learning—while their peers who have fixed mind-sets experience negative outcomes.

I read Dweck's "Growth Mindset" and watched her TED talk within my first few weeks of teacher training. I fell in love with the theory, researched more pedagogic material, and prepared lessons for my Maths classes.

Students loved the content. After all, the idea that with the right set of believes everybody can do it is encouraging. Yet, recent research shows the mindset theory might not be as miraculous as many educators think.

In 2018, researchers published two meta-analysis of literature around growth mindsets. They looked at more than 300 studies to evaluate its effectiveness and practice.

"The authors have assembled a huge dataset of mindset studies and have looked into them with great attention to detail," says unaffiliated researcher Stuart Ritchie, from the University of Edinburgh in an interview.

But are growth mindsets as helpful as many of us think?

"We found limited evidence for mindset theory and the evidence varied by the specific claims," says study co-author Brooke Macnamara, in an interview. "For example, overall, we found a significant but weak relationship between growth mindsets and academic achievement, and a significant, but small effect of growth mindset interventions on academic achievement."

Unfortunately, mindset work isn't the magic key many people have wanted it to be. The benefits are oversold.

Ritchie concludes: "What this study reveals is that the so-called 'revolution' is mostly a mirage: yes, there does seem to be effect of teaching children to hold a growth mindset, and this effect is a little bit bigger in children who are from poor backgrounds or who are at risk of academic failure, but it's more like a tiny nudge in the right direction than a life-changing panacea."

Yet, unless people stick to ineffective learning strategies by prioritizing effort, mindset work is not harmful. While the students benefits are smaller than supposed, it's still a cost-effective intervention.

Mindset inventor Carol Dweck recently summed it up best: "Growth mindset is on a firm foundation, but we’re still building the house." So let's keep mindset co-creator David Yeager's words in mind who says:"Growth mindset interventions are in their infancy and much remains to be learned."


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Learning Nuggets

🧠 The four-step process to enhance your self-directed studying

This article explores how you can independently achieve your desired learning goals. It's a very specific guide to excelling at self-directed learning in university.

🧱 Should we trust science and does science tell the truth?

Big Think is an online platform that promotes the best thinking practices and displays more than 15,000 videos from industry experts that explore questions such as: Will AI turn against us? Do we have a free will? Is religion helping or hurting us? And should we trust science? If you're interested in learning about the big questions this is an excellent resource to get inspired. If you don't know where to start I suggest you give the "Should we trust science?" section a look.


“The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.”

—Robert Greene in "Mastery"


Eva Keiffenheim

Make the most of your mind

Eva Keiffenheim is a TEDx speaker and learning expert. She advises startups, education foundations, policymakers, and NGOs on strategic initiatives related to the future of education and learning.

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