Students' View of Intelligence Can Help Grades
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7406521
Summary
This NPR article discusses the idea that when children are taught that they can increase their intelligence they will become smarter. Carol Dweck a research psychologist from Stanford University conducted a study to see if this theory was true. In the study she asked several hundred students entering 7th grade if they thought their intelligence would change or not. Over the next two years she noted the change in their math grades. The students that thought they could change their intelligence had improved math scores, while the children who thought their intelligence would stay the same, had decreased math scores. Dweck found this interesting and conducted another study, where she split a group of 100 seventh graders that were not doing well in math into two different study groups. One group taught the students better study skills and the other group taught them how their brain works when they are learning new material. The group that learned how their brain worked showed significantly more improvement than the other group of students. Dweck's studies showed that when a student is told they can succeed and have the support from parents or guardians and teachers, they are more likely to improve their intelligence.
Personal Response
After reading the article "Students' View of Intelligence Can Help Grades", I have a better understanding of the importance of children having a good support system for learning. A student's intelligence will develop, as they get older especially if they are aware of this fact. When students are told that they will become more intelligent and that their intelligent is not "fixed" they are more likely to actually become smarter. Something I have learned from personal experience that this article helped make more sense of for me is that when teachers tell a student that they are capable of learning and they just need to try, the student is much more likely to actually make that effort and learn the material. However, if a teacher was ever to tell me that I probably would not learn anything from the material he or she was teaching and that it would not make me smarter, there is no reason I would pay attention. Reading this article helped me understand that teachers and parents need to support their students and give them motivation in order for them to succeed and become more intelligent.
Educational Connections
The material in this article is very significant in the field of education because it pushes the idea that a teacher has the ability to change a student’s view of what they can learn and how intelligent they can be. If a teacher were to tell a student that he or she was not capable of learning the course material then they would probably not even try to learn. However, if that same teacher told the student that they were capable of learning the material and becoming more intelligent, that student would most likely work a lot harder and achieve that intelligence. This is important for the field of education because students need motivation to learn and succeed. Without support from teachers, students have no drive to try their best and put forth enough effort to reach a higher level of intelligence. The ideas in this article should be shared among the education community as a way to show just how important support from school faculty can be in a students learning career.
Personal Opinion
I thought this article was very interesting because prior to reading it I had no idea that studies like this had been conducted. It was surprising for me to realize that a students intelligence level could decrease simply because they thought their intelligence would stay the same for their entire life. I would recommend this article to anybody in the field of education because it is important for teachers and school faculty to know that they could have such a great impact on how students learn. Teachers should be aware of the fact that they have the ability to alter the way student learns for the rest of their life. This article was very eye opening for me and I believe it would be for any teacher as well.