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Fixed Mindset

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When students encounter challenging tasks or experience failure, they make different attributions about the causes. They may focus on their intelligence or level of effort. How our beliefs about intelligence impact our goals and performance is the focus of Carol Dweck’s work (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007; Dweck, 1986; Dweck, 1999; Hong, Chui, Dweck, Lin, & Wan, 1999). Dweck’s implicit theories of intelligence involves two mindsets: the fixed view and the malleable view. People who have a fixed mindset often believe that their own intelligence is fixed entity that cannot be changed; and those who have a malleable mindset believe that their intelligence can be changed and increased (Dweck, 1999). These two mindsets have profound influences on students’ responses to challenging situations, potentially leading to the extremes of withdrawal of effort and learned helplessness (fixed mindset) or persistent effort and a mastery orientation (malleable mindset). Fortunately, mindsets can be altered and used as interventions to …show more content…

Exerting effort, experiencing difficulty, or coming into contact with other high-performing students makes students with a fixed view question their intelligence, even if they have high confidence in their intelligence. These students are likely to focus on low-effort successes, and they feel smart when they outperform their peers. Challenges are a threat to self-esteem, and students with a fixed view will pass up important learning opportunities if they believe it will demonstrate that they are not smart enough (Hong et al., 1999). After experiencing failure, these students quickly give up even after being successful shortly before in the task (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Students with a fixed view orientation are more likely to focus on performance goals. These goals orient students to prove their ability and avoid failure (Dweck 1986,

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