Growth mindset is Carol Dweck’s name for the belief that abilities can be developed. The contrasting “fixed” mindset treats ability as a static trait. Laboratory praise studies in the 1990s (Mueller and Dweck) and later school interventions (Blackwell, Trzesniewski and Dweck, 2007) made the idea a global education export. The 2006 book Mindset did the rest.
Victoria Sisk and colleagues’ 2018 meta-analyses found only modest average associations and intervention effects, larger in some high-risk groups. Li and Bates reported failures to replicate key praise findings. The construct remains useful as a caution against ability-as-destiny talk — and weak as a miracle programme.
Check each criteria to confirm findings against the atlas verdict.
Growth mindset is Carol Dweck’s name for the belief that abilities can be developed. The contrasting “fixed” mindset treats ability as a static trait. Laboratory praise studies in the 1990s (Mueller and Dweck) and later school interventions (Blackwell, Trzesniewski and Dweck, 2007) made the idea a global education export. The 2006 book Mindset did the rest.
Victoria Sisk and colleagues’ 2018 meta-analyses found only modest average associations and intervention effects, larger in some high-risk groups. Li and Bates reported failures to replicate key praise findings. The construct remains useful as a caution against ability-as-destiny talk — and weak as a miracle programme.
Children praised for intelligence later avoided challenges more than children praised for effort, in their experiments. Later replications have been mixed. Two meta-analyses: mindset–achievement correlations were small on average; interventions had small average effects, with some larger effects for students at higher risk.
Failures to replicate core praise effects in their samples. The debate is about robustness and moderators, not about whether beliefs can ever matter. Yes. Binet’s original project was instructional. Dweck often cites that history against later “fixed IQ” folklore.
This is about practice and individual craft. It is not a group IQ score. It does not replace the full topic page.
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