KNOWING IS NOT GIVEN

Suppose you possess something of great value to you. It is something you use, but it doesn't become depleted with its use. By using it, it leads to many other wanted things: places, people, objects, understanding, in all a better life. Your belief is that the amount you have of this thing is unchangeable – you either have enough or you don't, despite anything you might do. You might feel lucky you have it, but you can't increase the level you enjoy, and you can't decrease it either – at least under normal living conditions. According to Carol S. Dweck, this is the image many have of intelligence. Due to this perspective, it has led to some beliefs about education and learning that are counter- productive.

Before reviewing some of these beliefs, let me give this view a name. Dweck calls this notion a “fixed trait” view of intelligence and describes it as the theory of fixed intelligence. According to her research, the belief in fixed intelligence leads to some ironic concerns. If you believe your intelligence level is unchangeable, you live in fear that future challenges will be met with insufficient intelligence. This concern leads to some less than forthright behavior. One is tempted to act smart, hide any insecurity, and go about meeting challenges under a cloud of worry. You tend to avoid real challenges; heck, no one wants to seem wanting or dumb. To ease one's concerns, easy-effort assignments are sought so as to be able to outperform other people. Failures take on a greater threat; they might expose limited capabilities that can't be remedied. Efforts to promote self-esteem with baseless praise, either as a result of engaging in tasks of low level difficulty or being praised for mediocre performance, actually cater to this view of intelligence. Unfortunately, there has been a set of practices in our popular culture that do exactly that in the name of enhancing self-esteem. Dweck shows “… how we encourage vulnerabilities in our students when we try to boost their self-esteem within this system. The well-meant successes we hand out and the praise for intelligence we lavish on them do not encourage a hardy, can-do mentality.”¹ These efforts to bolster self-esteem, based on commonly held faulty assumptions, actually promote an aversion to challenges for they might point out the limit of one's intelligence, a limit that is impervious to improvement.

But what if this common view is wrong? What if intelligence is changeable; what if we are able to improve on our level of this valuable asset? A view that says to someone who mocks one for being a dummy: yeah, I might not know that right now, but I can learn it. Dweck has good news; her research demonstrates that intelligence is not a fixed trait, but an “incremental” one. She presents the theory of malleable intelligence: “[i]t's just that [people] focus on the idea that everyone, with effort and guidance, can increase their intellectual abilities.”² By the very act of learning – an active process in which we apply workable strategies to solve the mysteries we confront – we can increase our intelligence, our intellectual abilities. We can see difficult problems as opportunities to not only seek information and understanding, but also as those experiences that make us smarter, more intelligent, more able. Even those who have low levels of intelligence at any given point can have justified reasons to see challenges as those kinds of opportunities that will lead to higher mastery. Feeling smart is not overcoming easy tasks, but taking on the tough ones, working on them, and eventually solving them. The incremental view, if accepted, can have an enormous effect on not only how we learn, but also on how we teach. It helps us free ourselves from the concerns of looking smart to valuing learning through challenges, effort, and dealing with error.

Under the incremental view the following misconceptions come to light:

• high ability students are more apt to demonstrate “mastery-oriented” accomplishments – remember, given a big enough problem, we are all low ability individuals
• school successes encourage “mastery-oriented” characteristics
• praising a student's intelligence fosters “mastery-oriented” traits
• confidence in their own intelligence is key in promoting “mastery-oriented” characteristics among students

I will in future postings further distill this general view of intelligence – explain how the above is a list of misconceptions – and comment on the effects these misinformed assumptions have on school policies geared at addressing underachievement. After all, underachievement is an equality issue and, as such, becomes something we can legitimately address in civics education.

1Dweck, C. S. (2000). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press, p. 3.

2Ibid.