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Most of the growth mindset experiments have used priming to get people in an effort-focused or an ability-focused state of mind, but recent priming experiments have famously failed to replicate and cast doubt on the entire field. And growth mindset has an obvious relationship to stereotype threat, which has also started seeming very shaky recently.

Which priming experiments are you thinking of in particular?

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You see they reviewed 66 research studies on this practice, and only one was considered valid.

Growth is two things right now in education. It is a new way to structure schools, where you try to move everyone forward from where they are. You don’t need to decide if you believe in Fixed vs. Growth Mindset to explain why kids are in different places. We are just going to do education differently now. Even if you are proficient, we are going to try to teach you more instead of having you waste a year. If you can’t read by the end of 3rd grade, we are going to keep trying to teach you how instead of saying that time is up.

Educators get the sense that something new is happening and it has to do with growth. They keep hearing the word growth. So, they need some professional development having to do with growth. Dweck’s stuff has the word growth in it. Her theory is not necessarily what is driving the education reform, but both share the word growth. So, schools are buying her book for everyone and doing training on the Growth Mindset. She is probably getting rich and doesn’t care if you say her research doesn’t look right. That has never mattered in education. People like those posting her examine her theory and wonder if they believe it should guide how we educate kids. It is not guiding anything. Race to the Top funds are doing the guiding. This is a parallel flavor of the day fad training because it has the word growth in it.

Pretty soon, people will pick up on the Growth idea and see it is selling, and we’ll see a whole slew of new stuff about growth come out for educators: How to Promote Growth of Poor People; Understanding How You Feel About Growth; Leadership and Growth; etc.

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Even so, it seems like a large effect size. I wonder if the importance of this double blinding is testable — somehow have researchers who don’t know about the growth mindset claims and just say the words, or have another experiment where the researchers say nothing different, but have one group mentally marked down as failures/quitters and another group as set for success.

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the experimental intervention is changing three short words in the middle of a sentence.

That’s what they claim the intervention was, but it is impossible to double-blind a spoken intervention.

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