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This is an article going through ways to scaffold your lessons and assignments into smaller pieces that your students can build upon. I found this article useful as it breaks down specific ways that you can make scaffolding for your curriculum, such as using visual aids, pre-teaching vocabulary and drawing upon what students already know. These practices will help to make student learning less overwhelming for the student, give them something to draw and build upon, and serve to help them retain the information instead of just a basic info dump.

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6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

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Support every student by breaking learning up into chunks and providing a concrete structure for each.

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This is an article comparing the methods of assimilation and accommodation in teaching. Assimilation is adding upon what they already know while accommodation requires a new perspective on the subject and thus a change in their current knowledge. I found this article useful as it gave suggestions in expanding the student's 'schema' or understanding. I feel that I will be using both kinds of knowledge gaining in my class while teaching so it is important to know the difference and how to help encourage growth of the schema.

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by Terry Heick

Learning is a natural response to encountering something new.

Within Jean Piaget's theories on cognitive development are related ideas on how children process knowledge. Piaget was interested in how children organize 'data' and settled on two fundamental responses stimuli: assimilation of knowledge, and accommodation of knowledge.

Assimilation of knowledge occurs when a learner encounters a new idea, and must 'fit' that idea into what they already know. Think of this as filling existing containers.

Accommodation of knowledge is more substantial, requiring the learner to reshape those containers.

You can think of these containers as 'schema.' Schema are fluid and constantly evolving vessels students use to process what they see, read, and feel. The following from the University of Puget Sound is a simple example clarifying the difference between assimilation and accommodation of knowledge.

"When a child learns the word for dog, they start to call all four-legged animals dogs. This is assimilation. People around them will say, no, that's not a dog, it's a cat. The schema for dog then gets modified to restrict it to only certain four-legged animals. That is accommodation.

"Assimilation is like adding air into a balloon. You just keep blowing it up. It gets bigger and bigger. For example, a two year old's schema of a tree is "green and big with bark" - over time the child adds information (some trees lose their leaves, some trees have names, we use a tree at Christmas, etc.) - Your balloon just gets full of more information that fits neatly with what you know and adds onto it.

Accommodation is when you have to turn your round balloon into the shape of a poodle. This new balloon 'animal' is a radical shift in your schema (or balloon shape)....Now that they are in college in the redwood forest, we have conceptualization (schema) of trees as a source of political warfare, a commodity, a source of income for some people, we know that people sit and live in trees to save them; in other words, trees are economic, political, and social vehicles. This complete change in the schema involves a lot of cognitive energy, or accommodation, a shift in our schema."
Background Knowledge
Students come to the classroom with an incredibly diverse set of experiences. This isn't just a matter of content knowledge or reading levels either. Students adapt their own thinking-both in process and in form-in response to the kinds of input they've been exposed to.

A childhood of ranging, divergent thinking that varies in depth, form, and tone can provide a 'schema' that more readily accepts new ideas, or has provided the student with an increased sense of self-efficacy in making the effort to do so. This sort of divergence doesn't have to be academic, either. Experience is experience.

Piaget thought of these as processes-assimilating and accommodating knowledge-as both interactive (one affecting the other) and capable of overlapping. When a child encounters stimuli without assimilating or accommodating it-or without being capable of assimilating or accommodating it-they will fail to "understand." Whatever new idea they encountered will either have to be further parsed and analyzed, or discarded.

So for you as a teacher, what does this imply?
6 Tips For Schema-Friendly Teaching 1. Know the basics
Know that schema can be thought of as templates or vessels students use to organize knowledge.

Know the difference between assimilating knowledge and accommodating knowledge.

Know that the latter is more difficult than the former.

And know that what's happening at the cognitive level will be different for every student because their schema is nuanced and unique.
2. It's cultural
It's also a matter of culture. Students with access to WiFi at home will have a much greater opportunity for 'broadband schema'-that is, the kind of schema that is diverse, digital, and at times random and nonsensical. The same with students raised on farms, in the city, in single-parent homes, and so on.

Schema is cultural because we're human.
3. Diversify your teaching strategies
This all suggests diversity. One size fits all doesn't fit anyone even at the brain level.
4. Encourage self-direction
Students will naturally seek out ideas that either align with their own (which isn't necessarily good), or may be less alarmed to encounter competing thoughts on their own terms when learning on their own.
5. Don't project what-and how-you understand on students
It's tempting to project your own understanding and preferences onto students as well. What 'makes sense' to you is powerful, and it can be hard to get around that no matter how much you recognize it intellectually. But it's based on your own schema, scale, and timeline.

Learning is different for everyone.
6. Practice, practice, practice
Allow students to encounter ideas over and over again from a variety of perspectives, using different 'vessels.' This also suggests spiraling big ideas in your curriculum. Being exposed to academic standards only a few times in limited number or forms limits a student's ability to effectively reform said data into useful schema.

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The Assimilation vs Accommodation Of Knowledge

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by Terry Heick Learning is a natural response to encountering something new. Within Jean Piaget's theories on cognitive development are related ideas on how children process knowledge. Piaget was interested in how children organize 'data' and settled on two fundamental responses stimuli: assimilation of knowledge, and accommodation of knowledge.

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This is an article going over the basics of Piaget's model of Cognitive Development. His theory breaks down different stages of development based on characteristics. I found this helpful because it ties into the concept of Assimilation and Accommodation. I will use this to help understand the needs of my students.

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Much of modern cognitive theory, including its relationship to socialization, stems from the work of the Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget. In the 1920s Piaget ob

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This is an article that explores the physical capabilities of the teenage mind and how that affects how they think. A particularly interesting point brought up in the article relates to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, in saying that physical needs and emotional needs must be met to help the student achieve their full potential. This article goes through various misunderstandings about teenagers that will help me be more empathetic and relate to my students more.

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Teenagers also aren't very good at reading emotion on others' faces. In addition to the obvious physical signs of adolescence, teens and 'tweens are undergoing a major neurological overhaul, which is why that perennial teen mumble "I don't know" may be closer to the truth than we'd realized.

What this means for teachers, says Philp, is that they must be both patient and persistent. The point at which teenagers tend to withdraw and ask to be left alone is exactly when it's most important to engage them.

Below, Edutopia.org discusses Philp's conclusions with him.

What is the first thing teachers need to know about the brains of their teenage students?

I think one of the things middle school teachers need to recognize is the incapability of consistency from most kids. The kids will come in one day loving you, and then the next day, with no warning, you are the total enemy.

For young teachers, this is really hard on their developing confidence. You're searching for assurance that you're doing OK, but the inconsistency with which kids treat you is really disarming. So, middle school teachers need to recognize that this is the outward manifestation of a brain that is undergoing profound changes.

Teachers often make assumptions that their directions have gotten through. But the disconnect is that the student often doesn't get it. His or her interpretation is really different.

One of the standard things I talk to teachers about in my work is that when a kid gets in trouble, the teacher will ask, "Why did you do that?" Kids will almost always say, "I don't know," and maybe that's more accurate than we thought. When teachers understand some of the rudiments of how the brain is changing, they have a lot more patience with kids.

There are so many things going on with kids -- the physical and emotional changes, sexual development, all of those things are being undertaken by a brain that isn't capable of functioning like an adult brain. A lot of kids will look at any time they have to be quizzed about how they feel, or their reasons for doing something, as a demand for introspection. That's what teachers are asking for, and parents, too. So the teenager's response is, "Leave me alone. I don't feel like thinking about this."

That sounds discouraging, as if there's nothing to do with teenagers but sit back and wait until their brains are developed enough that they can act like human beings.

We've made some assumptions about the teenage brain, but we're looking at a tremendous curve here; I'm amazed at how many kids function awfully well and do use pretty good judgment. And one has to look at it and ask, "OK, is that environmentally controlled? Is it something we can instill in others?" That's the encouraging part of this research. We're beginning to realize that, experientially, the brain is really influenced by its environment.

At about age 12, 13, 14, the brain goes through a major pruning, much as it did around age two or three. Many of the neurons have two choices, if you will: They can develop into a neural network threaded together as a result of experience, or they're pruned away.

So, in other words, if you develop a skill at a young age, you're likely to retain that ability, whereas if you don't, that skill may be much harder to develop.

Yes. Unless teenagers put together those neural networks, they may never develop successful relationships with academics, with skills of all sorts. So, if the kid is sitting in front of a TV all day and not getting experiences, acquiring skills, we have a more serious problem than anyone had realized. Probably, we've only started to realize this in the last seven or eight years.

That suggests that we need to engage teenagers, not just let them grow up on their own.

Often, we let them go and we don't want anything to do with them. But what we've known for a long time is that if we let kids do their own things, they'll first seek out adult role models, but if those are not available for them, they'll seek out teen role models.

And this is the time when, characteristically, we've given up. Parents don't attend middle school and high school events like they did in elementary school. Kids want their privacy, and a lot of parents capitulate to that. And we're looking at probably the most important developmental time for the brain.

Recently, we've seen some wonderful character-development programs, like Developmental Assets. Those programs tend to be based on behavioral studies, but I see, over the next few years, that those behaviorally based programs will be fortified by research on the adolescent brain.

What does a teenage brain need in order to learn?

In order to make any progress, a child's brain has a list of priorities. At the survival rate, kids are not learning anything. For a kid walking through South Central Los Angeles to get to Locke High School, for instance, just getting there is a real concern. In the big herding high schools where they have 2,500 or 3,000 students, many of their emotional needs are not being met.

And the brain, in order for learning and thinking to occur, must fulfill those two categories first: You've got to survive, and you've got to have your emotional needs met. And good teachers have always known this. When you walk into a good classroom, you see a comfortable, pleasant place, a place where people are welcome.

Once a classroom is safe and comfortable, what can teachers do to engage their students?

When I do my workshops, one thing I try to get across is that kids can listen only for a short time -- probably 15 minutes max, maybe 20. And you've got to find innovative ways to change the psychological state of your learners about every 20 minutes: Get them up on their feet, change the environment using music, have them interact with each other.

I encourage teachers with a variety of strategies. For instance, how can you use music effectively in the class in order to make it an emotionally welcome place? A lot of teachers use music, but the nuances of how to use it are really important. I see more teachers saying, "I can learn to control the physiological state of my learners much more by using music at the right time."

So, for instance, maybe you should play something calming when they come into the classroom, like maybe classical music?

That's the perception most people have, that you should have music playing when kids come in. But you would also want to have playlists for other kinds of music, too. When kids come in to the class, you probably want to use music with an upbeat to it, 80 beats per minute or something. Other times, you'd want to use music in transition, between activities, or when you're writing in journals, maybe 50-60 BPM.

I'm a fan of public radio, and I'm amazed at how well they can integrate little pieces of music. So I try to encourage teachers to use emotional songs when they're doing readings. You remember the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War? There's a musical theme running through it, a resounding, beautiful melodic piece. It would be a great piece of music to play in the background along with a reading of Civil War letters.

And a lot of teachers don't realize how easy this is today. With laptops, iTunes, and inexpensive speakers, it's easier than ever to use music in the classroom.

What you're advocating is a real departure from the let-me-lecture-to-you-for-45-minutes approach to teaching.

I think that's the single most important thing I want to give to teachers: Sure, your students may be giving you eye contact, but that doesn't mean you're engaging them.

Amy Standen is a former contributing editor to Edutopia. She reports on science and the environment for KQED-FM, in San Francisco.

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Teenagers also aren't very good at reading emotion on others' faces. In addition to the obvious physical signs of adolescence, teens and 'tweens are undergoing a major neurological overhaul, which is why that perennial teen mumble "I don't know" may be closer to the truth than we'd realized.

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This is an article stating facts about the teen brain. I found the statistics on mental disorders and the relation to stress very interesting. I can use this information to better know what is going on with the development of my students. This will help me have more empathy and more understanding in their lives.

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National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

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Learn about how the teen brain grows, matures, and adapts to the world.

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This is an article exploring the Education Theory of Constructivism. It is a practice that encourages active learning and believes in a dynamic world view. This is the theory that I best lean towards in my own philosophy. I like how it explains learning as an active, not passive process. I can use this as a way to know best ways to incorporate this philosophy into my teaching.

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How do children gain a deeper understanding of how they think, feel, and act so that they can improve their learning and develop meaningful relationships? Since antiquity, philosophers have been intrigued with how human beings develop self-awareness -- the ability to examine and understand who we are relative to the world around us. Today, research not only shows that self-awareness evolves during childhood, but also that its development is linked to metacognitive processes of the brain.

Making Sense of Life Experiences

Most teachers know that if students reflect on how they learn, they become better learners. For example, some students may think and process information best in a quiet library, while others may focus better surrounded by familiar noise or music. Learning strategies that work for math may be different from those applied in the study of a foreign language. For some, it takes more time to understand biology than chemistry. With greater awareness of how they acquire knowledge, students learn to regulate their behavior to optimize learning. They begin to see how their strengths and weaknesses affect how they perform. The ability to think about one's thinking is what neuroscientists call metacognition. As students' metacognitive abilities increase, research suggests they also achieve at higher levels.

Metacognition plays an important role in all learning and life experiences. Beyond academic learning, when students gain awareness of their own mental states, they begin to answer important questions:

How do I live a happy life?

How do I become a respected human being?

How do I feel good about myself?

Through these reflections, they also begin to understand other people's perspectives.

At a recent international workshop, philosophers and neuroscientists gathered to discuss self-awareness and how it is linked to metacognition. Scientists believe that self-awareness, associated with the paralimbic network of the brain, serves as a "tool for monitoring and controlling our behavior and adjusting our beliefs of the world, not only within ourselves, but, importantly, between individuals." This higher-order thinking strategy actually changes the structure of the brain, making it more flexible and open to even greater learning.

Self-awareness is part of The Compass Advantage™ (a model designed for engaging families, schools, and communities in the principles of positive youth development) because it plays a critical role in how students make sense of life experiences. Linked by research to each of the other Compass abilities, particularly empathy, curiosity, and sociability, self-awareness is one of the 8 Pathways to Every Student's Success.

Self-awareness plays a critical role in improved learning because it helps students become more efficient at focusing on what they still need to learn. The ability to think about one's thinking increases with age. Research shows that most growth of metacognitive ability happens between ages 12 and 15 (PDF, 199KB). When teachers cultivate students' abilities to reflect on, monitor, and evaluate their learning strategies, young people become more self-reliant, flexible, and productive. Students improve their capacity to weigh choices and evaluate options, particularly when answers are not obvious. When students have difficulty understanding, they rely on reflective strategies to recognize their difficulties and attempt to rectify them. Improving metacognitive strategies related to students' schoolwork also provides young people with tools to reflect and grow in their emotional and social lives.

7 Strategies That Improve Metacognition

1. Teach students how their brains are wired for growth.

The beliefs that students adopt about learning and their own brains will affect their performance. Research shows that when students develop a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset, they are more likely to engage in reflective thinking about how they learn and grow. Teaching kids about the science of metacognition can be an empowering tool, helping students to understand how they can literally grow their own brains.

2. Give students practice recognizing what they don't understand.

The act of being confused and identifying one's lack of understanding is an important part of developing self-awareness. Take time at the end of a challenging class to ask, "What was most confusing about the material we explored today?" This not only jumpstarts metacognitive processing, but also creates a classroom culture that acknowledges confusion as an integral part of learning.

3. Provide opportunities to reflect on coursework.

Higher-order thinking skills are fostered as students learn to recognize their own cognitive growth. Questions that help this process might include:

Before this course, I thought earthquakes were caused by _______. Now I understand them to be the result of _______.

How has my thinking about greenhouse gases changed since taking this course?

4. Have students keep learning journals.

One way to help students monitor their own thinking is through the use of personal learning journals. Assign weekly questions that help students reflect on how rather than what they learned. Questions might include:

What was easiest for me to learn this week? Why?

What was most challenging for me to learn? Why?

What study strategies worked well as I prepared for my exam?

What strategies for exam preparation didn't work well? What will I do differently next time?

What study habits worked best for me? How?

What study habit will I try or improve upon next week?

Encourage creative expression through whatever journal formats work best for learners, including mind maps, blogs, wikis, diaries, lists, e-tools, etc.

5. Use a "wrapper" to increase students' monitoring skills.

A "wrapper" is a short intervention that surrounds an existing activity and integrates a metacognitive practice. Before a lecture, for example, give a few tips about active listening. Following the lecture, ask students to write down three key ideas from the lecture. Afterward, share what you believe to be the three key ideas and ask students to self-check how closely theirs matched your intended goals. When used often, this activity not only increases learning, but also improves metacognitive monitoring skills.

6. Consider essay vs. multiple-choice exams.

Research shows that students use lower-level thinking skills to prepare for multiple-choice exams, and higher-level metacognitive skills to prepare for essay exams. While it is less time consuming to grade multiple-choice questions, even the addition of several short essay questions can improve the way students reflect on their learning to prepare for test taking.

7. Facilitate reflexive thinking.

Reflexivity is the metacognitive process of becoming aware of our biases -- prejudices that get in the way of healthy development. Teachers can create a classroom culture for deeper learning and reflexivity by encouraging dialogue that challenges human and societal biases. When students engage in conversations or write essays on biases and moral dilemmas related to politics, wealth, racism, poverty, justice, liberty, etc., they learn to "think about their own thinking." They begin to challenge their own biases and become more flexible and adaptive thinkers.

What other ways do you help students reflect on their thinking in your classroom?

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Metacognition: Nurturing Self-Awareness in the Classroom

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How do children gain a deeper understanding of how they think, feel, and act so that they can improve their learning and develop meaningful relationships? Since antiquity, philosophers have been intrigued with how human beings develop self-awareness -- the ability to examine and understand who we are relative to the world around us.

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This article explains the idea of metacognition and how it relates to student learning. The article gives ways to teach students how to access metacognition. I can use this as a guide to help my students learn skills to access metacognition and become more invested in their learning.

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Students who succeed academically often rely on being able to think effectively and independently in order to take charge of their learning. These students have mastered fundamental but crucial skills such as keeping their workspace organized, completing tasks on schedule, making a plan for learning, monitoring their learning path, and recognizing when it might be useful to change course. They do not need to rely on their teacher as much as others who depend on more guidance to initiate learning tasks and monitor their progress. Students who do not learn how to "manage" themselves well as they proceed through school experience more setbacks, become discouraged and disengaged from learning, and tend to have lower academic performance. They may also be responsible for more classroom management issues.

Many teachers we know enjoy teaching students how to wield one of the most powerful thinking tools: metacognition, or the ability to think about your thoughts with the aim of improving learning. A metaphor that resonates with many students is that learning cognitive and metacognitive strategies offers them tools to "drive their brains." The good news for teachers and their students is that metacognition can be learned when it is explicitly taught and practiced across content and social contexts.

A student who is excited about being in the driver's seat and steering toward learning success may well be destined to become an independent thinker on the way to charting a responsible course for school, career, and life. Being metacognitive can be likened to being more conscious, reflective, and aware of one's progress along the learning path. Teachers have told us how they feel an extraordinary sense of pleasure teaching their students useful strategies that can be applied to all aspects of their lives in and outside of school.

Metacognition in the Brain

Although educational research on the power of metacognition for increasing student learning and achievement has been amassing for several decades, scientists have only recently begun to pinpoint the physical center of metacognition in the brain. Researchers at the University College London have discovered that subjects with better metacognition had more gray matter in the anterior (front) prefrontal cortex. Studies are ongoing to determine just how this brain area contributes to the critically important skill of metacognition.

Teachers who want to introduce metacognition in their classrooms might begin by reading our post Engaging Brains: How to Enhance Learning by Teaching Kids About Neuroplasticity, and also teach students about the anterior prefrontal cortex, the brain area that researchers have begun to link with metacognition.

How to Teach Students to Be More Metacognitive

1. Explicitly teach students about this essential learning skill by defining the term metacognition. Especially with younger students, we recommend a metaphor -- such as driving their brains -- as a concrete way to guide them toward thinking about how they can best learn. This metaphor taps into students' desires to master important skills for driving their destiny.

2. Ask students to describe the benefits and supply examples of driving their brains well. For example, sometimes we might need to put on the brakes (e.g., by reviewing a reading passage to make sure that we understand it) or step on the gas (e.g., by jotting down and organizing notes for an essay instead of getting stuck on how to start it). We need to keep our brains moving in the correct lane and along best route toward achieving our goals.

3. Whenever possible, let students choose what they want to read and topics they want to learn more about. When they are genuinely interested and motivated to learn about a topic of study, students are apt to sustain interest in thinking about a project over the long haul.

4. Look for opportunities to discuss and apply metacognition across core subjects and in a variety of lessons so that students can transfer it for the most benefit. When Donna has taught this topic, she's often asked students to give examples across academics, in interactions with friends and family, and (for older students) on the job. If she's with young children, she asks them how their parents might use this strategy in their work.

5. Model metacognition by talking through problems. We've found that students learn a lot from listening as their teachers use higher-order thinking strategies aloud. They often laugh when their teachers make "mistakes," and they learn when their teachers stop, recognize the miscue, and step through the process of correcting. This "teachable moment" underscores that everyone makes mistakes, and that mistakes are best seen as opportunities to learn and improve.

How do you ensure that students can choose topics of study that interest them? And what are some of your favorite ways to help students become independent learners? Please tell us about them in the comments section below.

Reference

Stephen M. Fleming. "The Power of Reflection: Insight into Our Own Thoughts, or Metacognition, Is Key to Higher Achievement in All Domains." Scientific American, September/October 2014, pp. 31-37.

For Further Reading

For more information on teaching metacognition, check out our article, " The Boss of My Brain: Explicit Instruction in Metacognition Puts Students in Charge of Their Learning" in ASCD's October issue of Educational Leadership. Find another free resource on this topic at For the Love of Teaching. Here, one of our brain-based teaching graduates, classroom teacher Diane Dahl, blogs about how she introduces metacognition to her second graders.

See also Chapter 6 of Five Big Ideas for Effective Teaching: Connecting Mind, Brain, and Education Research to Classroom Practice. For a discussion on cultivating self-regulation in young children, check out Flourishing in the First Five Years: Connecting Implications from Mind, Brain, and Education Research to the Development of Young Children.

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Metacognition: The Gift That Keeps Giving

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Students who succeed academically often rely on being able to think effectively and independently in order to take charge of their learning. These students have mastered fundamental but crucial skills such as keeping their workspace organized, completing tasks on schedule, making a plan for learning, monitoring their learning path, and recognizing when it might be useful to change course.

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This is an article exploring the concept of the Growth mindset. The article goes through misconceptions on the growth mindset and what really helps in developing a growth mindset. I really liked the examples of encouraging phrases that can be used instead of others. I can use this as a base to know how to best encourage my students in learning.

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Carol Dweck Revisits the 'Growth Mindset' - Education Week

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This is a fascinating article discussing the idea and theory that children grow best and prefer to be challenged in their learning. I found the article interesting because it talked about the growth mindset vs the fixed mindset and how students and people can often feel stuck in one place because they believe that they can't achieve more. I plan on encouraging a growth mindset and offering challenging ideas and concepts to my students to help them in their growth.

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ONE DAY LAST NOVEMBER, psychology professor Carol Dweck welcomed a pair of visitors from the Blackburn Rovers, a soccer team in the United Kingdom's Premier League. The Rovers' training academy is ranked in England's top three, yet performance director Tony Faulkner had long suspected that many promising players weren't reaching their potential. Ignoring the team's century-old motto- arte et labore, or "skill and hard work"-the most talented individuals disdained serious training.

On some level, Faulkner knew the source of the trouble: British soccer culture held that star players are born, not made. If you buy into that view, and are told you've got immense talent, what's the point of practice? If anything, training hard would tell you and others that you're merely good, not great. Faulkner had identified the problem; but to fix it, he needed Dweck's help.

A 60-year-old academic psychologist might seem an unlikely sports motivation guru. But Dweck's expertise-and her recent book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success -bear directly on the sort of problem facing the Rovers. Through more than three decades of systematic research, she has been figuring out answers to why some people achieve their potential while equally talented others don't-why some become Muhammad Ali and others Mike Tyson. The key, she found, isn't ability; it's whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or as something that can be developed.

What's more, Dweck has shown that people can learn to adopt the latter belief and make dramatic strides in performance. These days, she's sought out wherever motivation and achievement matter, from education and parenting to business management and personal development.

As a graduate student at Yale, Dweck started off studying animal motivation. In the late 1960s, a hot topic in animal research was "learned helplessness": lab animals sometimes didn't do what they were capable of because they'd given up from repeat failures. Dweck wondered how humans coped with that. "I asked, 'What makes a really capable child give up in the face of failure, where other children may be motivated by the failure?'" she recalls.

At the time, the suggested cure for learned helplessness was a long string of successes. Dweck posited that the difference between the helpless response and its opposite-the determination to master new things and surmount challenges-lay in people's beliefs about why they had failed. People who attributed their failures to lack of ability, Dweck thought, would become discouraged even in areas where they were capable. Those who thought they simply hadn't tried hard enough, on the other hand, would be fueled by setbacks. This became the topic of her PhD dissertation.

Dweck and her assistants ran an experiment on elementary school children whom school personnel had identified as helpless. These kids fit the definition perfectly: if they came across a few math problems they couldn't solve, for example, they no longer could do problems they had solved before-and some didn't recover that ability for days.

Through a series of exercises, the experimenters trained half the students to chalk up their errors to insufficient effort, and encouraged them to keep going. Those children learned to persist in the face of failure-and to succeed. The control group showed no improvement at all, continuing to fall apart quickly and to recover slowly. These findings, says Dweck, "really supported the idea that the attributions were a key ingredient driving the helpless and mastery-oriented patterns." Her 1975 article on the topic has become one of the most widely cited in contemporary psychology.

Attribution theory, concerned with people's judgments about the causes of events and behavior, already was an active area of psychological research. But the focus at the time was on how we make attributions, explains Stanford psychology professor Lee Ross, who coined the term "fundamental attribution error" for our tendency to explain other people's actions by their character traits, overlooking the power of circumstances. Dweck, he says, helped "shift the emphasis from attributional errors and biases to the consequences of attributions-why it matters what attributions people make." Dweck had put attribution theory to practical use.

She continued to do so as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, collaborating with then-graduate student Carol Diener to have children "think out loud" as they faced problem-solving tasks, some too difficult for them. The big surprise: some of the children who put forth lots of effort didn't make attributions at all. These children didn't think they were failing. Diener puts it this way: "Failure is information-we label it failure, but it's more like, 'This didn't work, I'm a problem solver, and I'll try something else.'" During one unforgettable moment, one boy-something of a poster child for the mastery-oriented type-faced his first stumper by pulling up his chair, rubbing his hands together, smacking his lips and announcing, "I love a challenge."

Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable students thought they lacked ability just because they'd hit a setback. Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while-so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized-and, with colleague Elaine Elliott soon demonstrated-that the difference lay in the kids' goals. "The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something," Dweck says, and "learning goals" inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than "performance goals."

Students for whom performance is paramount want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat. So they pursue only activities at which they're sure to shine-and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in any endeavor. Students with learning goals, on the other hand, take necessary risks and don't worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn. Dweck's insight launched a new field of educational psychology-achievement goal theory.

Dweck's next question: what makes students focus on different goals in the first place? During a sabbatical at Harvard, she was discussing this with doctoral student Mary Bandura (daughter of legendary Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura), and the answer hit them: if some students want to show off their ability, while others want to increase their ability, "ability" means different things to the two groups. "If you want to demonstrate something over and over, it feels like something static that lives inside of you-whereas if you want to increase your ability, it feels dynamic and malleable," Dweck explains. People with performance goals, she reasoned, think intelligence is fixed from birth. People with learning goals have a growth mind-set about intelligence, believing it can be developed. (Among themselves, psychologists call the growth mind-set an "incremental theory," and use the term "entity theory" for the fixed mind-set.) The model was nearly complete (see diagram).

Growing up in Brooklyn in the '50s, Dweck did well in elementary school, earning a spot in a sixth-grade class of other high achievers. Not just any spot, it turned out. Their teacher, Mrs. Wilson, seated the students in IQ order and even used IQ scores to dole out classroom responsibilities. Whether Mrs. Wilson meant to or not, she was conveying her belief in fixed intelligence. Dweck, who was in row 1, seat 1, believes Mrs. Wilson's intentions were good. The experience didn't scar her-Dweck says she already had some of the growth mind-set-but she has shown that many students pegged as bright, especially girls, don't fare as well.

Tests, Dweck notes, are notoriously poor at measuring potential. Take a group of adults and ask them to draw a self-portrait. Most Americans think of drawing as a gift they don't have, and their portraits look no better than a child's scribbles. But put them in a well-designed class-as Betty Edwards, the author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, has-and the resulting portraits look so skilled it's hard to believe they're the work of the same "talentless" individuals. The belief that you can't improve stunts achievement.

Culture can play a large role in shaping our beliefs, Dweck says. A college physics teacher recently wrote to Dweck that in India, where she was educated, there was no notion that you had to be a genius or even particularly smart to learn physics. "The assumption was that everyone could do it, and, for the most part, they did." But what if you're raised with a fixed mind-set about physics-or foreign languages or music? Not to worry: Dweck has shown that you can change the mind-set itself.

The most dramatic proof comes from a recent study by Dweck and Lisa Sorich Blackwell of low-achieving seventh graders. All students participated in sessions on study skills, the brain and the like; in addition, one group attended a neutral session on memory while the other learned that intelligence, like a muscle, grows stronger through exercise. Training students to adopt a growth mind-set about intelligence had a catalytic effect on motivation and math grades; students in the control group showed no improvement despite all the other interventions.

"Study skills and learning skills are inert until they're powered by an active ingredient," Dweck explains. Students may know how to study, but won't want to if they believe their efforts are futile. "If you target that belief, you can see more benefit than you have any reason to hope for."

The classroom workshop isn't feasible on a large scale; for one thing, it's too costly. So Dweck and Blackwell have designed a computer-based training module to simulate the live intervention. Their hip multimedia software, called Brainology, is still in development, but thanks to early buzz from a Time magazine article and Dweck's recent book, teachers have begun clamoring for it, one even asking to become a distributor.

Unlike much that passes for wisdom about education and performance, Dweck's conclusions are grounded in solid research. She's no rah-rah motivational coach proclaiming the sky's the limit and attitude is everything; that's too facile. But the evidence shows that if we hold a fixed mind-set, we're bound not to reach as high as we might.

Although much of Dweck's research on mind-sets has taken place in school settings, it's applicable to sports, business, interpersonal relationships and so on. "Lots and lots of people are interested in her work; it touches on so many different areas of psychology and areas outside of psychology," says Stanford psychology professor Mark Lepper, '66, who as department chair in 2004 lured Dweck away from Columbia, where she'd been for 15 years. "The social psychologists like to say she's a social psychologist; the personality psychologists say she's a personality psychologist; and the developmental psychologists say she's a developmental psychologist," Lepper adds.

By all rights, her appeal should transcend academia, says New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, who is well known for making psychological research accessible to the general public. "One of the most popular pieces I ever did relied very heavily on work done by Carol Dweck," he said in a December interview in the Journal of Management Inquiry. "Carol Dweck deserves a big audience. It is criminal if she does not get that audience." Perhaps Mindset will help; it was written for lay readers.

It certainly cemented Tony Faulkner's belief that Dweck could help the Blackburn Rovers soccer team. Unlike the disadvantaged kids in Dweck's middle-school study, the Rovers didn't think they lacked what it took to succeed. Quite the opposite: they thought their talent should take them all the way. Yet both groups' fixed mind-set about ability explains their aversion to effort.

But aren't there plenty of people who believe in innate ability and in the notion that nothing comes without effort? Logically, the two ideas are compatible. But psychologically, explains Dweck, many people who believe in fixed intelligence also think you shouldn't need hard work to do well. This belief isn't entirely irrational, she says. A student who finishes a problem set in 10 minutes is indeed better at math than someone who takes four hours to solve the problems. And a soccer player who scores effortlessly probably is more talented than someone who's always practicing. "The fallacy comes when people generalize it to the belief that effort on any task, even very hard ones, implies low ability," Dweck says.

Her advice for the Rovers rings true for anyone stuck in a fixed mind-set. "Changing mind-sets is not like surgery," she says. "You can't simply remove the fixed mind-set and replace it with the growth mind-set." The Rovers are starting their workshops with recent recruits-their youngest, most malleable players. (Faulkner realizes that players who've already earned millions from being "naturals" have little incentive to reshape their brains.) The team's talent scouts will be asking about new players' views on talent and training-not to screen out those with a fixed mind-set, but to target them for special training.

In his 2002 essay that relied on Dweck's work, Gladwell cited one of her best-known experiments to argue that Enron may have collapsed precisely because of the company's talent-obsessed culture, not despite it. Dweck's study showed that praising children for intelligence, rather than for effort, sapped their motivation ( see sidebar). But more disturbingly, 40 percent of those whose intelligence was praised overstated their scores to peers. "We took ordinary children and made them into liars," Dweck says. Similarly, Enron executives who'd been celebrated for their innate talent would sooner lie than fess up to problems and work to fix them.

Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer says Dweck's research has implications for the more workaday problem of performance management. He faults businesses for spending too much time in rank-and-yank mode, grading and evaluating people instead of developing their skills. "It's like the Santa Claus theory of management: who's naughty and who's nice."

Leaders, too, can benefit from Dweck's work, says Robert Sternberg, PhD '75, Tufts University's dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Sternberg, a past president of the American Psychological Association, says that excessive concern with looking smart keeps you from making bold, visionary moves. "If you're afraid of making mistakes, you'll never learn on the job, and your whole approach becomes defensive: 'I have to make sure I don't screw up.'"

Social psychologist Peter Salovey, '80, MA '80, dean of Yale College and a pioneer in the field of emotional intelligence, says Dweck's ideas have helped him think through a controversy in his field. Echoing an older debate about the malleability of general intelligence, some scholars say emotional intelligence is largely inborn, while others, like Salovey, see it as a set of skills that can be taught and learned. "People say to me all the time, 'I'm not a people person,' or 'I'm not good at managing my emotions,'" unaware that they're expressing a fixed mind-set, Salovey says.

Stanford psychology professor James Gross has begun extending Dweck's work to emotions. In a recent study, Gross and his colleagues followed a group of Stanford undergrads as they made the transition to college life. Those with a fixed mind-set about emotions were less able to manage theirs, and by the end of freshman year, they'd shown poorer social and emotional adjustment than their growth-minded counterparts.

As she approaches the end of her third year at Stanford, Dweck has embraced the challenge of cross-country culture shock in a manner consistent with the growth mind-set. Nearby San Francisco provides her with the benefits of a great city, she says, including a dining scene that rivals New York's; and the University supplies a more cozy sense of community. She's also brought a bit of the New York theater scene with her in the form of her husband, critic and director David Goldman. He founded and directs the National Center for New Plays at Stanford.

At the Association for Psychological Science convention in May, Dweck will give the keynote address. The topic: "Can Personality Be Changed?" Her short answer, of course, is yes. Moreover, holding a growth mind-set bodes well for one's relationships. In a recent study, Dweck found that people who believe personality can change were more likely than others to bring up concerns and deal with problems in a constructive way. Dweck thinks a fixed mind-set fosters a categorical, all-or-nothing view of people's qualities; this view tends to make you ignore festering problems or, at the other extreme, give up on a relationship at the first sign of trouble. (The growth mind-set, though, can be taken too far if someone stays in an abusive relationship hoping her partner will change; as always, the person has to want to change.)

These days, Dweck is applying her model to kids' moral development. Young children may not always have beliefs about ability, but they do have ideas about goodness. Many kids believe they're invariably good or bad; other kids think they can get better at being good. Dweck has already found that preschoolers with this growth mind-set feel okay about themselves after they've messed up and are less judgmental of others; they're also more likely than kids with a fixed view of goodness to try to set things right and to learn from their mistakes. They understand that spilling juice or throwing toys, for example, doesn't damn a kid as bad, so long as the child cleans up and resolves to do better next time. Now Dweck and graduate student Allison Master are running experiments at Bing Nursery School to see if teaching kids the growth mind-set improves their coping skills. They've designed a storybook with the message that preschoolers can go from "bad" one year to better the next. Can hearing such stories help a 4-year-old handle a sandbox setback?

Dweck's students from over the years describe her as a generous, nurturing mentor. She'd surely attribute these traits not to an innate gift, but to a highly developed mind-set. "Just being aware of the growth mind-set, and studying it and writing about it, I feel compelled to live it and to benefit from it," says Dweck, who took up piano as an adult and learned to speak Italian in her 50s. "These are things that adults are not supposed to be good at learning."

Read a January 2010 update on this story.

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ONE DAY LAST NOVEMBER, psychology professor Carol Dweck welcomed a pair of visitors from the Blackburn Rovers, a soccer team in the United Kingdom's Premier League. The Rovers' training academy is ranked in England's top three, yet performance director Tony Faulkner had long suspected that many promising players weren't reaching their potential.

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This is an article exploring neuroscience and how it relates to student learning. The article gives many benefits to studying neuroscience, including understanding students with learning disabilities and learning problems. I can use this information to adapt my teaching to better accommodate my students in their learning.

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Why does Neuroscience Belong in Classroom Practice?

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"There is nothing more human than the human brain." Educators study childhood development and now as the field of neuroscience expands, why wouldn't educators grasp the opportunity to explore this incredible depth of knowledge to enhance their practice and daily interactions with their students?