The power of believing that you can improve | Carol Dweck | TED
The Power of Yet
In this section, the speaker talks about the importance of having a growth mindset and how it can help individuals overcome challenges.
Not Yet Mindset
- Students in a high school in Chicago who didn't pass a course were given the grade "Not Yet" instead of failing. This helped them understand that they were on a learning curve and gave them a path into the future.
- Having a "Not Yet" mindset gave the speaker insight into an early turning point in her career.
Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset
- Students with a growth mindset understood that their abilities could be developed, while those with a fixed mindset felt that their intelligence had been judged and failed.
- Fixed-mindset students run from errors and don't engage with them, while growth-mindset students engage deeply, process errors, learn from them, and correct them.
Raising Children for Yet
- The speaker questions whether we are raising children for now instead of yet.
- We need to praise wisely by praising effort, strategies, focus, perseverance, and improvement instead of intelligence or talent.
- Rewarding yet can be done by rewarding effort, strategy, progress over getting answers right now.
- Teaching children about growth mindsets can change their mindsets and improve their grades.
Growth Mindset for Equality
- Educators creating growth mindset classrooms steeped in yet can help children who chronically underperform achieve equality.
- A kindergarten class in Harlem, New York scored in the 95th percentile on the national achievement test after a year of being taught with a growth mindset.
Transforming Meaning of Effort and Difficulty
In this section, Carol Dweck talks about how effort and difficulty can transform the meaning of learning. She shares examples of students who were able to improve their academic performance by changing their mindset towards effort and difficulty.
Examples of Students' Improvement
- Fourth-grade students in the South Bronx became the number one fourth-grade class in the state of New York on the state math test.
- Native American students in a school on a reservation went from the bottom of their district to the top, which included affluent sections of Seattle.
- The Native American students outperformed Microsoft kids because they transformed their mindset towards effort and difficulty.
Transformation of Meaning
- Effort and difficulty used to make students feel dumb and give up, but now it's when their neurons are making new connections, stronger connections. That's when they're getting smarter.
- A 13-year-old boy wrote a letter to Carol Dweck saying that he put more effort into his schoolwork, relationships with family and friends, and experienced great improvement in all those areas.
- The boy realized that he wasted most of his life before putting effort into these areas.
Basic Human Right for Children
- It becomes a basic human right for children to live in places that create growth once we know that abilities are capable of such growth.
- All children should live in places filled with "yet" where they can grow.