However, according to one of the world’s leading social psychologists, celebrating such minor childhood victories will only turn boys and girls into lazy pupils, reluctant to learn and more likely to cheat and lie.
In a keynote address, Professor Carol Dweck from Stanford University in California told the Scottish Learning Festival that it was her “mission” to root out pointless “intelligence praise” in schools. She also condemned TV shows such as The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent for giving young people a warped sense of success.
“It is never necessary to praise intelligence,” said Dweck. “I believe that Scotland did not have a long history of praise and that in the past few years educators have been learning to be more encouraging. That’s why it is so important that Scotland learns from the mistakes of the US and does not go down the path of praising intelligence, but learns to develop a habit of praising ‘process’.”
Dweck’s research over 15 years suggests that, when children who get top marks are praised for their intelligence, they do not develop as learners. Instead the praise encourages them to believe their cleverness is innate and good results will come easily. This, she says, is a “fixed mindset”.
She found that children with fixed mindsets did not become robust pupils and their marks eventually declined – and also that they were more likely to cheat and lie to cover up their deteriorating grades.
In contrast, children who were praised for the effort they put into getting their marks – the “process” of learning – fared better, and their marks steadily rose. Dweck labelled this “a growth mindset”.
“I was surprised that one sentence of praise would make children into learners or non-learners,” said Dweck. “I was surprised by how a relatively short intervention can change their grades. I understood that through intelligence praise, parents and educators were not helping children. I had a mission. I needed to save children from intelligence praise.”
Giving gold stars, the traditional form of rewarding good marks, should only be done with great caution, she added. “You just have to think, ‘What message am I sending?’ And sometimes with a gold star you are saying that learning of itself is not rewarding, that you need something external to tell you that you’ve done well.”
Since she began her research and published the 2006 book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she has received scores of letters from adults who were told they were geniuses or prodigies when they were at school. “So they waited, and nothing happened,” she said. “They never amounted to anything because people gave them this false promise – maybe not explicitly – that because they were a genius they would be a huge success in life.”
Television talent shows also encourage fixed mindsets, she believes, and give out “harmful messages” to children. “They can make people think, ‘If I don’t have talent I am not going to be a success,’” she said. “Most of us don’t feel we were necessarily born with a huge talent, but most of us can develop incredible skills. Or someone who has talent can just think, ‘Success will come and find me,’ without realising how much work people do before they are discovered.”
Dweck’s comments have had a mixed response among Scottish educationalists. Judith Gillespie from the Scottish Parent Teacher Council disagreed that children’s intelligence should never be praised. “Bright people need praise,” she said. “They need praise just for achieving in the same way less bright children need praise. I’m sorry, but if a bright kid is getting 100%, even if it involves no effort whatsoever, they will still misinterpret that if they are not told ‘well done’. You should not deny praise to bright children for doing well.”
School Leaders Scotland (SLS), the body representing head teachers, said it agreed with Dweck’s message but warned against a blanket ban on praising intelligence. Ken Cunningham, SLS general secretary, said: “For me it’s always about getting the balance right and meeting the needs of the actual youngster. There are some young people who need praise and some who need to be told they are quite clever – but people need to understand that you have to work hard to get there.”
Margaret Sutherland is an education lecturer at the University of Glasgow. As coordinator of the Scottish Network for Able Pupils, she works with some of the brightest children in Scotland. She said Dweck’s work had “credence” and encouraged teachers to engage with it.
“It is not about never saying anything positive,” she said. “It is about how you construct your feedback. If a highly able child gets a good mark after putting no effort in, and yet the feedback they get is how clever they are, their reaction might be: ‘Is that all you want? Then that’s all I’ll give you.’ So they learn
to underachieve.”
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