This post was written by Pablo Toledo, Rush Soccer’s Sporting Project Director.
In this is remarkable study, Carol Dweck and her team researched for over a decade the effects of praise on students, reaching some amazingly revealing results of the effects of praising by ability vs effort. This study involved a series of experiments on over 400 fifth graders from all over the country.
In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it. — Carol Dweck, Stanford University
Carol S. Dweck (born October 17, 1946) is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Dweck is known for her work on the mindset psychological trait. She taught at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Illinois before joining the Stanford University faculty in 2004.
Did you know that having a growth mindset is one of the main psychological traits of the most successful people?
It is, and what makes it even more remarkable, is that we (coaches and parents) are main actors in the development of these mindsets in our children. The way we praise them has a profound impact on the beliefs they develop. This is not an academic, theoretical post. It matters because this is what we do from the sideline, coaching training sessions, talking in our ride home, or at dinner.
This is, to me, one of the most important things I’ve learned in my life, and the reason for that is that I realized how much of a fixed mindset I had growing up and how that limited my potential. I’ve changed for the better since I learnt this. I wish I had known it before.
Now I have as one my top priorities to contribute to the development of a growth mindset in my children and the players I work with.
Watch this five minutes video please, and I can assure you that you will too.