Carol Dweck's Fixed Mind-Set As A Student Believing Their Success

Carol Dweck describes fixed mind-set as a student believing their successes and failures reflect how smart they are. While growth mind-set describes a student looking at their successes and failures as an opportunity to learn new abilities and skills. Carol Dweck means fixed mind-set does not look at the effort a student puts in to an assignment, but only the grade they receive. Growth mind-set does focus on the effort a student puts into an assignment. Student’s either have fixed or growth mind-set and this can significantly help or hurt their self esteem.

Most adults do not realize how great of an effect they have on children. For example, if a child does a project for school and receives a good grade, they may have growth mind-set and try to think of the skills they learned. If the child tells his/her parent and the parent says “Wow! You can do projects without trying, you’re so smart”. The student may feel that if they receive a poor grade, their parent will not be proud of them. This is because the student was only praised on their talent, but not their effort. An adult probably did not think this could potentially hurt a child, but it certainly can.

Even as a kindergartener my teacher told my parents that she is amazed by the effort I put into something when I do not understand the lesson. So I would say I have a growth mind-set. This is greatly influenced by my parents and always being praised for the effort I put into my work, inside and outside of school. I did have a teacher that rewarded students for their grades and not effort. I can still remember feeling so ashamed when I did poorly on a reading assessment. This did hurt my self-esteem in academics, but eventually I overcame it and enjoy looking at every task as an opportunity to