Posted on June 1, 2008 by Rebecca Valentine in - Practice Motivators
I had the pleasure recently of hearing Dr. Carol Dweck speak about her research on children’s motivation. Her research findings are very relevant to us as music teachers.
To sum up her ideas in a nutshell, she has found that praising a child’s intelligence, ability, and/or talent, actually decreases his/her level of motivation and therefore limits the child’s achievement. The reason for this is that children who are praised based on their intelligence or ability develop a “fixed mindset,” which causes them to believe that their level of intelligence is what it is and cannot be changed, whereas children who are praised for their effort and hard work develop a “growth mindset,” which means that they believe they can positively effect their level of intelligence/talent/ability through their own effort. Children with a growth mindset are more motivated to work harder and achieve more because they feel that this hard work will pay off in a very meaningful way. The fixed mindset children may be reluctant to put forth effort, because they are afraid of losing their intelligent or talented status if they try but fail.
In a practical sense, this means that as teachers we need to avoid making comments such as “You’re such a great cellist,” “You have a wonderful ear,” or “You are so musical.” Instead praise the students with remarks such as “You must have really practiced hard, because this has improved a lot since last week,” “I can tell you are really listening carefully to intonation,” “Wow, you’ve done great work on the phrasing.”
I believe this research (or similar research) is also mentioned in the book Einstein Never Used Flashcards, which is an interesting and relevant read for other reasons as well.