Psychology - Effects of Learning on Development

• Mindset theory


  Theory about motivation that explains how changing motivation can make students more academically successful
• Fixed mindset

  • Sees ability as outside of their control, set at birth
  • If face a difficult task, assume they can't overcome it and give up
• Growth mindset

  • Sees ability as something that can be improved through learning and practice
  • If face a challenge, are less likely to give up and assume they will be successful if they keep working hard
• People are not completely one or the other, they are somewhere in between with only a few people at the extreme ends
• Growth or fixed mindset can depend on the context
• Praise

  • Thought to be important in developing a growth mindset
  • If only praise success, can be problematic as people may think successful people are just naturally better
  • If praise effort, it's possible for everyone to increase their effort and lead to increased success
• Meaningful praise

  Not just giving out all the time for low effort to make people feel better
• Self-efficacy


  A person's self-belief that they can actually succeed at a task
• Developing self-efficacy

  • Teachers can create classroom experiences where students achieve success with challenging but possible tasks
  • This gets students used to succeeding and expecting to succeed
• There is experimental evidence that supports Dweck's mindset theory
• Dweck's theory has practical applications in providing guidance to teachers on how to help their students achieve academically
• There are criticisms of Dweck's work, as focusing on students having the correct mindset can ignore reasons outside of their control for underperformance
• Research on the application of Dweck's research in schools has shown very limited improvement in school performance
• Learning styles


  Idea that people vary in the way they take in and process information, so teachers should try to match each student's learning style with appropriate classroom activities
• Verbalizers


  • Process information better audibly, in the form of words
• Visualizers

  • Process information better visually, in the form of images, pictures, diagrams, and graphs
• Learning styles was seen as modernizing teaching, moving away from a one-size-fits-all rote learning approach
• Learning styles made teachers focus more on the individual needs of students and use more varied teaching styles in the classroom
• Willingham's learning theory

  • The most appropriate task for teaching children should be the one that matches the content, not the child's learning style
  • Children should be given a range of tasks to improve both their visual and verbal skills
• Willingham thought that the main focus to judge effective learning wasn't the style used, but whether the students actually remembered the information
• There is a large amount of evidence to support Willingham's argument that learning styles is not effective, and very few studies that support learning styles
• Willingham's ideas have been influential for teaching, as he has provided ideas for improving teaching and effectively countered learning theories
• Some people criticize Willingham as rejecting modern forms of teaching and focusing too much on uncreative traditional rote learning