Tag: education

Do “Growth Mindset” interventions improve students’ academic attainment?

“We conducted a systematic review and multiple meta-analyses of the growth mindset intervention literature. Our goal was to answer two questions: (a) Do growth mindset interventions generally improve students’ academic achievement? and (b) Are growth mindset intervention effects due to instilling growth mindsets in students or are apparent effects due to shortcomings in study designs, analyses, and reporting? To answer these questions, we systematically reviewed the literature and conducted multiple meta-analyses imposing varying degrees of quality control. Our results indicated that apparent effects of growth mindset interventions are possibly due to inadequate study designs, reporting flaws, and bias. In particular, the systematic review yielded several concerning patterns of threats to internal validity.”

Here’s a pic:

Macnamara, B. N., & Burgoyne, A. P. (2022). Do growth mindset interventions impact students’ academic achievement? A systematic review and meta-analysis with recommendations for best practices. Psychological Bulletin.

Formal education and training

“[…] formal education and training rarely enhances competence. Instead, the so-called educational system mainly performs sociological functions, like controlling access to protected occupations and legitimising huge disparities in quality of life. These, in turn, have the effect of compelling most people, against their better judgement, to participate in the unethical activities of which modern society is so largely composed – the manufacture and marketing of junk foods, junk toys, junk education and junk research.”

– John Raven (2003, p. 360)

References

John, R. (2003). CPD – What should we be developing? The Psychologist, 16(7), 360–362.

The point of an English degree (Stewart Lee)

‘The universities minister, Michelle Donelan, wants to chop courses where “fewer than 60% of graduates are in professional employment or further study within 15 months of graduating”. She misunderstands the point of studying the arts. […] The point of an English degree is to inspire those who take it with such a love of literature that they spend the next decade serving in bars while trying to complete their Great Work. And if that doesn’t fly, they must become English teachers, handing on the same curse of loving literature to future generations, their collective misery deepening like a coastal shelf, just as our collective understanding of the works grows because of their efforts.’

– Stewart Lee (2022, 3 June). Tory contempt for the arts means we face a second dark age. The Guardian.

Making an effort to meet your students’ needs

“Most of his students were young apprentices in the building trade, and when he walked in to teach his first class he asked them what it was they wanted to learn – what difficulties did they face in their lives that he could really help them with? It turned out that their greatest concern was with lack of sleep. So Colin duly crammed his brain full of the scholarly literature on sleep and set about teaching a term of classes on the art of sleeping. It is a story that has always stayed with me as a teacher, the ultimate example of making an effort to meet your students’ needs.”

– Roman Krznaric on Colin Ward

Education happens between individuals

“At the most fundamental level, education happens between individuals — a personal connection, however long or short, between mentor and student. Whether it’s personally answering a question raised in class, spending twenty minutes working through a tricky idea in office hours, or spending years of close collaboration in a PhD mentorship relationship, the human connection matters to both sides. It resonates at levels far deeper than the mere conveyance of information — it teaches us how to be social together and sets role models of what it is to perform in a field, to think rigorously, to be professional, and to be intellectually mature.”

– Terran Lane, On Leaving Academia