Huge Study Finds Professors' Attitudes Affect Students' Grades (arstechnica.com) 136
A huge study at Indiana University, led by Elizabeth Canning, finds that the attitudes of instructors affect the grades their students earned in classes. The researchers conducted their study by sending out a simple survey to all the instructors of STEM courses at Indiana University, asking whether professors felt that a student's intelligence is fixed and unchanging or whether they thought it could be developed. Then, the researchers were given access to two years' worth of students' grades in those instructors' classes, covering a total of 15,000 students. Ars Technica reports: The results showed a surprising difference between the professors who agreed that intelligence is fixed and those who disagreed (referred to as "fixed mindset" and "growth mindset" professors). In classes taught by fixed mindset instructors, Latino, African-American, and Native American students averaged grades 0.19 grade points (out of four) lower than white and Asian-American students. But in classes taught by "growth mindset" instructors, the gap dropped to just 0.10 grade points. No other factor the researchers analyzed showed a statistically significant difference among classes -- not the instructors' experience, tenure status, gender, specific department, or even ethnicity. Yet their belief about whether a students' intelligence is fixed seems to have had a sizable effect.
The students' course evaluations contain possible clues. Students reported less "motivation to do their best work" in the classes taught by fixed mindset professors, and they also gave lower ratings for a question about whether their professor "emphasize[d] learning and development." Students were less likely to say they'd recommend the professor to others, as well. Is it possible that the fixed mindset professors just happen to teach the hardest classes? The student evaluations also include a question about how much time the course required -- the average answer was slightly higher for fixed mindset professors, but the difference was not statistically significant. Instead, the researchers think the data suggests that -- in any number of small ways -- instructors who think their students' intelligence is fixed don't keep their students as motivated, and perhaps don't focus as much on teaching techniques that can encourage growth. And while this affects all students, it seems to have an extra impact on underrepresented minority students.
The students' course evaluations contain possible clues. Students reported less "motivation to do their best work" in the classes taught by fixed mindset professors, and they also gave lower ratings for a question about whether their professor "emphasize[d] learning and development." Students were less likely to say they'd recommend the professor to others, as well. Is it possible that the fixed mindset professors just happen to teach the hardest classes? The student evaluations also include a question about how much time the course required -- the average answer was slightly higher for fixed mindset professors, but the difference was not statistically significant. Instead, the researchers think the data suggests that -- in any number of small ways -- instructors who think their students' intelligence is fixed don't keep their students as motivated, and perhaps don't focus as much on teaching techniques that can encourage growth. And while this affects all students, it seems to have an extra impact on underrepresented minority students.
Bull (Score:5, Insightful)
Prove to me that is not because one set of professors actually gives fair grades, while the other artificially inflated them...
This study is why people now think social sciences are bullshit. It made horrible racist assumptions at the outset, and then denied the basic truth that some people are smarter than others, regardless of whether they are back, white, green, or polka dot.
Anti science troll whines, news at 11. (Score:1)
Nobody has to prove shit to you. Convincing dumbasses isn't the point of studying something. You're a moron making wild assumptions from the outset and then crying about exactly that. Your complaints have nothing to do with the study.
Also reverse cause and effect - teachers see fact (Score:3)
It's also *possible* that the teachers are observing what happens in their classes, would mean the study is reversing cause and effect. Teachers who see students learn, perhaps because they teach an interesting subject, will think students can learn - because they do. Teachers who see students say "I'm bad at math" - and then proceed to be bad at math, will notice that. It may be both sets of teachers are observing what does happen in their classes - their particular subject in a particular field at a par
Re:Bull (Score:5, Interesting)
I've taught logic in graduate school. The worst thing you can do as a teacher is determine that smartness is baked in. The best thing you can do is assume every student is a budding Einstein if you could just help them along a bit to discover how to learn. By the way, Einstein was no Einstein in school, and not really a very good mathematician.
Jeezus, I hope you never get near students.
Re: Bull (Score:1)
This comment makes no sense, so logic tells me you were a bad logic teacher.
Re: Bull (Score:4, Insightful)
Well since you seen to have conflated the idea that believing people are different is the same thing as assuming anything about your students individually, you're pretty bad at logic. Also you're an arrogant prick.
Re: Bull (Score:4, Interesting)
In the social sciences, by graduate school most of the high IQ demo is already out.
Think about who likes to live in echo chambers? It isn't the smart ones.
Shouldn't they have learned logic before grad school? Sounds like * studies to me.
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I can't speak for graduate school. When I graduated this wasn't a thing here in Germany.
Today I work mostly with 2nd or higher up (of 7) semester undergrads. From my experience I can say that smart people come in all shapes. Here I mean either motivated people or those who are quick to grasp concepts and can solve their problems without a lot of assistance afterwa
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By the way, Einstein was no Einstein in school, and not really a very good mathematician.
When Einstein finished his PhD in Theoretical Physics he was considered one of the top physicists in the world.
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Einstein derived E=MC^2. That's a neater trick than measuring it.
No it isn't (Score:2)
Einstein derived E=MC^2. That's a neater trick than measuring it.
First, he actually derived E^2=p^2c^2+m^2c^4. E=mc^2 is the special case of a body at rest. Secondly deriving an expression is certainly not any neater than testing it experimentally. It is only when we have both theory and experiment consistent with each other that our knowledge advances and devising an experiment to test theory can be just as hard, if not harder, than coming up with the theory in the first place. The Higgs boson is an excellent example of this.
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>he actually derived E^2=p^2c^2+m^2c^4
Yes, professor Moore. Thank you for picking that nit.
Re:Bull (Score:5, Informative)
I know someone very smart, who is currently doing graduate work in logic, who actually bothered to go to a library (perhaps it was Princeton) to take a boo through some of Einstein's original manuscripts.
Somewhere in there, he found something like nine pages of notes over the course of which Einstein essentially taught himself four-dimensional differential geometry. He said it was an extremely efficient self-course, setting a pace he couldn't imagine himself.
Not long ago I audited about five hours of Susskind's introduction to GR. (About 200 hours of Susskind's lectures are available on YouTube.)
Adding the Lorentz transform was pretty straightforward, but then when you add accelerating frames of reference, you're left with a deep problem, which actually stumped Einstein for some while.
Eventually, he wrote down the Einstein metric:
G mu nu = R mu nu - 1/2 R g mu nu
and the rest was history.
Susskind commented that this was quite a bit worse that QED, because gravitation self-interacts far more than EM (I think his analogy was to imagine photons that also carry charge).
Neither of these anecdotes in any way supports the idea of Einstein as a weak mathematician, though clearly his intuition in writing down the right problem greatly exceeded his formal abilities.
My friend concluded that what Einstein really when he commented something to the effect of "if you think you have problems, they're nothing compared to mine" was relative to the task at hand: inventing a whole new metric tensor.
Furthermore, Einstein probably was Einstein in school, it's just that no teacher ever set a test in writing down the right problems (rather than the right answers). Having such a gift at writing down the right problem, one can imagine why he didn't exert himself in the competition to write down answers to the tired problems of yesterday.
This can be viewed through the economic lens of comparative advantage at an individual scale. You might just be the best person alive on the planet at writing down the right problem (this is not easy). Should you invest your marginal effort in developing that capacity, or in polishing apple's for your teacher, using a skillset where you are definitively ordinary (formalism) as compared to Poincare or Riemann? Where being merely Poincare or Riemann would be a definite step down, as compared to your one true gift.
Umm, he almost got into college at 16 (Score:2)
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I've taught logic in graduate school. The worst thing you can do as a teacher is determine that smartness is baked in.
Sure you are not confusing "smartness" with achievement? The bad thing is to let the smart kids slack off and rely on their innate ability. Teachers should praise effort, but acknowledge intelligence.
Einstein was no Einstein in school, and not really a very good mathematician.
Bollocks! That is a complete urban legend. Einstein was brilliant at maths in school, though probably not the equal of his friend Marcel Grossmann, who helped with the maths for GR.
Jeezus, I hope you never get near students.
Its sad that you got near students if you were unable to recognise talent.
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When I taught both UG and Grads, I told my students that as and when their grade improves, all old grades will be thrown out. That is if in the second exam they a B then first exam C will be thrown out. Thus his grade will be "B" in both exam. I reasoned that once you progress in learning you should not be penalized for your past mistakes. A child falls many times and then walks. Can we punish the child.? The second improvement I made was to recognize that students are afraid of exams because of the unknown
Re: Bull (Score:3)
By the way, Einstein was no Einstein in school, and not really a very good mathematician.
Well, I'm just going to assume you are a budding Einstein. Maybe it will allow you to discover how to learn so that you don't parrot that old rubbish the next time the way you just did!
Real world calling, it hopes you join it (Score:1)
The key statement is that your "life" experience in teaching is with graduate students, who have already been selected to be budding Einsteins. So, your assumption would hold true in that case. However, you are not seeing the broader world beyond your own, limited experience.
Now, I am going out on a limb and asserting like so many on these forums, you claim to care
Re: Bull (Score:1)
Did I miss it in TFA? Did anyone review the actual coursework to determine which set of professors were grading more fairly? Study seems incomplete otherwise.
Re: Bull (Score:5, Interesting)
Did anyone review the actual coursework to determine which set of professors were grading more fairly?
They could have both graded fairly. According to the summary, the students felt less motivated and didn't work as hard in the "fixed-mindset" classes. So they may have gotten worse grades because they failed to learn as much and actually deserved worse grades.
Re: Bull (Score:5, Interesting)
Did anyone review the actual coursework to determine which set of professors were grading more fairly?
They could have both graded fairly. According to the summary, the students felt less motivated and didn't work as hard in the "fixed-mindset" classes. So they may have gotten worse grades because they failed to learn as much and actually deserved worse grades.
The importance of teachers and parents on student achievement, independent of a student's supposed intrinsic intelligence, is confirmed by a whole generation of education research. Education researchers are not common on Slashdot, but my wife was one, after being a math teacher and has a PhD in mathematics education. One trick she pulled while doing research in a central Oregon reservation was to stand in for a pregnant teacher for a term (she was there and still had her teaching license, so why not?). The class which for all time had hit a 100% failure fate (to pass standardized exams), magically attained a 100% pass rate for that term and fell back to a 100% fail rate after she left.
Pedagogy research has been done. The results tell how teaching should happen. If you know the research and apply the conclusions, students will succeed. A problem is that this is consistently not done in most schools. Schools still get bogged down in stupid stuff like ability tracking and age delineation. They clearly are broadly ignorant of the results of education research.
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Pedagogy research has been done. The results tell how teaching should happen. If you know the research and apply the conclusions, students will succeed.
I'm inclined to believe this is true, that by now the research has been done and it's fairly well understood how to teach.
My question is, if this is the case, why does it seem like there's still such a wide variety of teaching? Why so many charter schools, differing "systems", etc? Shouldn't research-based teaching methods actually just eliminate the so-called achievement gap, with the remaining poor learners actually a product of poor parenting/poverty?
I feel like how to teach ought to be a fairly solved
New sells. Especially new research in academia (Score:1)
Try selling a weight loss program based on the insight that:
Calories in - calories burned = weight gain/loss
It's a very simple well-known fact. If you burn more calories than you ate, where did the extra calories coke from? From burning fat.
If you eat more food than you burn, whwrw does the extra food go? It stays in your body, which therefore gets bigger.
Yet the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry is centered on "new ideas" to avoid this plainly obvious (and old) fact. Fad diets. Fad workouts. Fad ma
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It's funny, but nutrition and weight loss is one field where the "proven" theory of calories in/calories out has been shown to be at least less axiomatic than it's been thought to be if not less effective than ketogenic diets.
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The ci-co=weight delta, that does not show the arrows of causation.
What changes CI? Hunger.
What changes hunger? Exercise, Hormones, superoxide satiety signalling from the reverse electron transport at the mitochondrial boundary when processing saturated fats.
What changes hormones? The diet composition of carbs, protein, different fat types, different sugar types, sunlight,
What changes CO? Exercise using calories, hormones driving body temperature, hormones signaling muscle building etc.
So exercise alone isn
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>After that comes the modern paedagogicak science and starts selling various snake oils, like teaching and learning styles, nurture, etc.. which is false.
Nope. A lot of the recent science was fine and the bad stuff is easily identified. There are good and bad ways to teach and we know better what they are than we did in renaissance times. It is known how to teach people across the social spectrum. I described a situation where my wife succeeded with the supposedly most 'unteachable' demographic. What did
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Presumably American universities have systems in place to make sure that grading is fair and consistent between courses.
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Prove to me that is not because one set of professors actually gives fair grades, while the other artificially inflated them....
Exactly that! If you look at the graph comparing grades, you will see that the "fixed mindsets" generally gave lower grades. This could be interpreted as being more demanding or rigorous and not inflating the grades. With more rigorous testing you will get a bigger difference between higher and lower performing students, because the grades will be spread over larger interval (reflected by the larger error margins in their data).
If the authors of the article want me to believe them, I want to see the grades
common knowledge (Score:2, Insightful)
none of this is news, in fact it's well known. The entire reason for institutionalized learning is to make sure people are indoctrinated into a certain world view and this is not a slant at any particular political group. That is how everyone does it.
One of my absolute favorite proofs of this is Seminary. Every time I meet a preacher than talks about attending seminary I ask them. Why did you attend? Then I ask them, if they would have paid any attention to any of the actual Prophets of the Bible... be
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He believes in prophets. He is _clearly_ nuts.
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"Do you think people go to seminary in the hope that they become prophets?"
There is never any end to straw man arguments you guys have.
What I believe is not even the point, it is what the person attending seminary believes. I bet some think they might become prophets by attending, but what does that have to do with me?
I am just using Seminary as an example of nothing more than other people giving other people papers that they somehow are in the know about God or Religion. The entire purpose of institution
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Really? What evidence do you have a G-d choosing anything? Don't hold back, lay it on us.
Re: common knowledge (Score:2)
If you can accept that God exists in the first place, then the evidence is straightforward: The world exists, therefore God chose to create it.
...or someone created it for him. Lack of imagination, perhaps?
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I can't speak for all Gods, but if you read any religions there is in the vast majority of cases a prophet or an Avatar of of their choosing.
Your problem is that you think I need to prove something like this, when the problem is entirely something different.
Is a person a police officer or lawyer because they graduated college? No they are not... they must first be granted those positions by someone in Actual Authority, the same would be for any god you can think of.... or are you operating under the idea t
Not exactly (Score:4, Informative)
Over time education like I described above (intended for the working class) was mixed with principles of an entirely different branch of education: what the ruling class gets. This is where "well rounded" educations came from. The idea was to teach critical thinking skills to people who didn't think critically by nature. You typically did this with the liberal arts instead of STEM because while there's no value in getting a math problem half right there _is_ value in being half right on your critical understanding of a book.
The "well rounded" education is used to make sure your offspring can go off and effectively run your dynasty when your old/dead. You needed them to think critically or they'd get killed by an ambitious member of your court.
In an proper world without the constant meddling of the ruling class everyone would get both a practical (working class) education and the "well rounded" one that was usually reserved for the ruling class. You might not know this, but you want this. You want this a lot. Ignorant people make bad decisions. If you're a member of the ruling class you can exploit those bad decisions for your gain. If you're not those people become an angry mob and kill you. Or you join the mob, which sounds fun until you stop and think about the decades of poverty that lead up to you joining that mob.
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You are fairly spot on!
And you are right, I do want ALL people to receive both a practical and well rounded education. But the problem is that most people do not want this. They will say that they do, but they don't. They do want indoctrination, they want people to be raised by a specific belief system. Why do you think they don't want religion discussed in schools? I want all possible religions to be taught and freely discussed, this can be done without indoctrination. I want all ideas to be discusse
Re:Not exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
The story is all so nice and neat, but a lot of is back-fitted crap, like the stuff about bells.
School was often taught in Churches, they were already using the Church bells for whatever events happened at the school. Later, electricity made bells easy to install everywhere. It is a basic aid for group activities, used by nearly every type of human activity. The only reason to connect it to factory bells is when you're just making up history as imagined by a popular narrative.
More real was that basic education was seen as being needed so that workers grow up able to read instructions, and weigh, measure, and time things. But there was never really a gap where it wasn't understood that a well-rounded education was more effective even at teaching to weigh and measure. That was always understood. It is simply that the schools were being provisioned from different sources of money than the traditional upper class education; a teacher who can read and write is enough when you want to save money. And some of them will be good anyways, so you'll end up with lots of educated workers.
Even now with all the access to information it is difficult to get people to separate what they imagine from what they know. They don't bother to think about, "if I was hired as a school teacher in that era, what instructions would I be given?" Where does the conspiracy to condition children to bells come from? How would the instruction be given? How would a teacher who had to purchase supplies out of the budget for their pay know that they were required to purchase the bell? Or would they only buy it because it was a major convenience for them? Is it possible that the rich kids didn't have bells, because they had private tutors and it didn't serve any purpose?
In Merry Olde England, when the peasants were gathered around the square waiting for alms, (a free cup of soup and a beer, basically) did the church ring the bell to tell them it was time? Did pre-industrial American farm kids come running when a dinner bell was rung? Can you imagine living on a farm with people spread out all over the place and not being used to banging on a noise-maker at dinner time?!
You're missing the point (Score:2)
Anyway, yes, they came running for Alms. Got them. Left.
The point was regimentation. Bells were just the most obvious example of that. The entire education was to get you ready to work in a factory.
Yeah, Churches taught a bit too. Go look up pre-Industrial revolution literacy rates sometime. They were very few, very far between. A few religious kooks spreading the word of God. The ones who taught kids to read were sometimes killed bec
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The entire purpose, the reason, for education the kids was so they could be better factory workers.
There is no need to backfit nonsense about regimentation, when regimentation is how you manage to teach groups. There is no mystery there to solve with a conspiracy. There is no dishonest purpose, or surprising element. There is simply modern ignorance, and the back-fitting of data-points that for some odd reason seem surprising to you, but are actually required elements in the first place for basic reasons.
Th
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Institionalised learning dates back to Babylon (Score:2)
So you're making the usual American mistake of forgetting anything OLD OLD. Greece and Rome had academies of learning, and the kids of the upper classes went to school etc etc.
Yep, and I'm not Babylonian (Score:2)
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In Christian theology, Prophets are regular humans who are assigned some divine task by God. They are not given any sort of special access to wisdom by this act, though they sometimes receive assistance via miracles.
It is not even clear that it is any sort of reward. It is clear that they're not selected based on religious learning. It seems to be more that God decides on having a Prophet for some task, and assigns whoever is walking past.
But good luck even finding a preacher who would put the words of Jesu
You're confusing 'prophet' and 'teacher' (Score:2)
Which the NT clearly separate.
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I confuse nothing.
John 14:26 - "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."
Prophets are sent to lead you to the path, which leads you to the Holy Ghost, whereby you are then instructed. Are you saying humans are the teachers and refute what Christ said as written in the bible?
The search for truth is like a teacher, not a human passing around little pieces of paper
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Acts 17 records Agabus as a prophet. 1 Cor 12, 2 Peter 2 and Eph 4 all clearly separate the two ministries. It is the role of the evangelist - yet another ministry - to lead people to the path.
We need churches where all these ministries are active and healthy; the alternative - too often seen in churches led by a single person - is that only that person's ministry is well developed in the life of the church, and much else fails to happen. That's not the route to a healthy church.
Yeah there is nothing more motivating (Score:2)
than taking a required class with 500 of your closest friends and than trying to talk to one of the two TAs who are apparently failing English as a second or third language.
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taking a required class with 500 of your closest friends and than trying to talk to one of the two TAs who are apparently failing English as a second or third language.
Bah, you think that's bad? When I went to college the first time (at 17) my Algebra instructor himself had an impenetrable Chinese accent, at least to me and several others in the class who would all look at one another in puzzlement when he dropped a particularly mush-mouthed gem. I couldn't understand a goddamn thing he was saying, and eventually had to drop out. I'm still crap at math.
Another person I know took [teaching] "Engrish as second ranguage" with "Doctor Kah" who would say "Ok, this be on test,
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I had a similar experience. I took Calculus 2 at the local community college from a native speaker. But he wouldn't assign homework, instead he expected us to study on our own and come to him with any questions. I don't work well without structure, so eventually I had to drop out.
I took the same class again, with the same result.
Then I took the class at the University. The teacher was an old Chinese man with a thick accent. But he assigned homework every day and took the time to explain things until we all
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instead he expected us to study on our own and come to him with any questions
I completed an entire BSc math degree where almost every course was like that. The first year courses had some home work which would count for the final mark, but almost every course after that we were left alone and you didn't need to talk to anyone ever, and had to face a 3 hour final exam. If you were having trouble, there were student course forums, or you could ask your tutor.
As everyone was an adult, you were expected to study as an adult and you were not spoon fed. I take it that is not the case in U
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This was a problem for me at a major midwestern University in the mid-80s. I had a calculus TA who literally never spoke any intelligible English and generally communicated with grunts, pointing and occasionally a word or two written on the blackboard (either "QUIZ" or "QUESTION"). I actually tried asking questions once and he just did did some sample problem solving in front of me with no actual explanation in any spoken language. We had a professor who was a perfect English speaker the other 3 days a w
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As a senior in college I lived in an apartment off campus with a graduate roommate. He told me of how he applied for a job at the university and part of the application was an English aptitude test. I guess the school got tired of complaints on teaching assistants being unable to speak proper English and tested everyone that applied. He said he scored a bit lower than average because of his dyslexia but still got a job as a teaching assistant. He was from Michigan and the majority of the students would
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You obviously had not known many English speaking teachers in other countries.
True.
English speaking expats (including teachers and professors) are most notorious for never ever learning the local language even after working in another country for one or two decades.
Well, that's sad, but I'm talking about being understandable. I'd not only want to learn the local language, but also use my best TV news accent (i.e. deaccented) when speaking English so as to be as understandable as possible, and also to teach students to be as understandable as possible. Anything else is irresponsible.
Interesting to read (Score:1)
I am a college instructor, and can understand the concern here. I will admit to being surprised by the quiet student who does not seem to get the material and then nails the exam.
Who to hire? (Score:2)
Want a person who can code?
Who was able to learn to code?
Who entered college with the skills to study and who has the ability to study?
Could pass real exams under exam conditions and show they had real academic ability over years of education?
Who will enter the workforce ready with new skills and the ability to learn new skills?
With a real degree and the ability to code as their professional qualifications sho
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None of these types of professors believe that anyone can learn anything without their personal assistance.
Honestly (Score:4, Interesting)
If I can get serious for just a moment, I believed that coming from a place of love and respect made for better student outcomes. I didn't teach STEM or anything, but I was considered a hard grader and expected a fair amount from students (especially grad students). When I was just a newly-minted lecturer, back in the '80s, I had a colleague tell me that it's important to be invested in the success of your students. You're not just pumping gas. That always stuck with me.
I know folks bullied by their teachers (Score:2)
It wasn't all the time. The Gym teachers almost always did it. I just happened to be at a school where it didn't happen much, but I was pretty horrified years later when some nerd friends of mine talked about i
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for being nerdy or just plain weird & ugly. Growing up a nerd I hung out with nerds but I was relatively normal. I hadn't noticed it but a lot of the extreme nerds (or worse, the LGBTQ kids had it rough) were being actively shit on by their teachers... up to and including the school principal.
My first notably negative experience in school was in third grade. We had a teacher there for literally only one year (so I got to experience him) who was a lazy asshole. I'd regularly finish my work before everyone else (and got great marks, mind you) and then I'd be expected literally to lay my head on my desk and wait quietly for the other children to catch up. He didn't have any more work to give me, because that would be work for him. Problem is, I was already growing to be larger than the other kids,
Standardised tests? (Score:2, Insightful)
Are they hinting at assessment bias? Are these scores given by professors for written answers, projects, theses - from standardised multi-choice tests - or both?
Why is this not mentioned?
A hint is that the article uses "underrepresented minorities" as a euphemism for lower-intelligence minorities - Asians and Jews not included. So IQ is likely to be key here. If you control for SAT scores, does the racial "bias" disappear? My guess would be "yes".
It is true that intelligence, at least the measur
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The most interesting result I saw wasn't mentioned in the summary and barely mentioned in TFA. The fixed mindset professors graded about 0.2 points lower than the growth m
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Why are you assuming that any of the grades are inflated? It's entirely possible that the fixed professors grade lower because they are worse at teaching.
Let's say we have a class that has multiple sections taking the same tests. If your belief is that your student's abilities are fixed, and the first quiz has your kids doing worse then the growth-minded-guy teaching the other section, you are not likely to change your teaching style. It's not your fault your kids cannot comprehend your brilliance. OTOH if
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Standardized tests can work well or fail absolutely, it has a lot to do with the methods of teaching, and the subject at hand as well. Subject-fact tests generally are better, because they require you to understand the knowledge that's been gained and apply it to the problem. Regurgitation of information doesn't get you any points. The most difficult exams I've ever taken are open-book subject fact tests. Not only do you have to understand the content of the question being asked, you need to reference t
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A hint is that the article uses "underrepresented minorities" as a euphemism for lower-intelligence minorities
Ah, the old supremacist myth that some arbitrary races are just inherently dumber. Rather undermined by the fact that the mere fact that the professor thought they might be able to improve resulted in a significant narrowing of the gap.
It is true that intelligence, at least the measurable part, is fairly fixed for individuals, so the professors teaching the hardest subjects (advanced maths and physics) are more likely to express the "fixed mindset", while those teaching the more wishy-washy liberal arts subjects like biology and chemistry, where attitude and hard work achieve more, are more likely to lean in the "growth mindset" direction.
Except that, again, here we have results in non-wishy-washy STEM subjects, including hard ones like maths and physics. As the study notes, the actual course doesn't seem to have any effect, the only variable that caused a significant change was the belief by the teacher that
Lower or Higher? (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's possible, but not necessary. Performance scales of any kind are generally nonlinear, usually something like a logistic curve. So a beneficial effect tends to create more of a boost in the middle than at the top. Also, poorer students might not have good influences from home, so a great teacher makes more of a difference.
A 90% student might go up to 95% with a great teacher, but a 50% student might jump much more than 5%.
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Could just be compensation for a prior lifetime of lack of encouragement and negative stereotypes.
Did the same profs studied issue the grades? (Score:2)
If I understand the article correctly, the grades that are being compared were issued to the students by the very same professors who were being categorized as "fixed" or "growth" mindset.
I expect that a "fixed mindset" professor would obviously assign a lower grade to students they considered of lower intelligence.
If that really is the takeaway from this study then I fail to see cause for surprise in the result.
What I noticed (Score:5, Interesting)
Teachers that took attendance every day and docked you for absences tended to be the teachers who's handouts were copies of copies of copies of 20 year old crap. Not to mention the lectures were useless. Best plan was to find out when the tests and quizzes were and what they covered, and skipped class. But skipping class cost you big time.
Teachers who's lectures were not to be missed. Fark the tests and quizzes, if you wanted to understand the subject you went to the lectures.
Goes without saying the first group of teachers had tenure and didn't care, the second group did not have tenure and did care.
YMMV, there was variation in mine.
How about the non minority students? (Score:2)
No shit. (Score:3, Funny)
Why to you think colleges are such intersectional, communist crybaby spaces now?
Could it be this? (Score:4, Interesting)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
If memory serves there is the opposite effect, i.e. you can stunt the growth of someone if you act as if they are "lost cause".
Teacher should be aware of those and be carefully not to let the talented become lazy or the less talented to give up...
Or maybe: tough courses cause poor grades (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is the full article: STEM faculty who believe ability is fixed have larger racial achievement gaps and inspire less student motivation in their classes [sciencemag.org]
Being a teacher, this kind of thing is important to me. And this article irritates me, because I think they get things exactly backwards. The article specifically examines the performance of two groups of students: white/asian vs. black/latino/native-american. The latter group is implicitly assumed to be disadvantaged by the fact that their average, group intelligence is lower than the first group. The hypothesis being that, if your teacher thinks you're less intelligent, you will do more poorly in class that you should.
Interestingly: the article states that there was no discernable grouping amongst the teachers. Teachers and their beliefs were evenly distributed across all ethnicities, genders, ages, etc.. So this isn't a claim of racism or genderism, but simply a claim that teachers with particular views are poorer teachers. This is measured by the fact that their students received poorer grades.
I think this is the critical flaw in the study: Those grades are assigned by the teachers themselves. There is no objective measure of student capability. Teachers with "tough" courses will, on average, give out lower grades. And lower still to the less capable students.
I teach introductory courses - filter courses - at my university. An essential part of my job is to fail students who are unlikely be unable to complete the course of study. Hence, I give lower grades than instructors in other courses later in the program, after the incapable students have been eliminated. I've been doing this a long time, and I have come to the view that students either have certain aptitudes, or they don't. I submit that I have come to this "fixed mindset" view by observation: teaching thousands of students, failing those who cannot develop the necessary skills, and passing those who can. My role as a teacher is precisely that: to help them develop skills. If they are incapable of doing so despite my best efforts? Then they are in the wrong program of study.
In other words, it's not a "fixed mindset" that causes an instructor to hand out poor grades, but the other way around: someone who teaches teaches tough courses will come to recognize that student aptitudes are largely inherent. There are exceptions: I've seen talented students fail through laziness, and marginal students get through with sheer grit and determination. Those exceptions, by their very rarity, serve to underscore the general pattern.
Finally, one must comment on the student evaluations. Students in courses that handed out better grades were more likely to have liked the course. That's not a surprise, that comes close to a law of nature. However, the study misses a great opportunity here. The authors admit that my theory (about tough courses being the root cause) might be true:
"It is possible that faculty who endorse fixed mindset beliefs create more demanding coursesâ"requiring students to spend more time studying and preparing for their course. If this is true, then differences in studentsâ(TM) performance and psychological experiences might be explained by the demands of these courses (instead of professorsâ(TM) mindset beliefs)."
One of the questions in student evaluations ("how much time did this course require?") would have been a good indication of course difficulty. Unfortunately, the study does not seem to have tested this hypothesis, or at least, the paper makes no mention of it. A cynic might wonder if they did do the analysis, but perhaps it didn't support the desired results. After all: "tough courses lead to lower grades" would hardly be a conclusion worthy of publication.
Re: (Score:2)
wrong assumption (Score:1)
It does not matter if intelligence is fixed or not. The kind of things learned and tested for depend on how much work is spent to be able to reproduce information. They don't depend on intelligence.
A good test is designed to provide all the answers in the question. Leaving it to the test subjects intelligence to extract them, showing intelligence. Good tests are rare, favoring people who can reproduce information.
What a stupid headline (Score:1)
hmm (Score:2)
An alternate possibility is that those with the "fluid" belief subtly alter their teaching and grading activities to produce the results they want to see (or at least results that are closer to what they want to see).
But who knows. It could be that, on average, holding an irrational belief actually produces better classroom results.
IQ is genetic (Score:2)
In sports we recognize that different genetics correlate to performance. We also recognize that while someone is generally athletic different genetics leads to different physical attributes which correlate to performance in different sports, or different positions within a team sport.
Take building a football team as an example. A coach would want the guys doing the defending to be big and strong, but not necessarily fast. The people doing the catching would have to be fast, but not necessarily strong. T
Work at it (Score:2)
Probably a sign of weakness (Score:2)
Professor is a hard ass. Student doesn't step up. Result.
Why should everyone be expected to be "positive, encouraging, nurturing" etc.
Why can't we expect people to step up, to show up rather than expect someone else to bust themselves to help them?
Re: (Score:2)
Thats why the USA did all that decades of academic and IQ testing.
To ensure every fry cook with academic ability could get a full academic scholarship on merit.
Lots of great smart people did part time and night work to pay for college.
They showed they could study and kept on doing great when at college.
Their professional US qualifications reflected real academic ability f