Goals & Mindsets

Question 1

Why do we set goals?

Answer 1

Goals are related to who we want to be
- The Ideal Self

Goals are related to who we think we are
- The Actual Self

Actual Self -> Ideal Self
- Motivating or Devastating?

Question 2

Goals

Answer 2

Achievement Goals

• Mastery
• Performance
  
  • Approach
  • Avoidance

Other Goals

• Work-Avoidance Goals
• Social Goals
• Career Goals

Question 3

Achievement Goals

Answer 3

Mastery Goal
- Focused on acquiring knowledge or mastering a skill

Performance Goal
- Focused on performance in the eyes of others

Question 4

Achievement Goals

Answer 4

Performance-approach Goal
- Want to display competency and garner approval

Performance-avoidance Goal
- Doesn’t want to display incompetency and receive unfavorable judgements

Question 5

Jane, Joan, June Example

Answer 5

3 girls are playing basketball and all want to play well for different reasons:

• Jane: I want to show everyone how good I am (Performance-approach Goal)
• Joan: I really don’t want to screw this up (Performance-avoidance Goal)
• June: I want to be a better player (Mastery goal)

Question 6

Mastery vs Performance Goals

Answer 6

Mastery

• More intrinsically motivated
• Seek out challenges
• Interpret failure as need for more effort
• Remain calm during tests
• Achieve at higher levels

Performance

• More extrinsically motivated
• Avoid tasks that might reveal incompetence
• Interpret failure as lack of ability
• Feel anxious during tests
• Doesn’t necessarily mean they achieve at lower levels

Question 7

Encouraging Mastery & Performance Goals

Answer 7

Mastery

• Describe intrinsic value of learning a skill
• Focus attention on progress being made
• Communicate role of understanding over rote memorization
• Have students explain and justify their reasoning

Performance (Places emphasis more on looking good than learning!)

• Post best papers on the wall
• Score tests on a curve
• Remind students that good grades are needed for college/grad school
• Emphasize desire to beat other students/teams

Question 8

Work-Avoidance Goals

Answer 8

• When someone either doesn’t want to do the task, or exert as little effort as possible
• What do they do?
• Why? (Lack of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation)

Question 9

Social Goals

Answer 9

Our goals direct our social behavior (good/bad):

Want to feel powerful?
- Become a bully

Want to be liked/popular?
- Adopt that practices of the social group you want to join

Want to gain the teacher's approval?
- Work hard in class and participate

Question 10

Career Goals

Answer 10

Solidify as we grow older

Often guided by cultural norms, familial expectations

Gender stereotypes

• Helping professions
• Work/family balance

Question 11

Goal Intersectionality

Answer 11

Our goals can

• Overlap
• Conflict
• Exist separately

Question 12

In-Class Activity about goals (Are my goals mastery or performance-based?)

Answer 12

Are my goals mastery or performance-based?

• Mastery Goal: Focused on acquiring knowledge or mastering a skill
• Performance Goal: Focused on performance in the eyes of others

Question 13

Carol Dweck’s Research

Answer 13

These are attributions!

Fixed mindset
- Entity theory of intelligence

Growth mindset
- Incremental theory of intelligence

Question 14

Fixed Mindset

Answer 14

(i.e., “entity view”)

Intelligence is stable, uncontrollable, fixed

Ability can’t be changed

• Mistakes can be devastating
• View difficulties as obstacles and more likely t give up
• Learned helplessness is common

Question 15

Growth Mindset

Answer 15

AKA “Incremental View”

Intelligence is unstable, controllable, changing

Challenges are energizing, not intimidating

Ability can be changed over time

• Mistakes can increase effort
• View difficulties as challenges to be overcome
• Effort will lead to improvement

Question 16

Praising Intelligence vs. Effort (The Effects of Praise)

Answer 16

The Effects of Praise

• Children praised for their intelligence solved significantly fewer problems after a failure than they had before encountering difficulty
• In contrast, children praised for their effort solved more problems after their brush with adversity than they bad before it

Question 17

Growth vs. Fixed Mind-Set (Mind-set and Math Grades)

Answer 17

Mind-Set and Math Grades

• Students who believed intelligence is malleable (growth mindset line) earned higher math grades in the fail of 7th grade than those who believed in static intelligence (fixed mind-set line)
  
  • Even though the two groups had equivalent math achievement test scores in the 6th grade
• The grades of the growth mind-set group then improved significantly over the next two years, whereas the grades of the fixed mind-set students declined

Question 18

How to Encourage a Growth Mindset

Answer 18

• Focus on effort!
• Praise for persistence, not intelligence
• Tell success stories emphasizing hard work & effort achieve goals
• Emphasize change through effort
• See mistakes as opportunities for learning
• Teach about the brain as a learning machine

Question 19

Praising Effort, not success or intelligence (examples)

Answer 19

• I like the way you tried a lot of different strategies on that math problem until you finally got it
• That was a hard English assignment, but you stuck with it until you got it done
• I like that you took on a challenging project for your science class. You are going to learn a lot of great things.
• Mistakes are so interesting. Here’s a wonderful mistake. Let’s see what we can learn from it

Question 20

Self-efficacy

Answer 20

Belief in one’s capacity to succeed at tasks
- Can be about general ability or specific tasks performance

Judgement of confidence

Context-sensitive

“Can I do this?”

“How well can I do this?”

Question 21

Self-efficacy Influences

Answer 21

• The choices we make
• The effort we put forth
• How long we persist
• How we feel

Question 22

High Self-Efficacy

Answer 22

• See challenging problems as tasks to be mastered, rather than threats to be avoided
• Develop greater intrinsic interest and focus in their activities
• Set challenging goals and demonstrate a stronger sense of commitment to them
• Quickly recover their self-efficacy following setbacks and disappointments (Bandura, 1994)

Question 23

Low Self-Efficacy

Answer 23

• Avoid difficult tasks and view them as personal threats
• Have a weak commitment to their goals and believe that difficult tasks and situations are beyond their capabilities
• Dwell on personal failings and negative outcomes, rather than how to succeed
• Quickly lost faith in their personal abilities and easily develop depression and stress (Bandura, 1994)

Question 24

Learned Helplessness

Answer 24

Learned helplessness: The belief that we can’t change the course of negative events, that failure is inevitable and insurmountable

Is a response to failure, NOT success

Is a control - NOT a competence - problem

Seligman* key theorist

Question 25

Learned Helplessness Example (Seligman)

Answer 25

Animals must learn to jump barrier to avoid shock

Question 26

Learned Helplessness and Students

Answer 26

- "Students that are repeatedly exposed to school failure are particularly at risk for the development of learned helplesness" (Sutherford & Singh, 2004)

Question 27

Overcoming Learned Helplessness

Answer 27

- Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy | - Change attributions from pessimistic to optimistic and more realistic