Clearly, something new is needed if schools are to break out of this traditional,
aptitude-centered mentality and make it possible for young people
to acquire the kinds of mental habits needed to lead productive, fulfilling
lives. We need a definition of intelligence that is as attentive to robust
habits of mind as it is to the specifics of thinking processes or knowledge
structures. We need to develop learning goals that reflect the belief that
ability is a continuously expandable repertoire of skills, and that through a
person’s efforts, intelligence grows incrementally.
Incremental thinkers are likely to apply self-regulatory, metacognitive
skills when they encounter task difficulties. They are likely to focus on analyzing
the task and trying to generate and execute alternative strategies.
They will try to garner internal and external resources for problem solving.
When people think of their intelligence as something that grows incrementally,
they are more likely to invest the energy to learn something new
or to increase their understanding and mastery of tasks. They display continued
high levels of task-related effort in response to difficulty. Learning
goals are associated with the inference that effort and ability are positively
related, so that greater efforts create and make evident more ability.
Children develop cognitive strategies and effort-based beliefs about
their intelligence—the habits of mind associated with higher-order learning—when
they continually are pressed to raise questions, accept challenges,