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Hi,

Sorry if this is a borderline topic for this forum, but I'm applying it in Maths classes and would prefer an answer from mathematically/scientifically-minded people!

If anyone has used Dweck's Questionairre, and then carefully interpreted the results, I'd really appreciate your help.

I've recently conducted a largish-scale questionairre amongst my students, part of which included Carol Dweck's 3 key questions relating to 'attribution'. [See, for example, Geoff's Petty's description at: http://teacherstoolbox.co.uk/T_Dweck.html ].

I'm extremely keen to accurately compare my results with other, internationally-acquired data. But I can't find a proper description of how others' have analysed their data. Geoff says that, using the questionairre, students can be broadly classified into three types:

- Fixed IQ theorists

- Untapped Potential theorists

- and ~15% of students 'in the middle'.

Does anyone know exactly how these three borad catagorise are defined? I can then use the same classifications on my own data, and see how my classes / school compares to the norm.

Thanks in anticipation for anyone that can help.

J

Thanks - but just to be clear - it's what you call Dweck's 'data processing step' that I want described to me! I've already conducted the questionairre using the same questions and answer format (and conducted in a context that I consider to be 'fair'). The data processing method must be in the academic literature somewhere (otherwise it's not good science!) - but I'm having great difficulty finding it.

Ordinarily I'd share your concerns, but the fact that Hattie's evidence points to very similar conclusions gives it considerable weight IMO. Hattie's work is, IMO unquestionably, the most scientifically rigorous there is.

Got it.

I think these are the essential sections

This link should bring up the paper (Theories, attributions and coping).

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/system/files/Implicit%20Theories%2C%20Attributions%20and%20Coping.pdf

The implicit-theories measure described below was used in all the
studies in the present research.
Assessment of implicit theories. A three-item questionnaire developed
by Dweck and Henderson (1988) was used to measure participants' implicit
theory of intelligence. This measure is similar in format to the one
used in Chiu, Hong, and Dweck (1997); Chiu, Dweck, Tong, and Fu
(1997); and Levy, Stroessner, and Dweck (1998; Studies 1-4). The items
are "You have a certain amount of intelligence and you really can't do
much to change it"; "Your intelligence is something about you that you
can't change very much"; and "You can learn new things, but you can't
really change your basic intelligence." Participants were asked to show
their degree of agreement with each item on a 6-point Likert scale ranging
from 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strongly disagree). Thus, the higher the
participants' scores, the less they believe that intelligence is a fixed entity.

Recall that participants' implicit theories were measured on a scale that
ranges from 1 to 6, with higher scores indicating stronger disagreement
with an entity theory. Those participants who believe that intelligence is
fixed (entity theorists) should consistently endorse responses at the lower
(agree) end of the scale (yielding a mean score of 3.0 or lower), whereas
participants who believe that intelligence is malleable (incremental theorists)
should consistently endorse responses at the upper (disagree) end of
the scale (yielding a mean score of 4.0 or above). Those whose average
score falls between 3.0 and 4.0 have given mixed answers across items and
are indeterminate (or mixed) in their beliefs about intelligence. In the
present research, to select participants with unambiguous beliefs about
intelligence, we eliminated from the analysis those participants who scored
in the middle (i.e., who had an average score higher than 3.0 and lower
than 4.0). Participants with average scores lower than or equal to 3.0 were
classified as entity theorists, whereas those with average scores higher than
or equal to 4.0 were classified as incremental theorists.

mature_maths_trainee:

Ordinarily I'd share your concerns

You will be doing yourself a big favour by completely ignoring anything bgy1mm writes on any of these fora.

He is not a teacher of any kind - and certainly has limited understanding of even the basics of mathematics - yet is more than willing to spout off on subjects. Rather like Zelig from the eponymous movie, he will try and meld into the conversation.

One hopes in vain that he will take the hint and return to whichever part of Leeds he inhabits at this moment in time, but to no avail.

Betamale,

 - the purpose of the survey in general was for me to get to know the students' aspirations and beliefs a little better. I had struggled to motivate some of them. I believe it has begun to help me in that regard (I was certainly surprised by some of the answers).

 - the purpose of including Dweck's specific questions was that i) it fitted into the format of my other questions very easily, so was very easy to do ii) (amongst other questions) it helped 'distract' students from the connectedness of the other questions iii) Petty indicates that students identified by Dweck's survey as 'fixed IQ theorists' should be regarded as 'at risk' of under-achieving.

The reason I conducted quite a large-scale survey was that I was very interested to determine if there were any significant differences in beliefs and attitudes between 'top sets' and 'lower ability sets'. I haven't yet finsihed my analysis of that.

A very peripheral motivation was that I've been encouraged to carry out such surveys as part of my teacher training. I felt this one worthwhile.