Praise can Boost Student Success

A new review of research in the journal Child Development suggests just praising the effort of middle and high school students to boost their "growth mindset" can have the opposite effect, with those adolescents praised becoming less likely to believe their work can improve their intelligence or skills. In this article, the researchers explain these findings developmentally. The researchers suggest that effort praise can communicate that effort is a path to improving ability, but can also imply that the student needs to work hard because of low innate ability. The researchers propose that adolescents are at greater risk for interpreting the praise in the second way because secondary schools often value innate ability more than effort and adolescents are conscious of ability stereotypes.

Amemiya, J., & Wang, M. (2018). Why effort praise can backfire in adolescence. Child Development Perspectives, 12(3), 199-203. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12284