In his book, The Talent Code (2009), Daniel Coyle describes how Carol Dweck, in her ongoing effort to find ways to enhance student academic performance and to also hopefully advance higher levels of self-motivated educational engagement, set out to test the hypothesis of two of her rules: “pay attention to what ... children are fascinated by” and “praise [the children] for their effort” (2007).

In addition, Coyle informs readers that Dweck also decided to add an additional “educational element.” This “educational element” was to inform students about the brain.

This research involved Dweck working with 700 identified low-achieving middle school students. The students were randomly divided into two groups. Coyle explains what happened next: “The first group was given an eight-week workshop on study skills; the second was given the same workshop along with an additional element: a special 50-minute session that explained how the brain functions and how it develops when challenged.”

In terms of outcomes and results, “[w]ithin a semester, the second group had significantly improved their grades and study habits. The experimenters didn’t tell the teachers which group the kids were in, but the teachers could tell anyway. The teachers couldn’t put their finger on it, but they knew something big had changed.”

As noted, the teachers were not told anything about this experiment; however, they still reported that something significant had changed in this group of 700 students. So, what was it that changed, which led to the circumstances where the teachers were able to say that “they knew something big had changed”?

From this experiment by Dweck, there are two self-evident truths to consider. The first is the presentation about the anatomical, biological, and physiological aspects of the brain and the impact that personal effort has on the brain. The second point to note (which perhaps could be considered as being significant) is that the “brain-based informed group” independently (without any words of encouragement) decided to work harder.

As such, one can perhaps confidently deduce that this immediate, self-motivated effort is what then directly led to........

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