March/April 2007 > Features > Mind-set Research

According to a Stanford psychologist, you’ll reach new heights if you learn to embrace the occasional tumble. One day last November, psychology professor Carol Dweck welcomed a pair of visitors from the Blackburn Rovers, a soccer team in the United Kingdom’s Premier League. The Rovers’ training academy is ranked in England’s top three, yet performance director Tony Faulkner had long suspected that many promising players weren’t reaching their potential. Ignoring the team’s century-old motto—arte et labore, or “skill and hard work”—the most talented individuals disdained serious training. On some level, Faulkner knew the source of the trouble: British soccer culture held that star players are born, not made. A 60-year-old academic psychologist might seem an unlikely sports motivation guru. What’s more, Dweck has shown that people can learn to adopt the latter belief and make dramatic strides in performance. As a graduate student at Yale, Dweck started off studying animal motivation.

From Defeat, Rejection to Success From Now On: The Newsletter of The Efficacy Institute An idea for the day: Accepting responsibility for the outcomes of the children in one's classroom, whatever their backgrounds and whatever baggage they bring with them, is the absolute requirement for learning how to effectively teach kids living in difficult circumstances. This ethic of responsibility is clear when we talk with our most effective teachers. Where does it come from? And why is it not evident in all? Their initial answers usually cluster around the politically correct 'ours,' and one or two people, often primary grade teachers, will blurt out 'mine.' "What about 'mine'," I say, "Then who's responsible for them?" People acknowledge the implication of this answer: "I accept responsibility for what happens to the children in my class, whether the parents behave responsibly or not, and whether or not my colleagues join me in this responsibility." So the first question is: Whose kids are these?