‘Intelligence is not just good grades’: re-examining the mindset revolution in Indian classrooms

ABSTRACT

The present study examines how middle school students attending private schools in a major urban centre in India understand intelligence. The study focuses on mindset theory, which is a major framework in the literature on children’s understandings of intelligence. Mindset theories distinguish individuals based on beliefs about the malleability of personal characteristics. The present study used a mixed-methods approach to study mindsets and conceptualised mindsets as social representations. Interviews indicate that the malleability of intelligence, the fundamental core of the mindset meaning system, is not an important distinction for students. Instead, distinctions based on definitions of intelligence, as academic or social, are more pertinent. Focus groups highlight how definitions are constructed in peer cultures and classroom contexts. The study contributes to the growing critiques of mindset theory. The study proposes cultural psychology and social representations theory as theoretical tools to address existing controversies within the mindset literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Mindsets
• social representations
• intelligence
• mixed methods
• cultural psychology

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge Dr. Bradley Franks for his guidance. I would like to thank Neeharika Shetty, Devika Gupta, Srishti Narula, and Yamini Gupta for their assistance on this project. I am grateful to the principals at GPS and AIS for their time, and to the students for their trust and participation. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the CIES Conference in San Francisco (April 14-18, 2019)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This is a pseudonym.

2. This is a pseudonym.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.