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Knowledge or Abilities? How Undergraduates Define Intelligence

Whether students view intelligence as a fixed or malleable trait (i.e., their “mindset”) has significant implications for their responses to failure and academic outcomes. Despite a long history of research on mindset and its growing popularity, recent meta-analyses suggest that mindset does a poor...

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Autores principales: Limeri, Lisa B., Choe, Jun, Harper, Hannah G., Martin, Hannah R., Benton, Annaleigh, Dolan, Erin L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Society for Cell Biology 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8697642/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32004101
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.19-09-0169
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author Limeri, Lisa B.
Choe, Jun
Harper, Hannah G.
Martin, Hannah R.
Benton, Annaleigh
Dolan, Erin L.
author_facet Limeri, Lisa B.
Choe, Jun
Harper, Hannah G.
Martin, Hannah R.
Benton, Annaleigh
Dolan, Erin L.
author_sort Limeri, Lisa B.
collection PubMed
description Whether students view intelligence as a fixed or malleable trait (i.e., their “mindset”) has significant implications for their responses to failure and academic outcomes. Despite a long history of research on mindset and its growing popularity, recent meta-analyses suggest that mindset does a poor job of predicting academic outcomes for undergraduate populations. Here, we present evidence that these mixed results could be due to ambiguous language on the mindset scale. Specifically, the term “intelligence” is a referent in every item of the mindset scale but is never defined, which could result in differing interpretations and measurement error. Therefore, we conducted an exploratory, qualitative study to characterize how undergraduate students define intelligence and how their definitions may influence how they respond to the mindset scale. We uncovered two distinct ways that undergraduates define intelligence: knowledge and abilities (e.g., ability to learn, solve problems). Additionally, we found that students’ definitions of intelligence can vary across contexts. Finally, we present evidence that students who define intelligence differently also interpret and respond to the items on the mindset scale differently. We discuss implications of these results for the use and interpretation of the mindset scale with undergraduate students.
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spelling pubmed-86976422021-12-27 Knowledge or Abilities? How Undergraduates Define Intelligence Limeri, Lisa B. Choe, Jun Harper, Hannah G. Martin, Hannah R. Benton, Annaleigh Dolan, Erin L. CBE Life Sci Educ Article Whether students view intelligence as a fixed or malleable trait (i.e., their “mindset”) has significant implications for their responses to failure and academic outcomes. Despite a long history of research on mindset and its growing popularity, recent meta-analyses suggest that mindset does a poor job of predicting academic outcomes for undergraduate populations. Here, we present evidence that these mixed results could be due to ambiguous language on the mindset scale. Specifically, the term “intelligence” is a referent in every item of the mindset scale but is never defined, which could result in differing interpretations and measurement error. Therefore, we conducted an exploratory, qualitative study to characterize how undergraduate students define intelligence and how their definitions may influence how they respond to the mindset scale. We uncovered two distinct ways that undergraduates define intelligence: knowledge and abilities (e.g., ability to learn, solve problems). Additionally, we found that students’ definitions of intelligence can vary across contexts. Finally, we present evidence that students who define intelligence differently also interpret and respond to the items on the mindset scale differently. We discuss implications of these results for the use and interpretation of the mindset scale with undergraduate students. American Society for Cell Biology 2020 /pmc/articles/PMC8697642/ /pubmed/32004101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.19-09-0169 Text en © 2020 L. B. Limeri et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2020 The American Society for Cell Biology. “ASCB®” and “The American Society for Cell Biology®” are registered trademarks of The American Society for Cell Biology. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License.
spellingShingle Article
Limeri, Lisa B.
Choe, Jun
Harper, Hannah G.
Martin, Hannah R.
Benton, Annaleigh
Dolan, Erin L.
Knowledge or Abilities? How Undergraduates Define Intelligence
title Knowledge or Abilities? How Undergraduates Define Intelligence
title_full Knowledge or Abilities? How Undergraduates Define Intelligence
title_fullStr Knowledge or Abilities? How Undergraduates Define Intelligence
title_full_unstemmed Knowledge or Abilities? How Undergraduates Define Intelligence
title_short Knowledge or Abilities? How Undergraduates Define Intelligence
title_sort knowledge or abilities? how undergraduates define intelligence
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8697642/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32004101
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.19-09-0169
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