The 18-19 June 2016 Wall Street Journal article ‘A small fix in mind-set to keep students in school’ is relevant to the Social Role Valorization theme of mind-sets and expectancies. It describes two different studies on the power of mind-sets in schools.
From the article:
“The psychologist Carol Dweck at Stanford has argued that both teachers and students have largely unconscious ‘mind-sets’–beliefs and expectations–about themselves and others and that these can lead to a cascade of self-fulfilling prophecies.”
“Changing mind-sets is hard: simply telling people that they should think differently often backfires. The two new studies used clever techniques to get them to take on different mind-sets more indirectly.”
“In the first study … the most important part was a section that asked the teachers to provide examples of how they themselves used discipline respectfully. The researches told the participants that those examples could be used to train others–treating the teachers as experts with something to contribute … The researchers didn’t tell people to have a better attitude. They just encouraged students and teachers to articulate their own best impulses. That changed mind-sets–and changed lives.”
Note the connection made between changing mind-sets and changing lives, or in SRV language, how can changing mind-sets create greater access to the ‘good things of life’ for societally devalued people?
How might these studies be relevant in other human service fields? Could such studies be replicated with human service workers?