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Huge Study Finds Professors' Attitudes Affect Students' Grades (arstechnica.com)
A huge study at Indiana University, led by Elizabeth Canning, finds that the attitudes of instructors affect the grades their students earned in classes. The researchers conducted their study by sending out a simple survey to all the instructors of STEM courses at Indiana University, asking whether professors felt that a student's intelligence is fixed and unchanging or whether they thought it could be developed. Then, the researchers were given access to two years' worth of students' grades in those instructors' classes, covering a total of 15,000 students. Ars Technica reports: The results showed a surprising difference between the professors who agreed that intelligence is fixed and those who disagreed (referred to as "fixed mindset" and "growth mindset" professors). In classes taught by fixed mindset instructors, Latino, African-American, and Native American students averaged grades 0.19 grade points (out of four) lower than white and Asian-American students. But in classes taught by "growth mindset" instructors, the gap dropped to just 0.10 grade points. No other factor the researchers analyzed showed a statistically significant difference among classes -- not the instructors' experience, tenure status, gender, specific department, or even ethnicity. Yet their belief about whether a students' intelligence is fixed seems to have had a sizable effect.
The students' course evaluations contain possible clues. Students reported less "motivation to do their best work" in the classes taught by fixed mindset professors, and they also gave lower ratings for a question about whether their professor "emphasize[d] learning and development." Students were less likely to say they'd recommend the professor to others, as well. Is it possible that the fixed mindset professors just happen to teach the hardest classes? The student evaluations also include a question about how much time the course required -- the average answer was slightly higher for fixed mindset professors, but the difference was not statistically significant. Instead, the researchers think the data suggests that -- in any number of small ways -- instructors who think their students' intelligence is fixed don't keep their students as motivated, and perhaps don't focus as much on teaching techniques that can encourage growth. And while this affects all students, it seems to have an extra impact on underrepresented minority students.
The students' course evaluations contain possible clues. Students reported less "motivation to do their best work" in the classes taught by fixed mindset professors, and they also gave lower ratings for a question about whether their professor "emphasize[d] learning and development." Students were less likely to say they'd recommend the professor to others, as well. Is it possible that the fixed mindset professors just happen to teach the hardest classes? The student evaluations also include a question about how much time the course required -- the average answer was slightly higher for fixed mindset professors, but the difference was not statistically significant. Instead, the researchers think the data suggests that -- in any number of small ways -- instructors who think their students' intelligence is fixed don't keep their students as motivated, and perhaps don't focus as much on teaching techniques that can encourage growth. And while this affects all students, it seems to have an extra impact on underrepresented minority students.
Prove to me that is not because one set of professors actually gives fair grades, while the other artificially inflated them...
This study is why people now think social sciences are bullshit. It made horrible racist assumptions at the outset, and then denied the basic truth that some people are smarter than others, regardless of whether they are back, white, green, or polka dot.
I got my BA in '81 or so.
Teachers that took attendance every day and docked you for absences tended to be the teachers who's handouts were copies of copies of copies of 20 year old crap. Not to mention the lectures were useless. Best plan was to find out when the tests and quizzes were and what they covered, and skipped class. But skipping class cost you big time.
Teachers who's lectures were not to be missed. Fark the tests and quizzes, if you wanted to understand the subject you went to the lectures.
Goes without saying the first group of teachers had tenure and didn't care, the second group did not have tenure and did care.
YMMV, there was variation in mine.
The story is all so nice and neat, but a lot of is back-fitted crap, like the stuff about bells.
School was often taught in Churches, they were already using the Church bells for whatever events happened at the school. Later, electricity made bells easy to install everywhere. It is a basic aid for group activities, used by nearly every type of human activity. The only reason to connect it to factory bells is when you're just making up history as imagined by a popular narrative.
More real was that basic education was seen as being needed so that workers grow up able to read instructions, and weigh, measure, and time things. But there was never really a gap where it wasn't understood that a well-rounded education was more effective even at teaching to weigh and measure. That was always understood. It is simply that the schools were being provisioned from different sources of money than the traditional upper class education; a teacher who can read and write is enough when you want to save money. And some of them will be good anyways, so you'll end up with lots of educated workers.
Even now with all the access to information it is difficult to get people to separate what they imagine from what they know. They don't bother to think about, "if I was hired as a school teacher in that era, what instructions would I be given?" Where does the conspiracy to condition children to bells come from? How would the instruction be given? How would a teacher who had to purchase supplies out of the budget for their pay know that they were required to purchase the bell? Or would they only buy it because it was a major convenience for them? Is it possible that the rich kids didn't have bells, because they had private tutors and it didn't serve any purpose?
In Merry Olde England, when the peasants were gathered around the square waiting for alms, (a free cup of soup and a beer, basically) did the church ring the bell to tell them it was time? Did pre-industrial American farm kids come running when a dinner bell was rung? Can you imagine living on a farm with people spread out all over the place and not being used to banging on a noise-maker at dinner time?!