1. Beliefs About the Intelligence
Brunning - Chapter 7
Beliefs About the Intelligence

2. Implications for Teaching
Everyone holds beliefs about intelligence and knowledge
Beliefs about intelligence and knowledge affect our behaviors
Beliefs about intelligence and knowledge affect the way we reason
Education affects the kinds of beliefs we hold
Educational experiences affect reasoning skills
Beliefs are not strongly related to ability

3. Implicit Beliefs About Intelligence
Are unconscious personal beliefs about key aspectsof learning
set of tacit assumptions about how something works
Class, look at your learning behaviors and decide where you belong
Incremental Theory:
Learning (mastery goals)
Improve competency
Entity Theory:
Performance goals
Prove competency
Improving competence
Seeks challenge
Persists
Successeffort
+ response to failure
Self regulated
Providing competence
Avoids challenge
Successability
response to failure
Quits
Helpless

4. Constraints on Classroom Behaviors
Classroom factors that affect student orientation positively
Situational factorsclassroom climate/home environment (little is known)
Classroom structurenorm-referenced vs. criterion-referenced
Is Intelligence Changeable?
Attributional theoristsNo! (internal/stable/ uncontrollable
Brain-basedYes! (plasticity “ability to adapt successfully to environment”)

5. Guidelines for Fostering Adaptive Goals
Promote the view that intellectual development is controllable—it’s up to you!
Reward effort and improvement while deemphasizing native ability
Emphasize the process, rather than the products of learning
Process = how long I spent studying?
How do I organize my information?
Am I ready for my classes?
Stress that mistakes are normal part of learning
Encourage individual, rather than group evaluative standardsare you improving in your learning behaviors?

6. Epistemological Beliefs or…Beliefs about Knowledge
Right
Wrong
Dualistic perspective (early stages)
Perry (1970)
Ryan (1984) = Knowledge must be evaluated on a personal bases by using
the best personal evidence (experimentation) Relativists
Relativists
Based on their experimentation
* Develop different beliefs
* Have different approach to
learning
Dualists
* Search for fact oriented information
* Remember information reported
explicitly
* Knowledge is viewed as absolute
* Do not questions authority
* Knowledge accepted as faith
Experiment:
Asked students to describe strategies
they used to monitor their
comprehension
Results show:
Dualist do not do as well in final grades
Dualist fact-centered information
Relativistscontext centered information
Validated by SAT
scores

7. Schommer (1990) Extremely Complex Beliefsused a Self Report Inventory
Simple
Discrete
Unambiguous
Facts
Certain
Constant True
and Forever
Fixed
Ability
Genetic
Quick
or no
learning
Amount of higher ed received is inversely related to their beliefs
The longer the S attend college, the more likeable to believe that knowledge
is tentative and subject to personal interpretation = constructivist
Females = learning is gradual = persistence
SS with less education acquire new knowledge = all or nothing situation,
oversimplified conclusions
Prior knowledge = broader conclusions
Beliefs in simple knowledge negatively affects complex problem solving
SS in soft disciplines = knowledge is uncertain
SS in hard disciplines = knowledge is fixed
Kuhn (2000)epistemological beliefs are related to one’s ability to argue persuasively that knowledge:
Absolutist Multiplist Evaluative
(right or wrong) (knowledge is relative) (depend on rules of learning)

8. Reflective Judgment Kitchener & King (1981)
Judgment is defined as one’s ability to:
Analyze critically multiple facets of a problem
Reach an informed conclusion
Justify one’s response
Developmental Stages of Reflective Judgmentbased on certainty of knowledge, process of acquiring knowledge, and type of evidence used to justify one’s view of the world
Knowledge - unchangeable, absolute, and accessible
Knowledge - certain, but may not be accessible by everyone
Knowledge - is certain, though it may be accessible to anyone
Knowledge - is uncertain and idiosyncratic
Knowledge - is uncertain though contextually interpretative
Knowledge - is relative yet justifiable on the bases of rational arguments
Knowledge – is relative, though some interpretations have greater truth

9. Hope in Life and Attitude Change
Agency Pathways Hope inventory scores correlated with
“will” “ways” life orientation, life experiences, self-
esteem, and hopelessness
Self Generation
Determination of workable High hope SS showed greater self-
Perseverance solutions determination
CHALLENGE Prefer difficult tasks
How easily can maladaptive beliefs can be changed?
Changing beliefs = complicated
Beliefs are formed based on cognitive and affective information
When beliefs were formed initially
Those based on affective responses may be difficult to change
by cognitive means
Those based on cognitive responses may be difficult to change
based on affective persuasion
Teacher beliefs = assumptions about students, learning materials to be taught and
class organizationpreservice teachers tend to leave with many of the beliefs and
attitudes they held when entering the program