The Power of Not Yet

Growth Mindset Intervention and Personal Best Goal-Setting in Improving Academic Performance for Students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

“Grades do not define you”, and yet they do. There are reasons to believe that our educational system may just be holding up the students from the core essence of going to school, to sincerely learn. Purely in value of maximum learning, the current model of education that is received by most is outmoded and problematic to all learners especially to students with Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. The pass/fail grading system, for example, is part of the old assessment models adapted from the 19th century when shoes were valued on a certain ‘grade’ to determine whether the shoemakers will be paid or not.  This model of education should have been reformed along with the conclusion of modern concepts that integrated the influences of both genes and the environment on intelligence. How learners, notably the at-risk, reflect themselves on this motion is important because it is the foundation of their Mindsets that will affect their studying performance to a large extent.

On that note, our accustomed educational system is problematic also because it actually endorses the Fixed Mindset, a self-handicapping belief that personal attributes such as intelligence and personality are immutable. This leads to the pressure of looking smart and therefore the tendency to avoid challenges, view effort as futile, depreciate feedback and feel threatened by the success of others, bringing about an early plateau in learning. Normal learners may be able to still pull through this environment. But learners with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), this environmental demands on behavior devastates, if not already distressed their ability to learn at their potential.

The form of education that a student with ADHD has is also a concern. Because most are functional, unless there exists a comorbidity with another neurodevelopmental disorder, they do not necessarily fall under the category of learning disabilities, and therefore receiving Special Education that is designed for other neurodevelopmental disorders is not appropriate for them. At the same time, the normal school setting where teachers and school administrators are inadequately trained to handle the ADHD learners plus the culture of Fixed Mindset, is also an ordeal for their circumstance.

In school, the tasks that are presented to children and young people demands functions that ADHD seems to be vulnerable of. This includes self-regulation, self-control and task-relevant focus. Several researches including the DSM-5 have associated this disorder with reduced school performance and academic attainment. Even ADHD children with normal to superior intelligence were found to have high risks of severe underachievement (Katusic, Voigt, Colligan, Weaver, Homan, & Barbaresi, 2011). In short, learners with ADHD struggle to survive in our ordinary educational system that is not compatible for them.

However, one would not expect what a simple restructuring of feedback words can do—Not Yet instead of Fail, in transforming school behaviors of ADHD students for the better. The recent concept of Growth Mindset developed by Dr. Carol Dweck, coupled with earlier theories from Goal-setting sheds light on the enhancement of teaching style or interventions for learners with ADHD. What are the consequences of knowing that one’s intelligence or personality is something one can develop instead of something that is a fixed, inherent attribute?

Mindsets are defined by Carol Dweck as the fundamental beliefs of whether or not personal attributes, such as intelligence and personality can change. There are two types: the Fixed and the Growth Mindsets. The former is a belief in the immutability of personal attributes, while the latter assumes the malleability of these attributes through effort and experience. Her research featuring ethnically and economically diverse students shows that Mindset about intelligence predicts academic performance. Students with the Growth Mindset earned higher grades than the students with a Fixed mindset. The Fixed mindset group showed concerns about their ability, tend to worry about proving/disproving rather than improving, so they avoid challenges and prefer easy work to avoid mistakes and setbacks which prevents them from learning, while the ones found with Growth Mindset responded to challenges with academic persistence and focused more on what they can do to make a new goal work and to learn more (Dweck, Walton, & Cohen, 2014).

In light of this new theory by Dweck, another research led by Verberg attempted to explore the Mindsets of adolescents with Intellectual Disability (ID) including ADHD. Their study has shown that adolescents with ID have fixed mindset while adolescents without ID do not. The reasons being that youth diagnosed with ID are aware of their condition and may associate it with low intellectual potential, and are also at risk of low self-efficacy due to their susceptibility to negative life events, repeated failures, maladaptive studying behaviors and thoughts that are difficult to amend. In the end, this study further suggests Growth mindset intervention can contribute towards positive feelings of control, self-efficacy, and improved mental health for youth with ID (Verberg, Helmond, Otten, & Overbeek, 2019). What is particularly intriguing in Dweck’s research is the fact that the Growth Mindset can be taught and fostered in a simple restructuring of sentences and materials, and even short-term Growth Mindset intervention can have a long-term effect.

Short term experiments on Mindset Intervention led to promising results. In one of Dweck’s Mindset experiments, college students in a growth mindset group were taught that the brain grows and changes as they accommodate new information. To make sure that the message was processed properly, the students had to discuss this message in a letter to younger, at-risk pupils. They were instructed that if “students can be convinced that intelligence expands with hard work, they may be more likely to remain in school and put effort into learning”. The college students in another group were given the opposite instruction, they were told that if “struggling students can be convinced that there are many different types of intelligence, they may be more likely to continue to learn in an attempt to find and develop areas of strength”. As it turned out, the students in the growth mindset group earned higher GPAs in the following academic term than the other group (Dweck, Walton, & Cohen, 2014).

On another experiment led by the same group of researchers, students were divided into two. Both were showing declining grades in Math and had a workshop and learned on study skills, but only the students in the intervention workshop group incorporated Growth Mindset. They were taught how their brains “get smarter”, growing more neurons when they work on challenging tasks. Similarly, only the group exposed to the growth mindset benefitted from this experiment, exhibiting ‘a sharp rebound’ in their math performance (Dweck, Walton, & Cohen, 2014).  However, even if students possess the Growth Mindset, without self-regulation, this mindset won’t sustain.

For learners with ADHD, this can be difficult since the nature of the disorder is highly related to poor self-regulation. In both researches published by Dr. Martin in 2012 and 2013, the Self-regulatory model by Barkley was emphasized. It theorizes four executive functions required to successfully engage in schoolwork: the non-working memory, verbal working memory, self-regulation of motivation, and reconstitution. The last two—self-regulation of motivation and reconstitution are major areas of vulnerability for students with ADHD. Indeed, they have higher rates of off-task behavior, poor task completion, and poor-regulation. This model suggests that if interventions are made in consideration of the two vulnerable executive functions, positive academic outcomes are expected to follow. Thus, the research also proposes the potential of personal progress and personal growth approaches such as Personal Best (PB) goal-setting for students with ADHD. The PB goals provide specific information about what the student should go after. It straightens their attention on desired task-related outcomes. This clarity and specificity are helpful for students with ADHD. Trying to beat one’s own previous benchmark that enhances students’ sense of autonomy can also be intrinsically motivating (Martin, 2013).

These findings suggest that for learners with ADHD, the Growth Mindset intervention can work hand in hand with the Personal Best Goal-setting reforms to answer both vulnerabilities in self-regulation of motivation and reconstitution. It is also important to realize that this can be further promoted by teachers and schools. For example, one High School in Chicago uses a different kind of grading system. Instead of Fail, they use the word “Not Yet”. In Dweck’s TEDtalk presentation, she emphasized that “If you get a failing grade, you think, I’m nothing, I’m nowhere. But if you get the grade “Not Yet” you understand that you’re on a learning curve. It gives you a path into the future.” (Dweck, 2014). This is an example of positive educational rituals that promote the Growth Mindset.  

The idea that intelligence is not a fixed quantity has long been established by Alfred Binet, so this is, in fact not completely novel. However, what we failed to notice earlier is that whether we believe this or not is actually an important matter. For learners with ADHD, this means a turning point. They stand in between students with other neurodevelopment disorders and students that are considered normal. Neither of the educational systems--Special and standard, are appropriate for their learning needs. Because of this mismatch, they are more likely to perform less than their potential and more exposed to repeated failures, endorsing a fixed mindset. Of course, the researches do not rule out the role of medication. They only put forward implementation of Personal Goal-Setting (that can help in self-regulatory processes) supported by a Growth Mindset Intervention (which can help sustain the self-efficacy needed to persist in the attainment of the formed Personal Best goals) to improve school outcomes and studying behaviors among students with ADHD. 

References

Dweck, C. S., Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2017). Academic Tenacity: Mindsets and Skills that Promote Long-Term Learning. Place of publication not identified: Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse.

Dweck, C. (2014) The power of believing that you can improve. You Can Improve. Available at: <http://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve?language=en#t-96973>

Katusic, M. Z., Voigt, R. G., Colligan, R. C., Weaver, A. L., Homan, K. J., & Barbaresi, W. J. (2011). Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children with high intelligence quotient: results from a population-based study. Journal of developmental and behavioral pediatrics : JDBP, 32(2), 103–109. https://doi.org/10.1097/DBP.0b013e318206d700

Martin, A. J. (2012). The role of personal best (PB) goals in the achievement and behavioral engagement of students with ADHD and students without ADHD. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 37(2), 91–105. doi: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2012.01.002

Martin, A. J. (2013). Improving the Achievement, Motivation, and Engagement of Students With ADHD: The Role of Personal Best Goals and Other Growth-Based Approaches. Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 23(1), 143–155. doi: 10.1017/jgc.2013.4

Verberg, F., Helmond, P., Otten, R., & Overbeek, G. (2019). Mindset and perseverance of adolescents with intellectual disabilities: Associations with empowerment, mental health problems, and self-esteem. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 91, 103426. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2019.103426

Schroder, H. S., Callahan, C. P., Gornik, A. E., & Moser, J. S. (2019). The Fixed Mindset of Anxiety Predicts Future Distress: A Longitudinal Study. Behavior Therapy, 50(4), 710–717. doi: 10.1016/j.beth.2018.11.001