tainly solving problems that seemed intractable when you began your learning journey. This isn’t a result of innate ability: before we started programming, none of us had this ability. We don’t have to look very far back in history to understand that ability in this area is nascent among humanity.

Still, we must carefully consider psychological research before applying it to our work13 and decide if it is relevant. In a 2008 paper, Laurie Murphy and Lynda Thomas enumerate ways in which embracing such research can help in the field of computer science: 9

˲ Applying this research to introductory computer science courses may improve student learning and course retention rate.

˲ The gender gap in computer science education and practice may be directly attributable to cultural influences on self-theories of intelligence in women.

˲ Collaborative work, such as pair programming, is found in some studies to be wildly effective—and wildly ineffective in others. Conflicting goals of entity versus incremental theorists could explain these apparent contradictions.

˲Defensive classroom climates, characterized by students who ask “pseudo-questions” to demonstrate knowledge and professors who afford special status to those students, could be explained and ameliorated by adopting Dweck’s work.

As bugs present themselves as problems, and because problems tend to be perceived by the entity theorist as fundamental limits on ability, the focus here should be on moving students, peers, and co-workers toward a more malleable view of intelligence.

Organizational Adoption
of Malleable Self-Theories

Whether operating as a manager, men-
tor, or educator, adopting and promot-
ing malleable self-theories is impor-
tant in creating successful students
and co-workers. Debugging must not
be an afterthought in educating; indus-
try must stop insisting that bugs be in-
terpreted as failures of individual pro-
grammers (especially since individual
programmers are rarely responsible for
the design and functioning of an entire
system). Programmers should instead
be praised for their efforts in solving
bugs. In all cases, solving bugs is part
of the learning process. How can they
be presented as such?
Several studies have attempted to
move individuals’ views from a fixed
to a malleable perspective. A famil-
iarity with the literature is important
here, especially for educators and
managers. In a 2004 paper, Mantz
Yorke and Peter Knight suggest that
educators should “appreciate the sig-
nificance of self-theories for student
learning; be able to infer whether stu-
dents are inclined toward fixedness or
malleability; and possess strategies
for encouraging ‘fixed’ students to
move toward malleability.” 14
To do this, Murphy and Thomas
suggest looking at psychologist Lev
Vygotsky’s work from the early 20th cen-
tury. They state, “students learn best
when pushed slightly beyond their in-
dependent capabilities.” This requires
an instructor or mentor capable of
assisting students past their current
ability; Yorke and Knight observe that
this system works best when both the
teacher and student possess a mallea-
ble view of intelligence.
Moving an individual from an en-
tity to an incremental view can be as
simple as framing information in a
particular way. In multiple studies,
Dweck notes that information pre-
sented as praise of ability promotes
formation of an entity theory, where-
as praise for effort promotes an incre-
mental theory. This appears to be true
whether or not the individual receiv-
ing the information is the individual
being praised.
Dweck states that the temporal ef-
fect of praise-based shifts is unclear.
In one set of individuals in their study,
Cutts et al. consistently reinforced an
incremental mindset every time feed-
back was given on graded work. 3 Only
students receiving this intervention
(coupled with two other intervention
methods) saw movement toward in-
cremental self-theories and statisti-
cally significant improvement in test
scores (a feat that no other study I have
found has been able to show). It may
be that consistent environmental feed-
back promoting an incremental theory
is sufficient for an individual’s long-
term adoption. Given that it is shown
to work in short-term situations, con-
Whether
operating as
a manager,
mentor, or educator,
adopting and
promoting
malleable
self-theories
is important
in creating
successful students
and co-workers.