The Martoccio Experiment

It’s scary how much power a teacher truly has within his/her four walls.

Joseph Martoccio conducted a study that correlated mindset with ability. He split up a group of employees into two separate mindsets - fixed and growth. In the fixed group, Martoccio announced that ability is something that’s fixed while in the growth group, he announced that ability (in this case, computer skills) could be developed with practice over time.

Seems typical.

At the start of the course, both groups had relatively similar levels of confidence. By the end, the growth group was characterized as having more confidence despite the mistakes along the way. The fixed group was seen as carrying lower levels of confidence because of the mistakes along the way.

Shocker.

So the question is how we can bring this into the classroom. It’s scary how much power a teacher truly has within his/her four walls.

This always brings me back to one of the first teacher quotes I’ve been introduced to in college.

It follows as:

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.” - Haim Ginott.

Powerful and self-empowering. Revolutionary yet so obvious.

My takeaway from this is simple. We control the weather, culture, and environment. We lay the foundation for the classroom. It starts with us. From one role model to another, hear my plea. If we are unhappy with our classroom, let’s look within ourselves. If we all adopt the mindset that we’re human and we can continue to become better every day, it is with high hopes that we can pass that message along, loud and clear, that students can follow suit.

Let’s move from the old ways and begin adopting the growth mindset. We don’t need to be perfect. We just need to be willing.

That’s all. We just need to be willing.