Intelligence

I wanted to write something that I learnt after reading a book "Beyond Intelligence" written by Dona Matthews PhD and Joanne Foster Ed. D. I think its a good combination of educational expert and a science expert perspectives.

Perspectives on Intelligence:
From 3 decades of studies on people perspectives of their success and failures, Carol Dweck concluded that those who think of intelligence with a growth mindset: developing incrementally, step by step, with effort and practice, do better across in areas of academia, career, and psychological success, as compared to fixed mindset:folks who think of success as being something innate that people are born with.

This of course should not be startling as neurosciences has shown that brain activity develops from birth on wards and is affected over lifespan of an individual. A whole lot of learning is possible in a lifespan and that is what we as humans do and those who do not learn so to say have already reached their developmental state inertia.

To avoid coming back to a catch 22 situation, it needs to be stated that a mindset is not acquired at birth these refer to habits that can be developed and learned. I, being an educator myself am a witness to my college's students who have developed newer habits that tend to make oneself more successful, with all its subjectivity.

Research has shown that praising children for being smart is detrimental to their growth and instead of using the praise terms of "bright", intelligent, talented it is suggested to provide a praise children for what they have accomplished through practice, study, persistence, and good strategies. Always go for uplifting the growth mindset.

From fixed mindset perspective, does not give an elbow room for further improvement as intelligence is considered as innate, something one has from birth where as the growth mindset talks about varying degrees of intelligence, the intelligence being progressive and attainable by an individual. Ask any accomplished person and you shall hear back the experiences of an growth mindset person.


Why is that certain individuals master new ideas quickly and easily?
Well it can be thought that the above statement is valid only for new ideas that are close to concepts that these certain individuals have mastered already. So , in reality by considering their old existing knowledge possessed by them, the newly (but relatable) ideas are not really new to them.


Working hard does not mean that someone is not smart, instead it means to confront challenges and moving ahead methodically, and is the blueprint of making a person smart (not in the sense of innate smartness though).

Take away point:

The definition of Intelligence at last:
Intelligence is the ability to understand complex ideas, adapt effectively to the environment, overcome obstacles, engage meaningfully in various forms of reasoning, and learn from experience. It develops incrementally, and varies across time, situations, and domains.