Strategic Mindset Can be Taught to Children

People with a 'strategic
mindset' are the ones that are likly to succeed as they think of what to do
when confronted with a challenge or setback. They always think of better ways
doing a task or how else it can be done. The findings are based on research done
by Patricia Chen,Asst Professor of Department of Psychology at the National
University of Singapore, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. People with
strategic mindset tend to apply more effective strategies when working towards
their goals in life- including educational, work, health and fitness goals.
Asst Prof Chen and her
collaborators conducted a series of three studies, involving over 860 college
students and working adults from the United States. One of their studies on 365
college students found that students' strategic mindset predicted how much they
reported using effective learning strategies in their classes. And the more
they used these effective strategies, the better they performed in their
classes that semester, and also in new, different classes the subsequent
semester. A second study surveying 365 adults across the United States about
their strategic mindset, and relating their mindset to how effective these
adults were at pursuing professional, educational, health, and fitness goals of
importance to them, produced similar findings.
Can people learn a strategic
mindset? Yes, the researchers found that a strategic mindset can indeed be
taught. In an experiment, they randomly assigned some people to learn about a
strategic mindset through a brief training session. Later, they gave these
people a novel, challenging task to accomplish as quickly as possible. Compared
to other people in the study who were not exposed to these strategic mindset
ideas, those who had learnt about a strategic mindset later applied more
effective strategies to accomplish the task. Their strategic behaviours, in
turn, translated into faster task performance. Additionally, these people who
had learnt about a strategic mindset also voluntarily practised the task more
before they had to perform it under time pressure -- suggesting that a
strategic mindset also has important implications for practice.
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