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.