Learning How to Learn

“I just can’t understand it”...

“I’m too dumb for this”...

“I’m not as good as everyone else is at this”...

“I wish I could be as smart as her and as talented as him”...

These are things we’ve all thought to ourselves one time or another. In moments of frustration, the tendency of many people is to blame themselves, to think the problem lies with them. For many kids, this type of thinking begins early in elementary school, when they encounter their first real intellectual challenges. 

We all eventually find something that we struggle with at first. But while some kids view struggling as a sign of inherent inadequacy, other kids will view struggling as a benchmark for improvement. The latter category of kids tend to take their education and run with it, showing exponential levels of improvement in remarkably short periods of time. They become living proof of the extraordinary power of synaptic plasticity and stretch their mind’s capacity as far as possible. Meanwhile, kids who allow themselves to stagnate when they encounter something they don’t understand tend to leave a well of potential untapped without even realizing it. 

In the late twentieth century, Stanford Professor Carol Dweck coined the terms of “growth” and “fixed” mindsets to describe these opposing modes of thought, with a “growth mindset” entailing the belief that one’s abilities are not pre-determined and improvement is always possible, while a “fixed mindset” suggests a deep-rooted belief that one is born with a certain amount of skill and intelligence that can never be expanded. 

After tracking the test scores of kids with growth and fixed mindsets, she observed an astonishing gap between the two groups, with growth-mindset kids scoring in the upper percentiles on standardized tests while kids with fixed mindsets landed in the lower percentiles of test-takers. Ultimately, Dweck realized how many kids were being left behind in their education without anyone to dispel them of the stubborn belief that there was a ceiling to their skills and academic abilities. Ironically, it was the kids who believed in no ceilings that created the ceiling for test scores. 

With a pattern this clear and unequivocal, it cannot be a coincidence. So the question becomes – what exactly is the science behind a growth mindset? What happens in the brain that allows you to reach new heights of intellectual capacity? 

Using a plethora of brain imaging tools, we now have physiological markers of the neural processes that underlie growth mindsets. 

When analyzing changes in brain activity, many researchers first looked to EEG due to its remarkable ability to capture real-time changes in the brain in response to a certain learning task. In a series of experiments, researchers have assigned children difficult problems to solve and tested the different responses of their brains to these tasks. 

Standing at their computers as the electrical brain waves were read onto the screen, the researchers were looking for any marked differences in the brain signals of the children directly after they were told they had answered a problem incorrectly. Lo and behold, when comparing kids with growth and fixed mindsets, a statistically significant difference was in fact found in the activity recorded in regions of the brain responsible for reasoning memory, and behavioral modification. Kids with a growth mindset exhibited higher-amplitude electrical brain waves in these regions critical for learning than kids with a fixed mindset, suggesting that something as controllable and teachable as a mindset can in fact have true cognitive repercussions that affect one’s ability to learn. 

And the differences don’t stop here. 

fMRI studies measuring blood oxygenation and brain activity have revealed that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has a surge of activity in the minds of kids with growth mindsets following some sort of intellectual challenge. The dlPFC is a hotspot region in the brain for self-reflection and recalling one’s previous mistakes to perform the appropriate self-correction measures. Simultaneous to this surge of activity, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) flares to life in the brains of growth mindset children, suggesting an enhanced ability to learn and improve one’s skills with behavioral changes. Through these fMRI studies, researchers have also elucidated entire brain pathways that contribute to the development of a growth mindset, highlighting the undeniable connections between the ACC and reward pathways responsible for the production of dopamine. In essence, kids with a growth mindset are neurally hard-wired to love learning. 

So, for any parents reading this, you might ask yourself - how do I go about shaping my children’s brains to love learning and enjoy all the struggles associated with it? 

The answer is good old classical conditioning. I’d recommend rewarding your kids with praise and encouragement when you see them trying something new. Answer their questions thoughtfully. 

It may sound like trivial advice, but its value cannot be overstated. The first motivator we have in our lives is the desire to make our parents proud. Before we learn to seek the validation of our friends, our teachers, our significant others, our colleagues, we seek the validation of our parents. So celebrate when you see your kids push their intellectual limits and tell them how impressed you would be if you saw them exercising their full potential in school. 

Ultimately, I am writing this because NeuroBeacon is an organization that encourages kids to chase our cognitive science educational resources. Indeed, many organizations work tirelessly to increase children’s access to learning opportunities. But if we want to work towards increasing educational engagement, we must also address the prevalence of fixed mindsets as part of the core of the problem. Yes – we must provide kids with as many educational resources as possible, but we must also provide them with the coaching needed to push them in the direction of pursuing their future and education.  

We must teach kids not just what to learn, not just how to learn, but that they can learn. 

We must teach kids that there is hope for progress first – that there’s always a way to be better than you were before. 

References: 

Ng, Betsy. “The Neuroscience of Growth Mindset and Intrinsic Motivation.” Brain sciences vol. 8,2 20. 26 Jan. 2018, doi:10.3390/brainsci8020020

Smith, Jennifer. "Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset: How what you think affects what you achieve." Mindset Health, 25 Sept. 2020, www.mindsethealth.com/matter/growth-vs-fixed-mindset#:~:text=A%20growth%20mindset%20appears%20to,process%2C%20rather%20than%20the%20result. Accessed 26 June 2025.