The Effect of Reading About the Struggles of Accomplished Scientists

In this Education Week article, Jaclyn Zubrzycki reports on a new study from Teachers College, Columbia University (published by the American Psychological Association) on how high-school students reacted to different accounts of scientists’ work. Three groups of grade 9 and 10 students read short accounts of the work of Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Michael Faraday. Some students read texts that included details of the intellectual challenges each scientist faced (for example, Curie tried again with experiments that had failed). Some read texts that included details of personal challenges (Curie left her native Poland because at that time women weren’t allowed to attend school). And some stories focused only on accomplishments (Curie was fluent in five languages and won many awards). 

What did the researchers find? That students who read about scientists’ struggles, whether intellectual or personal, got better grades in science after reading the texts. The positive effect was most pronounced among students whose science grades were low before the experiment. Students who read only about accomplishments showed no difference in science achievement afterward. Another finding: both before and after reading the texts, students who had a “growth” mindset (effort, not innate talent, determines success) tended to do better in science classes than students with a “fixed” mindset. 

“Study Finds Motivating Power of Tales of Scientists’ Struggles” by Jaclyn Zubrzycki in Education Week, February 24, 2016 (Vol. 35, #22, p. 5), www.edweek.org; the full study is entitled “Even Einstein Struggled: Effects of Learning About Great Scientists’ Struggles on High School Students’ Motivation to Learn Science” and can be downloaded at

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/02/famous-scientists-st... 

From the Marshall Memo #627