A Cross-national Study of Student Teachers' Views about Intelligence: Similarities and Differences in England and Turkey

Abstract

A cross-national descriptive research method was used to explore Turkish and English student teachers' views about intelligence, and the factors which shape them. The "Adult Version of The Implicit Theory of Intelligence Scale" [1], and the Turkish version of this scale [2] were used to investigate the views of 114 English and 201 Turkish students of Primary Education. A semi-structured interview was also used with a sub-group of the students. The findings reveal that the Turkish students, on average, scored more highly in relation to entity intelligence theory than in relation to incremental intelligence theory, and the English students, on average, scored more highly in relation to incremental intelligence theory than to entity intelligence theory. In addition, when comparing the average scores in relation to incremental intelligence theory, the scores of the English students are significantly higher than those of the Turkish students.

Do Special and General Education Teachers’ Mindset Theories About the Malleability of Writing and Intelligence Predict Their Writing Practices?

“…These outcomes directly mirror the findings from Graham et al (2023) as the current study included all of the teachers from the prior investigation with three exceptions (one general and two special education teachers). They are also consistent with studies showing teachers typically believe that intelligence is malleable (e.g., Ilhan-Beyazatas & Dawson, 2017;Jones et al, 2012) and writing development and knowledge are not fixed or certain (Graham et al, 2021(Graham et al, , 2022(Graham et al, , 2023.…”

“…Much less research has examined teachers’ mindsets and their relation to teaching or student achievement. While relatively few in number, studies with teachers have investigated a range of topics including the mindsets held by teachers (e.g., Graham et al, 2023; Ilhan-Beyazatas & Dawson, 2017; Jones et al, 2012), relationships between teacher and student mindsets and students’ academic performance (e.g., Bostwick et al, 2020; Mesler et al, 2021), and the effectiveness of training designed to promote a growth mindset among teachers (e.g., Patrick & Joshi, 2019; Rissanen et al, 2019; Seaton, 2018). In order to better understand the relationships that exist between teachers’ mindsets, their teaching practices, and ultimately students’ beliefs and academic progress, more research is needed in this area, including how teachers’ mindsets are related to their teaching practices (the focus of this investigation).…”

Literature review on teachers’ mindsets, growth-oriented practices and why they matter

“…As educational and cultural contexts differ widely, it is necessary to acknowledge that we still possess little knowledge of teachers' mindsets elsewhere in the world, for example in developing countries. The few studies that exist and were included in this review indeed indicate the presence of cultural differences (Asbury et al, 2015;Ilhan-Beyaztas and Dawson, 2017;Zhang et al, 2020).…”