defining helplessness

Oh, yea, about that study from the previous post.

I couldn't help but notice just how they defined "helplessness" in order to get students to use in their research.

"Dweck and her assistants ran an experiment on elementary school children whom school personnel had identified as helpless. These kids fit the definition perfectly: if they came across a few math problems they couldn’t solve, for example, they no longer could do problems they had solved before—and some didn’t recover that ability for days."


Okay, to do a little generalizing here... therefore, there's a type of student who loses the ability to do things they know when confronted with things they don't know.

How often does this happen in math?

All the time. No wonder these guys don't learn any math.

What can we do about it?