ABSTRACT
Learned helplessness encourages a performance learning orientation whereby students feel they need to prove their competence and avoid failure at all costs. A performance learning orientation results in students engaging in easy activities that fail to challenge, so that they can prove to others that they are competent. Encouraging a mastery learning orientation places the emphasis on improving skills and developing competencies. Mastery and performance orientations have been reconceptualised as growth and fixed mindset. Students with a fixed mindset view intelligence as innate and unchangeable while students with a growth mindset view intelligence as malleable, placing the emphasis on effort rather than being clever. Teachers can encourage a growth mindset through a number of strategies, including praising effort over intelligence. Emotions mediate between growth and fixed mindset orientations. Strategies and interventions can only be effective when applied at a whole-school level. Raising self-esteem in students is rarely an effective strategy; however, nurturing individual academic self-concept can lead to positive outcomes.
