Ever try teaching a dog to read? Implicit theories of academic ability

When explaining academic outcomes, children and adults may describe differences in performance as fixed, that is, nothing can be changed, or incremental, that is, one can improve, and in so doing, display their lay theories about themselves and others. For example, one who holds an entity theory of intelligence generally attributes such differences to stable, uncontrollable factors, and tends to believe that one can readily and reliably predict an individual's intelligence using a single test score. In contrast, incremental views are less rigid and take into account controllable or changeable psychological or environmental variables.; This research examined southwest suburban third graders' implicit theories of reading ability regarding self, others and other species in a quasi-experimental design employing entity and incremental treatments. In this study, elementary students participated in a weekly reading program and worked together to teach a dog to do things that challenge an entity theorist's rigid views of what animals can and cannot do---specifically, to read a short list of vocabulary words. Repeated measures administered pre, mid, and post revealed new information about the flexibility of these children's implicit theories of reading ability and about the role of parents' implicit theories. According to teacher ratings, students' reading affect and performance improved significantly.