Teachers' Beliefs About the Nature and Malleability of Intelligence

This study examines teachers’ beliefs in the nature and malleability of intelligence, how these beliefs may vary in different academic domains, and whether those beliefs have any significant relationships with teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, epistemological beliefs, and proposed interventions for struggling students. Findings showed that teachers exhibited a more fixed view of the nature of intelligence when survey items were framed in terms of math, not language arts or domain-general items. There was also evidence suggesting that teachers’ beliefs in the fixed entity nature of intelligence are significantly correlated with holding a traditional unidimensional conception of intelligence. However, little evidence was found indicating a relationship between teachers’ various beliefs and their proposed strategies for struggling students. The results have implications for research on lay conceptions of intelligence, and for teacher education curricula.