I've read a couple of Dweck's books and highly recommend them—probably "Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development" for the crowd here. Her other book is branded like a self-help book, and it's still good though I imagine many won't like the style.
Her theory hinges on the concept of a 'declarative knowledge system' as a component of cognition, which could be described (in an over-simple manner) as "beliefs are significant determinants of behavior." This structure is also at the heart of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is the dominant paradigm for treating anxiety, depression, ocd, and others. It also works by correcting problematic beliefs in patients.
The belief in question in Dweck's work, which has so much impact on people's learning efficacy, is whether intelligence is changeable or not. If someone thinks it's changeable, they work hard to change it, and value effort. If they think it's something fixed that they're born with, they hold out hope that they might be brilliant for as long as possible, trying to make sure they and others think that's the case. You can imagine how this impacts people responses to failures in intellectual domains: if you think intelligence is changeable, you are glad to be given information on a weakness that you can now improve; if you think it's fixed, you become scared and discouraged.
I think this article focuses on the praise aspect, because it's easy to communicate the idea to lots of people; but the reason the type of praise matters is because one type or the other leads (on average) to the formation of one belief or another on the question of intelligence mutability. If you're not a parent, but someone interested in being able to learn more effectively, the praise aspect is probably less relevant to you—but the books are good.
The thing to keep in mind though, is that the only way to reap the benefits of what she's talking about is to understand that intelligence is changeable (to deeply believe it—that's where it's going to impact your behavior). Reading her books can help instill the idea—I'm still looking for other ways to prove it to myself and have had some success.
Her theory hinges on the concept of a 'declarative knowledge system' as a component of cognition, which could be described (in an over-simple manner) as "beliefs are significant determinants of behavior." This structure is also at the heart of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is the dominant paradigm for treating anxiety, depression, ocd, and others. It also works by correcting problematic beliefs in patients.
The belief in question in Dweck's work, which has so much impact on people's learning efficacy, is whether intelligence is changeable or not. If someone thinks it's changeable, they work hard to change it, and value effort. If they think it's something fixed that they're born with, they hold out hope that they might be brilliant for as long as possible, trying to make sure they and others think that's the case. You can imagine how this impacts people responses to failures in intellectual domains: if you think intelligence is changeable, you are glad to be given information on a weakness that you can now improve; if you think it's fixed, you become scared and discouraged.
I think this article focuses on the praise aspect, because it's easy to communicate the idea to lots of people; but the reason the type of praise matters is because one type or the other leads (on average) to the formation of one belief or another on the question of intelligence mutability. If you're not a parent, but someone interested in being able to learn more effectively, the praise aspect is probably less relevant to you—but the books are good.
The thing to keep in mind though, is that the only way to reap the benefits of what she's talking about is to understand that intelligence is changeable (to deeply believe it—that's where it's going to impact your behavior). Reading her books can help instill the idea—I'm still looking for other ways to prove it to myself and have had some success.