IMPLICIT THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE AMONG S CHOOLCHILDREN

In their theory on achievement motivation, Dweck and Leggett (1988) po stulate that implicit or naive theories about the malleability of inte lligence determine goals, attributions and adaptive vs, maladaptive be havior in the face of failure. In the present study, we investigated d ifferences in implicit theories of pupils in grades 5 to 10 from two r ather different schools (Gymnasium and Laborschule Bielefeld). We cond ucted group interviews with 17 groups of 5-6 children each and perform ed qualitative as well as quantitative analyses. Our results show that the definition of intelligence changes with increasing age. While the youngest pupils think that the 'amount of knowledge' is intelligence, the older ones focus on a person's 'apprehension'. This change in the definition of intelligence is of importance for the quantitative meas urement of implicit theories. As expected, older participants viewed i ntelligence as less malleable compared to the younger participants. Th e expected differences between schools were not found. In addition to the comparisons over age and schools, we discuss consequences for the construction of a questionnaire measuring implicit theories.