Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers

by Jo Boaler

taking a memorization approach to learning does not lead to high achievement, whereas thinking about ideas and relationships does.

research tells us that more effective and higher-achieving people engage in flexible thinking.

Adam Grant has written a book called Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World in which he argues that we have long valued the rule-following, memorizing students. He notes that the students in the US often regarded as “prodigies”—the ones who “learn to read at age two, play Bach at four, breeze through calculus at six”—rarely go on to change the world.

When scholars study the most influential people in history, they are rarely those regarded as “gifted” or “geniuses” in their childhood. Instead, the people who excel in school often “apply their extraordinary abilities in ordinary ways, mastering their jobs without questioning defaults, and without making waves.”

Connecting with people and ideas enhances neural pathways and learning.

when we connect with other people’s ideas there are multiple benefits for our brains and for our lives.

the African American students worked on math problems by themselves, whereas the Chinese American students worked collaboratively. The Chinese American students worked on their assigned math problems in their dormitories and in the dining halls, thinking about them together. By contrast the African American students worked alone in their dormitory rooms and when they struggled on problems, they decided they were just not “math people” and gave up.

In 2012, PISA assessments (international tests given to fifteen-year-olds worldwide, as mentioned earlier) showed that boys achieved at higher levels than girls in mathematics in thirty-eight countries.3 This result was disappointing and surprising. In the US and in most other countries, the achievement of girls and boys in school is equal. This reminded me again of the ways that tests distort what students actually know and can do.

What appeared to be a gender difference in mathematics achievement was in reality a difference in mathematics confidence levels.

Collaboration is vital for learning, for college success, for brain development, and for creating equitable outcomes. Beyond all of this, it is beneficial to establish interpersonal connections, especially in times of conflict and need.

Victor and Mildred Goertzel studied seven hundred people who had made huge contributions to society, choosing those who had been the subject of at least two biographies, people such as Marie Curie and Henry Ford. They found, incredibly, that less than 15 percent of the famous men and women had been raised in supportive families; 75 percent had grown up in families with severe problems such as “poverty, abuse, absent parents, alcoholism, serious illness,” and other major issues.8

Jay has studied resilience over many years and points out that people who survive hardship often do better, but not through “bouncing back,” as some think, because the recovery process takes time and is more of a battle than a bounce. She also points out those who ultimately benefit from hardship, becoming stronger and resilient, do so when they maintain self-belief, when they “own the fighter within,” and when they connect with other people. The thing that people who overcome hardship and do not become defeated by it have in common is that in times of need they all reached out to someone—a friend, a family member, or a colleague—and those connections helped them survive and develop strength.

The study produced results similar to those of the UK study. The students who learned mathematics actively, using and applying different methods for complex problems, achieved at significantly higher levels than those who reproduced methods a teacher had rehearsed. Again, the students also developed significantly different ideas about mathematics, and the students who learned more actively were ten times more willing to continue with mathematics beyond high school.13

When the results of this study started to emerge, Milgram accused me of scientific misconduct. This is a very serious charge that Stanford had to investigate by law and that could have ended my career. I was required to give a group of senior Stanford professors all of the data we had collected over the last four to five years. Stanford investigated Milgram’s claim, found no evidence at all that there was any cause to question our results, and ended the investigation. But Milgram was not finished, and his next move was to write a collection of lies and publish them online. I decided at first, on Stanford’s advice, to ignore this. I was, however, unimpressed by the whole set of events and decided to move back to England.

“Maybe I should go back.” At the same time I also promised myself that I would only go back if I fought to stop the campaign of slander that had been waged against me.

I stayed at home and clicked the button that made public my new webpage detailing the bullying behavior of the men.14 That was when everything changed. That night I also joined Twitter, and my first post linked to the details of the academic bullying. It spread like wildfire, and over the weekend my webpage was the most tweeted story in education. Within forty-eight hours I had been contacted by reporters from across the US, who ran news stories detailing the events.

I am sure everyone reading this book would have thought that by 2013 university departments would not still be discriminating against women, but it was clear from reading the emails that there are still plenty of men in positions of power who do not think women belong in STEM fields. They probably do not realize the extent of their discriminatory ideas and would be surprised by my making that statement, but their actions to suppress the work of women, detailed in the letters I read, revealed the discrimination clearly.

As the months and years went by, I continued to receive an outpouring of support. I also became more and more aware of the extent of the men’s aggressive behavior. The men involved had campaigned in districts around the country to stop any changes in mathematics teaching and had bullied teachers, district leaders, and parents.

Bullies still come after me, especially those helped by the anonymity and distance of social media. They think they can throw out insults and write abusive words about a woman working to improve education, but I am a much stronger person now. An idea that I hold on to when I read aggressive attacks is this: “If you are not getting pushback, you are probably not being disruptive enough.”

Education is a system in which we need to challenge the status quo because it has failed so many. So when I offer alternatives to what has always been assumed to be best and people come after me, aggressively, I am able to ignore their aggression, knowing that they are lashing out because what I have suggested has affected them in some way. I have learned to approach aggressive pushback differently—instead of letting it get me down or causing me to doubt myself, I view it as an opportunity.

you try to make productive change or suggest something new, in learning or in the workplace, and people become aggressive or ridicule you, try to view their criticism as a sign that you are making a difference. Pushback is a positive sign; it means that the ideas that are ruffling people’s feathers are powerful.

The showman Phineas T. Barnum, founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus (also the subject of the movie The Greatest Showman, starring Hugh Jackman), once said: “Whoever made a difference by being like everyone else?” I love that quote. It helps me know that new ideas will never be easy for some people to accept, yet they are very important. The ideas that are hardest for people to accept are those that go against the status quo, and they may be the most important of all.

People are so invested in the idea that intelligence and learning ability are genetically determined that they resist any notion to the contrary, particularly if they are the ones who benefited from their firmly held belief.

am very clear that there was one action that changed everything for me. It was the sharing of my experience with others and the incredible response of educators and scientists across the world who contacted me. It was connections with people—some of them in person, many of them online—that healed the wounds I was hiding. When people ask me what they should do when their work is attacked, I always suggest that they find people to connect with.

Shane started the movement “Count Me In,” which has now impacted more than ten million people, with speaking programs that have reached students in over one hundred countries.

Shane’s movement is also a helpful reminder that even—or perhaps particularly—in a world of online connectivity, genuine human connections are something that everybody needs and that changes people’s lives. Shane found that they helped young people know that their lives are bigger than the moments they are in now and that no matter how hard a situation may be, connections with people bring you out of it.

Despite the fears of some parents of high-achieving students, the students in this approach who improved the most in math achievement were the highest achievers.18 They increased their achievement more than other students at their school and more than the highest achievers in the other, traditional schools we studied. Their achievement gain came from their time explaining work to others—which is one of the best opportunities for students to understand more deeply themselves.

I noted the research showing that people who develop a growth mindset become less aggressive toward others. Interestingly, this stems from changing the way people feel about themselves. According to the research, people with a fixed mindset had thought they themselves could not change and so felt more shame about their own actions, which probably caused them to lash out more.

One of the important changes that many of the interviewees describe is being more resourceful when they face roadblocks. Instead of pretending they know or understand something they do not, they search for resources.

This new approach—of embracing uncertainty instead of pretending to know everything, of looking for resources to learn more—seems to enhance people’s connections with each other as well as people’s way of being in the world.

Approaching content with uncertainty and vulnerability is a trait I also recommend to teachers I work with. When students see their teacher present correct content all the time, always knowing the answer to any student question, always being right, never making mistakes, and never struggling, it creates a false image of what it means to be a good learner, in any subject. Teachers should embrace uncertainty and be open about not knowing something or making a mistake.

If you are a parent, discuss ideas with your children not as the expert in the room, but as a thought partner. Ask your children to teach you things—it will be something they enjoy; it will give them pride and enhance their learning. Admit to your children when you do not know something, but you have an idea for a way of finding out. Never pretend you know something that you do

I ask students to sit in groups and discuss things they do not like people to do when they work together on a problem.

Collaboration can be extremely engaging for students, but I have met many students who hate group work. This is because they did not have good experiences working in groups. The groups were probably not set up well. They may have had problems that were closed, or students may not have been taught how to listen, be respectful, and have an open mind. But for the vast majority of students, subjects come alive when they are discussed and when students think about the different ways problems may be approached, why their ideas work, and how they are being used.

Many people believe that the essence of high-quality learning is working alone, studying hard. Artists’ depictions of thinking and learning are often drawings and statues of individual people thinking hard. Rodin’s The Thinker is one of the most famous examples—a man sitting with his chin rested on his fist, apparently deep in thought. But thinking is inherently social. Even when we read a book alone, we are interacting with another person’s thoughts. It is very important, perhaps the essence of learning, when we develop the capacity to connect with another person’s ideas, to build them into our thinking, and to take them forward into new areas.

The pressure people feel to know everything is very real, but is something many people described letting go of when they learned about brain science and the value of struggle and openness. How often do people go into meetings or classrooms, worried that they do not know enough? And how refreshing would it be if people embraced times of not knowing and became more willing to acknowledge struggle? If people let go of the charade that they know everything and instead embraced uncertainty, it would give them a different way of navigating through the day, enabling more productive interactions. If people approached conversations in this way, it would help companies operate much more smoothly, friendships would develop better, and people would relax into their work and function more effectively.

Angela Duckworth introduced the world to the concept of grit—of being dogged and determined in pursuing an idea in a particular direction.2 Grit can be a really important quality, but it necessitates a narrow perspective, a zeroing in on the one thing that can bring about success. Athletes who achieve world-class success have all had to have grit, focusing on one activity and letting others go, and Duckworth herself talks about the need to be selective and not broad. This can work for some people, but is not the best approach for everyone.

The idea of grit also has an individual focus, whereas scholars point out that more equitable outcomes often come from the work of community.3 When young people excel and break through barriers to do so, it is rare for the achievement to be an individual accomplishment and much more typical for the achievement to be a collective effort, coming from teachers, parents, friends, other family members, and community allies. Grit does not capture this important feature of achievement, and may even give people the idea that they have to go it alone—and achieve through their own focused determination.

Freedom and creativity can lead to grit, but grit does not lead to freedom or creativity.

Henry’s choice to be grateful—for the “little things”—has had a profound impact on his life and what he has been able to achieve, even after being given a giant obstacle to overcome. Henry’s life illustrates not only the impact of gratitude but, more generally, the power of self-belief in achieving what many would see as impossible.

Dayna Touron, at the University of North Carolina, has conducted research studies with adults over the age of sixty and shown that even aging is, in part, a result of our minds.

Many people, as they age, start to believe they are capable of less, and this changes many decisions they make in their lives. Because they believe they can do less, they actually do less, which results in the cognitive decline they fear. Instead of retiring to a life of minimal activity, research tells us that we would be helped by filling our retirement years with new challenges and learning opportunities. Research has shown that elderly people who pursue more leisure activities have a 38 percent lower risk of developing dementia.11

I am often asked by teachers what they can do with their “unmotivated” students. It is my firm belief that all students want to learn, and they only act unmotivated because someone, at some time in their lives, has given them the idea that they cannot be successful. Once students let go of these damaging ideas and someone opens a learning pathway for them, the lack of motivation goes away.

Many people go through life feeling inadequate, often because a teacher, a boss, or, sadly, a parent or other family member has made them feel that way. When people feel they are not good enough, every failure or mistake is another opportunity to beat themselves up. When people realize that negative, limiting ideas are untrue, that any change can happen, and that times of struggle and failure are positive for brain growth, they stop feeling ashamed and start to feel empowered.

A second important key is knowing that times of struggle and making mistakes are good for our brains.

Samuels is unusual among doctors in embracing mistakes, recognizing that it is through mistakes that knowledge develops. Instead of beating himself up about them, he keeps a careful record of his mistakes, categorizes them, and shares them at conferences and other venues. In his blog post entitled “In Defense of Mistakes,” he states that without errors “there would be no further evolution of medical thought” and if doctors accepted rather than feared mistakes and saw them as opportunities for learning rather than shame, they could actually focus on the real enemy, which is illness.13 This open and positive approach toward mistakes has helped Samuels learn from them, become a better doctor, and help others in their path of learning and growth.

The teachers still assess students, but instead of giving an unhelpful number and penalizing mistakes, they give what I often describe as the greatest gift teachers can give students—diagnostic comments on ways to improve based on a leveled rubric (an evaluative scoring guide).

my final advice for you is to embrace struggle and failure, to take risks, and to not let people obstruct your pathways. If a barrier or roadblock is put in your way, find a way around it, take a different approach. If you are in a job and you would rather take on something someone else has always done, explore that new avenue. If your job does not allow you to work outside of limits, then maybe you should look for another job. Do not accept a life of limits. Instead of looking back on things that have gone badly, look forward and be positive about opportunities for learning and improvement. See others as collaborators, with whom you can grow and learn. Share uncertainty with them and be open to different ways of thinking. If you are an educator or manager, find out how your students or colleagues think. Value multiple ways of thinking, seeing, and working.

There may be nothing more important for our own or for our learners’ lives than knowing that we can always reach for the stars.