Carol Dweck
Carol Dweck is a psychologist best known for the distinction between fixed and growth mindsets: the belief that ability is either a stable trait or something that can be developed through effort, strategy, and feedback. In this wiki, she matters because she gives a psychological layer beneath older learning pages on deliberate practice, delayed improvement, and continuous improvement.
Her core contribution in the-power-of-believing-that-you-can-improve is not merely motivational. She reframes what difficulty means. Under a fixed mindset, difficulty feels like exposure. Under a growth mindset, difficulty becomes information about where learning is happening. That shift changes how students respond to error, challenge, praise, and failure.
Dweck also sharpens a recurring distinction already present elsewhere in the wiki: outcomes versus process. Her argument against praising raw intelligence parallels other ideas here that favor systems, repetition, feedback loops, and compounding over one-off performances or identity verdicts.
Across the newer mindset sources, Dweck's work also emerges as a hinge concept between learning science and self-concept. She is not just saying that good methods matter. She is saying that people often refuse to use good methods because the wrong theory of ability makes challenge feel like self-threat.