Carol Dweck: "The Growth Mindset"

Becoming a growth mindset school The idea of becoming a growth mindset school has been over a year in the making. Our Headteacher bought each member of SLT a copy of Mindset for Christmas, and it was the main agenda item at our annual senior team conference. Today I launched the idea of becoming a growth mindset school to all staff at our INSET day. This is the basis of the presentation I did. Our INSET session was for all staff – teaching, support, administrative, catering, site, network, technicians – everyone! It was essential for us, if we’re going to begin the process of shifting the culture of the school, that all staff are working together as one coherent team.

Growth Mindset Albert Einstein is considered one of the greatest geniuses of all time, though rumor has it he failed high school calculus. As you might imagine, this is an exaggeration ‒ Einstein didn’t remember getting anything but A’s. It’s possible that this story had something to do with his math skills. Despite his amazing intellect, Einstein wasn’t as strong in math as many of the other physicists of his day. Throughout his life, he was known to have frequently said, “If I could just do the math.” At the age of 76, Einstein passed away.

6 ways to teach growth mindset from day one of school Imagine if your new class this fall was full of students who would: Be willing to try new thingsStick with hard tasks and not give upPush themselves to do their best work, not just what’s “good enough”Believe in themselves and their own ability to learn Here’s the great news–these are traits that we can help develop in our students by teaching them about how their brains work. Many students enter our classrooms believing they’re either smart or not smart, good at reading or math, or not good in those areas. This belief that our basic qualities like intelligence and talents can’t be changed is called a fixed mindset. Often our students figure: Why bother trying at something that’s hard for me? The Myth of 'I'm Bad at Math' - The Atlantic “I’m just not a math person.” We hear it all the time. And we’ve had enough. Because we believe that the idea of “math people” is the most self-destructive idea in America today. The truth is, you probably are a math person, and by thinking otherwise, you are possibly hamstringing your own career. Worse, you may be helping to perpetuate a pernicious myth that is harming underprivileged children—the myth of inborn genetic math ability.

Developing a growth mindset in the classroom This article first appeared in Sec Ed magazine in April 2014. To read the original, click here. To read more of my monthly columns for Sec Ed, click here. Step by Step: Designing Personalized Learning Experiences For Students The phrase “personalized learning” gets tossed around a lot in education circles. Sometimes it’s used in the context of educational technology tools that offer lessons keyed to the academic level of individual students. Other times it’s referring to the personal touch of a teacher getting to know a student, learning about their interests and tailoring lessons to meet both their needs and their passion areas. As with most education jargon, the phrase isn’t fixed, but it usually connects to the idea that not all students need the same thing at the same time. It implies choice, multiple pathways to learning, many ways to demonstrate competency and resists the notion that all students learn the same way. Educator Mia MacMeekin has put together a clear infographic highlighting some of the ways teachers design “personalized” curriculum.

The Language of Choice and Support Language shapes our worldview. The narratives we hear around us influence our perceptions and understandings. Take Carol Dweck's concept of fixed versus growth mindset. One of the primary tools for fostering a growth mindset is changing how we talk about learning, from how we give feedback to how we address failure. Dweck's work shows that simple shifts in language of praise and feedback can hold immense power in children's view of themselves and of learning. We should harness this same power to better support our students who struggle with mental health challenges on a daily basis. Developing a growth mindset in the classroom There’s a free info graphic version of this article. To download it, click here. As a kid I wanted to become a cliché when I grew up so I bought a guitar and grew my hair. I successfully learnt all the chords but struggled to combine them in a meaningful way (perhaps I should’ve joined an experimental jazz band instead of churning out 1980s power ballads). When my dreams of rock stardom eventually withered on the vine, I turned my attention to mastering magic, then to conquering chess, and to all manner of other hobbies. What all these childhood endeavours had in common – apart from their mutual failure – was that I took it for granted that I’d have to work hard at them, I knew I’d have to practise endlessly and that I wouldn’t become expert overnight.

Top Ten Tips for developing a Growth Mindset in your Classroom Be Critical. Students should expect and welcome criticism. They must also be given the opportunity to act on any criticism or critique. This will allow students to realise that through improving their work and responding to feedback, they can be better than they were. Developing a Growth Mindset in Teachers and Staff The New Psychology of Success (2000), Dweck developed a continuum upon which people can be placed, based upon their understandings about where ability comes from. For some people (at one end of said continuum), success (and failure) is based on innate ability (or the lack of it). Deck describes this as a fixed theory of intelligence, and argues that this gives rise to a ‘fixed mindset’. At the other end of the continuum are those people who believe success is based on a growth mindset.

Creating a Growth Mindset in Your Students Belief that you can become smarter and more talented opens the doorways to success. That’s what twenty years of research has shown Carol Dweck of Stanford University. She has identified two opposing beliefs about intelligence and talent, beliefs that strongly impact our ability to learn. Though the fixed mindset has traditionally held sway, many recent studies show that the growth mindset better represents our abilities. Our brains are much more elastic than previously thought, constantly growing new connections. IQ and talent are not fixed, but are mutable based on experience and attitude. Teaching strategies to create 'growth' mindsets As a kid I wanted to become a cliché when I grew up so I bought a guitar and grew my hair. I successfully learnt all the chords but struggled to combine them in a meaningful way (perhaps I should’ve joined an experimental jazz band instead of churning out 1980s power ballads). When my dreams of rock stardom eventually withered on the vine, I turned my attention to mastering magic, then to conquering chess, and to all manner of other hobbies. What all these childhood endeavours had in common – apart from their mutual failure – was that I took it for granted that I’d have to work hard at them, I knew I’d have to practise endlessly and that I wouldn’t become expert overnight.

Developing a growth mindset I’ve decided to use the spring break as an opportunity to catch up on some long overdue reading – starting with ‘Mindset’ by Carol Dweck. The theory explored in this book is that there are two types of mindset – fixed and growth. The diagram below summarises the main qualities exhibited by each one: It’s obvious to see the relevance of this to us as teachers and Dweck presents a very compelling case for it. Whilst the theory is interesting, what I’m most interested in is what we can actually do in schools, in lessons, to move more of our students from a fixed to a growth mindset? This is the real challenge of teaching!