Growth Mindset

Happy Wednesday!

Looking for new ways to cultivate a classroom culture that embraces a growth mindset? This week’s coach tip includes several resources for you to add to your toolbox related to growth mindset in the classroom. Maybe you will try something new in the last few days of school, or use the resources to plan for next year!

Growth Mindset: a belief that suggests that one’s intelligence can be grown or developed with persistence, effort, and a focus on learning.

According to Mary Cay Ricci in her book, Mindsets in the Classroom, “An educator with a growth mindset believes that with effort and hard work from the learner, ALL students can demonstrate significant growth and therefore all students deserve opportunities for challenge. Add to this belief an effective teacher armed with instructional tools that differentiate, respond to learner’s needs, and nurture critical thinking processes, and you have a recipe for optimum student learning.”

   

Looking for a little summer reading? This book, Mindsets in the Classroom, is full of helpful ideas in an easy to read format. There is also a compatible resource book making new ideas easy to implement.

Additionally, this video “Praising the Process”, demonstrates how process praise helps students to develop growth mindsets. The video is specifically focused in the area of writing, and is well worth the 6 minutes to watch! In the video, Ms. Stewart shares tips for how teachers can begin to use process praise in their classrooms.

Finally, if you haven’t already checked out the Class Dojo videos related to growth mindset, you’re missing out! They are a perfect way to help elementary students to see themselves as learners, cultivate a growth mindset, and start classroom discussions.

Class Dojo Growth Mindset Videos

Moving Students from Fixed Mindset to a Growth MIndset

Last week's Teaching Tip shared information and resources to better understand growth mindset. Carol Dweck, who created the term, did a TED talk in which she urges teachers to adopt the phrase "not yet" in terms of unmastered learning targets in the classroom. She also encourages us to help kids move away from their fixation on grades and on the need for validation by:

• Praising and rewarding effort, strategy, and process (as opposed to intelligence or ability)
• Ensuring that we as educators don't ourselves adopt a fixed mindset toward kids whom we assume won't be able to learn or grow

Sometimes we run into kids whose fixed mindsets are so strong and their voices so loud that we struggle for words and strategies to counter their beliefs. If you find yourself trying to move a student from a fixed mindset  to a growth mindset, you might want to utilize some responses from "Mindset Kit/Seven Common Growth Mindset Scenarios and Responses,pdf"

Here are few of the responses to get you started:

• “Let’s take one step at a time. That way we can see where we might need to focus more attention and time.”
• “This looks like pretty demanding stuff. What would a focused first try look like?”
• “Let’s discuss some strategies for tackling this.”
• “Remind yourself that you just can’t do it ‘YET.’ Let’s think through some next steps to take.”
• “What was difficult? Let’s focus on the difficulties to see if we can figure it out.”
• “I can see a difference in now compared to ______ from last week/yesterday. What has changed? Talk me through what happened.”

Growth Mindset and Student Growth

Have you ever had a student proclaim, "I'm just no good at _______________!"  (fill in your subject area).  These students can benefit from learning about growth mindset.

A growth mindset is, "a belief system that suggests that one's intelligence can be grown or developed with persistence, effort, and a focus on learning" (Ricci 3).  Clearly, a growth mindset helps students achieve growth with any skill.

Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, says, "...students' mindsets--how they perceive their abilities--played a key role in their motivation and achievement, and we found that if we changed students' mindsets, we could boost their achievement.  More precisely, students who believed their intelligence could be developed (a growth mindset) outperformed those who believed their intelligence was fixed (a fixed mindset).  And when students learned through a structured program that they could 'grow their brains' and increase their intellectual abilities, they did better.  Finally, we found that having children focus on the process that leads to learning (like hard work or trying new strategies) could foster a growth mindset...".

Take this Mindset Self-assessment to find out if you have more of a fixed or a growth mindset.

As secondary teachers, it's important to help student understand and believe that they can grow and improve their skills, but teachers must also acknowledge that there are limits.  We can all improve our basketball skills, but we can't all be Michael Jordan.  

To learn more about growth mindset, check out these videos made available by the psychology department at Stanford University.

You can also join the book study that will be offered in the spring on Mary Cay Ricci's book: