This week I have decided to dig deeper and investigate the growth mindset. Sure I've hear the term used before and I have a basic knowledge of what it means, but I want to know more. If I need to have a growth mindset and I should encourage a growth mindset with my students, I definitely need to know all that I can about the growth mindset.
The first place I turned to was the trusty ole Twitter. I did a search of Growth Mindset and a #growthmindset search. This was helpful but I wanted to dig deeper, so I did a Google search and found a lot of other useful articles to give me the big picture of growth mindset in education.
The Growth Mindset is about "teach[ing] students to love challenges, to enjoy effort, to be resilient, and to value their own improvement. In other words, we can design and present learning tasks in a way that helps students develop a growth mindset, which leads to not just short-term achievement but also long-term success." Students with a growth mindset value effort and see effort as a means of developing and sharpening abilities, while students with a fixed mindset do not like effort and see ability as something that you naturally have or do not have. Likewise, students with a growth mindset keep moving forward when faced with challenges and obstacles by trying to strategies and staying involved, while students with fixed mindsets tend to get frustrated by obstacles and get discouraged or defensive.
As teachers, we should strive to design challenging, meaningful learning tasks that can be used to demonstrate and encourage a growth mindset. In order too prepare students to benefit from meaningful work, teachers need to create a growth-mindset culture in the classroom. One way to create such a culture is by providing the right kinds of praise and encouragement. I found this to connect directly with NCTCS 1a "Teachers establish a safe, orderly environment, and create a culture that empowers students to collaborate and become lifelong learners."
As teachers, we can also emphasize that fast learning is not always the deepest and best way to learn material and that students who take longer are sometimes able to actually understand material better than those who "fast learn." This plays in to NCTCS 4a and knowing the ways in which students learn.
There are steps we can take to build a growth mindset within the classroom and school. Learning tasks should challenge all students. This is where differentiation becomes a key player. Even bright students at the top of the class need to be challenged. If these students are not challenged they may settle into a fixed mindset that you are smart if you can succeed without effort. So as we plan challenging, differentiated learning tasks for our students we need to be ready to present these tasks in ways that portray challenges as fun and exciting. Students will be excited about something if you, the teacher, are excited.
Twitter led to some great growth mindset images that I am going to share below:
I don't know about you, but I want to teach because I want to see students succeed and to become lifelong learners. I think the growth mindset and lifelong learning go hand in hand. It's time we embrace the growth mindset and begin adding it to our lesson planning.
