Carol Dweck, professor at Stanford University and well known for her mindset research and its correlation to student achievement addressed misconceptions about her work and research at an Education Week event. Blogger Evie Blad shared a summary of the key take-aways. The following is adapted from that, and her full blog can be accessed here.
Most who recognize Dweck’s name understand that people operating from a fixed mindset see intelligence, ability, and other skills as innate traits like eye color and height. The implication for teaching and learning is that students are viewed as limited by the skills with which they were born. On the other hand, those with a growth mindset recognize that the brain can grow, that skills can be nurtured and developed and that intelligence is not something static. Consequently, all students can learn and grow if schools adapt to their needs and identify the strategies and practices that will help each student to develop his her abilities.
Dweck offers six suggestions for effective application of her research:
- Growth mindsets are not a silver bullet. Dweck cautions against expecting that change in mindset alone will result in increased learning. She encourages educators to understand the power in believing that all students can learn at high levels. (Hattie’s research affirms that high expectations in terms of what teachers believe about their students and their own abilities to reach their students in addition to what students believe about themselves can most significantly impact student learning and achievement—the effect size is 1.44!!)
- Mindset is not an either/or proposition. Students and educators alike have degrees of fixed and growth mindsets. For example, if I ask faculty to draw a pictorial representation of a concept, I might be triggering a fixed mindset for some who believe they can’t draw. This can serve as a barrier to their deeper understanding of the concept itself. The key is to be aware of the triggers—of those things that cause learners (adults or students) to retreat or disengage.
- Name your fixed mindset. Dweck suggests bringing your fixed mindset into the open by naming it. If a student is uncomfortable and believes she will fail when called upon randomly, she might note, “When we’re in a large group, and the teacher poses a question to the group, then looks my way, Matilda shows up.” In this example the student is bringing to light the fact she retreats when she fears being called upon at random. Not wanting to look dumb or stupid is reflective of a fixed mindset.
- Move beyond effort to strategies and practices. Help students like the one mentioned above in #3 to understand what strategies she might adopt to help herself as well as how she might work with the teacher to create a strategy for helping her grow in her comfort when called upon randomly. Perhaps the student puts her pencil in her right hand when she doesn’t have an answer.
- Develop a supportive, learning-oriented culture. How does your school and district respond to mistakes? How are innovation and learning encouraged? Does learning equate to one right answer in most classrooms? Or, are students and teachers encouraged to inquire, try a variety of solutions and resolve the problems they encounter?
- Avoid labels. Labeling can result in making excuses—if someone is labeled as having a fixed mindset, then we might use that as the explanation for low performance rather than working to identify strategies that will help that person learn and grow. Or, labeling someone with a growth mindset might result in assumptions that they readily adapt and need no supports to learn because they are “naturally” oriented toward growth and learning. Again, mindsets are not an either/or proposition.
(SAI, April's "Mentoring Matters", 2016)
