Recognizing and Overcoming False Growth Mindset

[elleng]

'All educators care deeply about their students' motivation. They want them to love learning, and to be resourceful and persistent in the face of learning challenges. They don't want their students to lose heart when they get stuck, make mistakes, or receive disappointing grades. In this context, the growth mindset entered the scene.

A growth mindset is the belief that you can develop your talents and abilities through hard work, good strategies, and help from others. It stands in opposition to a fixed mindset, which is the belief that talents and abilities are unalterable traits, ones that can never be improved. Research has shown (and continues to show) that a growth mindset can have a profound effect on students' motivation, enabling them to focus on learning, persist more, learn more, and do better in school. Significantly, when students are taught a growth mindset, they begin to show more of these qualities.

We typically teach students a growth mindset through online programs that demonstrate how the brain changes with learning (how the neurons grow stronger connections when students work on hard things and stick with them) and how to apply this to their schoolwork. These programs also contain testimonials from other students about how they've used a growth mindset to approach their schoolwork and to work toward meaningful goals in their lives.

In the wake of the many exciting research results, educators became increasingly interested in promoting a growth mindset among their students. This was extremely gratifying. To see some of the great successes was even more gratifying. However, I slowly became aware that not all educators understood the concept fully.'>>>

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/recognizing-overcoming-false-growth-mindset-carol-dweck?utm_content=37471529&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

[LWolf]

1. In my experience,

this is something that happens every single time we take a powerful concept and try to standardize if for mass consumption. It gets watered down, it gets misunderstood, and it gets misapplied.

The concept of the growth mindset is being promoted by admins across the country; that's part of the problem. It's one thing to make sure everyone has heard of it, and to invite people to investigate further. It's another to try to make everyone adopt it.

The adoption of a powerful concept works better from the ground up than from the top down.

My admin has taken a middle course; he gave us all Dweck's book and assigned it as reading, then set aside a couple of meetings to discuss it. He did not, however, go any further than that. He did not, for example, include it in anything required for all of us to enact. That leaves us to digest it and take on whatever resonates, or whatever we feel ready for, as individuals. If it becomes a greater part of our practice, it will happen at ground level.