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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! What is Growth Mindset? Professor Carol Dweck and “Mindset” Growth Mindset is the idea Professor Carol Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Dweck’s approach to mindset was sparked by her own experience of education. Even as a child, I was focused on being smart, but the fixed mindset was really stamped in by Mrs. The Science behind Growth Mindset I have previously blogged about my tentative first steps into neuroscience. Why are we interested in Growth Mindset
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. Provide elements of choice. Imagine if every classroom, every teacher instilled this culture within your school. Author: Pete Jones I am primarily an Art teacher, but over the past 5 years have been co-developing an experienced-based learning programme in the school I work in called Pebble, (short for Project Based Learning).
New Research: Students Benefit from Learning That Intelligence Is Not Fixed
Arten Popov Teaching students that intelligence can grow and blossom with effort – rather than being a fixed trait they’re just born with – is gaining traction in progressive education circles. And new research from Stanford is helping to build the case that nurturing a “growth mindset” can help many kids understand their true potential. The new research involves larger, more rigorous field trials that provide some of the first evidence that the social psychology strategy can be effective when implemented in schools on a wide scale. Even a one-time, 30-minute online intervention can spur academic gains for many students, particularly those with poor grades. Earlier, well-designed tests of simple and relatively inexpensive growth-mindset interventions had surprisingly shown improvements in students’ grades over weeks or months. However, all the original intervention studies were small and left some educators and policymakers unconvinced. A Light Touch Leads to Meaningful Change
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The Learning Myth: Why I'll Never Tell My Son He's Smart
By: Salman Khan Join the #YouCanLearnAnything movement My 5-year-old son has just started reading. Every night, we lie on his bed and he reads a short book to me. Inevitably, he’ll hit a word that he has trouble with: last night the word was “gratefully.” He eventually got it after a fairly painful minute. Researchers have known for some time that the brain is like a muscle; that the more you use it, the more it grows. What this means is that our intelligence is not fixed, and the best way that we can grow our intelligence is to embrace tasks where we might struggle and fail. However, not everyone realizes this. The good news is that mindsets can be taught; they’re malleable. The Internet is a dream for someone with a growth mindset. And now here’s a surprise for you. — You can view the original op-ed in Huffington Post here.
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. According to Dweck: In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. The crucial point for individuals is that these mindsets have a large impact upon our understanding of success and failure. Needless to say, this idea of mindsets has significant implications for education. We have to really send the right messages, that taking on a challenging task is what I admire. Modelling Create space for new ideas Build time for self-reflection
Why the Growth Mindset is the Only Way to Learn
“You’re too old to learn a foreign language.” “I couldn’t work on computers. I’m just not good with them.” “I’m not smart enough to run my own business.” Do you know what these statements have in common? They’re all examples of the fixed mindset- the belief that intelligence, ability, and success are static qualities that can’t be changed. When you have a fixed mindset, you believe that at a certain point, what you have is all you’re ever going to have: You’ll always have a set IQ. The problem is, this mindset will make you complacent, rob your self-esteem and bring meaningful education to a halt. In short, it’s an intellectual disease and patently untrue. The fixed mindset’s antithesis, the growth mindset, may be the cure. Dr. But before the good news, we have to address the bad. The Fixed Mindset in Action Do you find yourself trying to prove how smart you are? These are all symptoms of a fixed mindset. Within a fixed framework, progress is impossible. But where do these mindsets come from?
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. In her book Mindset, Dweck outlines the dramatic effect that these opposing beliefs have on learners: As you can see from this chart, the fixed mindset leads to many of the learning and discipline problems in school, while the growth mindset leads to optimal learning. Alfred Binet created the IQ test for a very similar application—to raise the intelligence of Parisian schoolchildren. “Never!”
Ethical issues in teacher-led research | Evidence into practice
At the last research leads event at Cambridge, I raised the issue of ethical considerations where teachers engage in research. Here are some thoughts: First of all, it’s important not to over-state the seriousness of ethical issues in teacher-led research within schools. The sorts of things that most teachers ‘investigate’ are close enough to the activities which take place as part of ordinary teaching in schools that ethical issues are not a major concern: Trying out a new writing frame, creating a formative assessment to identify misconceptions, developing questioning techniques, adapting materials to help EAL students access learning, implementing low-stakes quizzes to help consolidate previously taught topics, etc. Teachers already have a duty of care towards their students and should simply exercise professional judgement when planning innovations in their teaching. BPS: Code of Human Research Ethics (The British Psychological Society, 2010) Minimising Harm “Minimising Harm.
