untitled Developing a growth mindset in the classroom | M J Bromley's Blog There’s a free info graphic version of this article. To download it, click here. As a kid I wanted to become a cliché when I grew up so I bought a guitar and grew my hair. What all these childhood endeavours had in common – apart from their mutual failure – was that I took it for granted that I’d have to work hard at them, I knew I’d have to practise endlessly and that I wouldn’t become expert overnight. I played that old six-string every night after school till my fingers bled, readily accepting that improvement would be incremental. Most of us feel this way about our interests. And yet when it comes to schooling – to mastering English or maths or science – we often forget the importance of hard work and practice. By creating a culture in which students believe that their abilities are preordained, and in which they are either good at a subject or not, we discourage them from taking risks, from making mistakes. Why should this be? Free info graphic version of this article: Like this:
untitled 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. These individuals argue that success is based on learning, persistence and hard work. 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. Crucially, Dweck’s research is applicable to all people, not just students.
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. 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. In one such study, urban Milwaukee students who were at risk for mental retardation were entered into an intensive education program prior to first grade. Alfred Binet created the IQ test for a very similar application—to raise the intelligence of Parisian schoolchildren. “Never!” 5 Steps to Growth
Teaching strategies to create 'growth' mindsets As a kid I wanted to become a cliché when I grew up so I bought a guitar and grew my hair. I successfully learnt all the chords but struggled to combine them in a meaningful way (perhaps I should’ve joined an experimental jazz band instead of churning out 1980s power ballads). When my dreams of rock stardom eventually withered on the vine, I turned my attention to mastering magic, then to conquering chess, and to all manner of other hobbies. What all these childhood endeavours had in common – apart from their mutual failure – was that I took it for granted that I’d have to work hard at them, I knew I’d have to practise endlessly and that I wouldn’t become expert overnight. I played that old six-string every night after school till my fingers bled, readily accepting that improvement would be incremental. Most of us feel this way about our interests. And yet when it comes to schooling – to mastering English or maths or science – we often forget the importance of hard work and practice.
Developing a growth mindset | Class Teaching I’ve decided to use the spring break as an opportunity to catch up on some long overdue reading – starting with ‘Mindset’ by Carol Dweck. The theory explored in this book is that there are two types of mindset – fixed and growth. The diagram below summarises the main qualities exhibited by each one: It’s obvious to see the relevance of this to us as teachers and Dweck presents a very compelling case for it. So what follows is an initial attempt to look at each of the qualities of the ‘growth mindset and some of the strategies and techniques we use as teachers to develop this in students. Links to other relevant posts and blogs have also been included, within this post. Embrace challenges Tell students that they will be doing challenging learning in lessons – and tell them why you think they will be able to do it. Persist in the face of setbacks Show students strategies they can use when they become stuck e.g. use the 5Bs: Think carefully about your questioning. Learn from criticism Like this:
Empowering Student Voice Through Classroom Culture Posted 02/17/2015 12:31PM | Last Commented 02/22/2015 1:53AM Empowering student voice transforms a learner from being an observer to an initiator. We’ve all seen students who walk in the door on the first day of school with a fixed mindset. Their previous educational experience may have led them to believe they may be great in math, but struggle in reading. These students come to us expecting to experience the same struggles and emotions they have in past years. Students may lack confidence, and be unwilling to take risks. As educators, how can we support the development of a growth mindset that will lead to empowerment of student voice? Ongoing Community Building to Support Growth Mindset Educators grasp the importance of team building, but to take it further in order to shift the culture, I utilize Laurie S. Steps to Establishing Community Create an environment of cooperation: move toward collaboration through pushing one’s comfort zones. How did you feel during the activity?
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? 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? According to Dweck, they’re formed very early in life – and it’s actually possible a mindset like this was useful. Find peers
Math = Love: Growth Mindset and SBG Bulletin Board Downloads I already included the pictures of my two new bulletin boards this year in my massively long post of classroom pictures today, but I wanted to create a separate blog post that people could use to easily find the downloads to duplicate these bulletin boards in their own classrooms. I don't think I've ever been this happy with my bulletin boards before. They make me smile. They represent what I think is important. They are useful to students. They spark conversations. The bulletin board behind my desk is called "Change Your Words - Change Your Mindset!" . This is not an original idea. The words printed on gray cardstock represent a fixed mindset. The words printed on colored cardstock represent a growth mindset. I'm asking my students this year to listen for people speaking in the fixed mindset and to offer them a statement in the growth mindset instead. My other bulletin board stems from this theory of mindset. I changed the coloring to better represent my grading structure.
jlsu En av böckerna som jag tipsade om i mitt blogginlägg boktips 2015 handlar om hur vi ser på hjärnan och vår förmåga att utvecklas. Boken jag tänker på är Carol S. Dwecks ”Mindset – du blir vad du tänker”. Hon skriver om ”fixed mindset” och ”growth mindset” som är två olika förhållningssätt till hjärnan och möjligheterna att utvecklas och lära sig. Jag har gjort några infographics som kan vara användbara i klassrummet. Lycka till med det dynamiska tankesättet och läs gärna Carol S.
jlsu Som en uppföljning till mitt förra blogginlägg om dynamiskt och statiskt tankesätt kommer här den s k isbergsillusionen. Isbergsillusionen visar exempel på vad som krävs för att bli framgångsrik, men som oftast inte syns på ytan. När man ser någon som är riktigt duktig (t ex en idrottsutövare, en musiker, en jonglerare etc) ser det väldigt enkelt ut. Därför är det lätt att tro att det handlar om ”medfödd talang”. Den som vill ha isbergsillusionen som pdf kan ladda ner den här: Isbergsillusionen