21st Century Learning and Teaching

What would you say are a few of the biggest myths about growth mindset?

OK, myth No.1 is the myth that it’s all about effort, and that you instil it by praising effort. Effort is one factor that leads to learning. So the ultimate value is growth, progress, learning. And effort is one thing that leads there but there are many other things – strategies, using resources, getting advice, guidance and mentorship, and when people leave that out and just praise effort, it’s not transmitting a growth mindset. Adults have nagged children for centuries to try harder. That’s not a growth mindset, it’s an adult nagging a child to try harder!

Also, we find that when teachers think it’s just about effort and praising effort they may praise effort that isn’t even there, or that’s not effective. So if a child tries hard at something and you say ‘great job, you tried hard’, but they didn’t make progress, they didn’t advance, you’re actually conveying a fixed mindset because you’re saying ‘great effort, I didn’t really expect you to do that, and I don’t expect you to do that, so I’m trying to make you feel good about not doing it’. So we need people to understand that it’s appreciating a variety of process variables that lead to learning.

The second myth is that you can teach students a lesson on growth mindset and put a poster up in the front of the room, and that’s that, that they will have a growth mindset from then on. And we know if the teacher doesn’t then embody a growth mindset, if teachers don’t embody growth mindsets in their teaching practices, in the way that they give feedback when the child is stuck, and the way they present a new unit, in the way that they give opportunities for revision and growth of understanding – if they don’t embody that growth mindset, they are not teaching it. And in fact, if their behaviour contradicts the poster at the front of the room, then maybe they’re doing a disservice.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=carol+dweck

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Growth+Mindset

False growth mindset is saying you have growth mindset when you don’t really have it or you don’t really understand [what it is]. It’s also false in the sense that nobody has a growth mindset in everything all the time. Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets. You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait.

Something really challenging and outside your comfort zone can trigger it, or, if you encounter someone who is much better than you at something you pride yourself on, you can think “Oh, that person has ability, not me.” So I think we all, students and adults, have to look for our fixed-mindset triggers and understand when we are falling into that mindset.

I think a lot of what happened [with false growth mindset among educators] is that instead of taking this long and difficult journey, where you work on understanding your triggers, working with them, and over time being able to stay in a growth mindset more and more, many educators just said, “Oh yeah, I have a growth mindset” because either they know it’s the right mindset to have or they understood it in a way that made it seem easy.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Growth+Mindset

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2016/11/14/pssst-the-most-important-in-education-understanding/

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/getting-ready-for-modern-education-first-try-to-understand-what-it-is/

In science, we build a firm foundation and then we keep renovating the house. We find interesting results, we are fascinated by them, we don’t always trust them, so we go back and replicate them. We also challenge them by asking, where will this not work? When does the effect go away? How can we use better methods to test our theories?

As part of this process, scientists ask each other questions. Recently, other scientists asked us some questions about three of our papers. We took this very seriously, carefully considered each inquiry, delved into the studies again (in some cases reanalyzing the data), and prepared three documents, each detailing our process and our findings (here, here, and here). In each case, we showed that the conclusions reached in the paper were sound. But, as with anything that helps make science better, we were grateful for the questions because they pointed out areas for improvement or clarity, and because we believe in open science.

It is important however to consider these questions in light of a large body of work. The growth mindset story does not rest on a handful of isolated studies. Research in this area has been ongoing for 30 years and the field has amassed a large body of work. A meta-analysis published in 2013 found 113 studies conducted by many authors and concluded that mindsets are a significant factor in people’s self-regulation toward goals.

Meta-analyses are helpful, but not the final word. Government data collected at a country level—all the 10th grade students in the country of Chile (over 160,000)—showed that holding a growth mindset predicted academic achievement at every socioeconomic level. Recently, the state of California, collecting data from over 100,000 middle schoolers, found that students’ mindsets were a good predictor of their test scores. And this doesn’t include many experimental studies that have carefully oriented children (or adults) toward different mindsets and found effects on outcomes. It is highly unlikely that mindset is a phantom phenomenon.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=carol+dweck