My aim as an educator is always to engage my students in their learning.
I reflect constantly, and seek feedback. It is so important to refine and reflect – to ensure that what we are doing is actually meeting the needs of our students. As a middle years advocate, (and Management committee member of Adolescent Success (visit www.adolescentsuccess.org.au for more information) – formerly Middle Years of Schooling Association), I am more than aware that meeting the needs of our students is key to their learning and ultimately to their success. Of course, this applies to all learners, and we have certainly adopted that philosophy within our college.
In education we are bombarded with ideas and examples of pedagogical frameworks for learning, with research that we are told is the most relevant and integral to success, new programs and approaches that must be implemented and of course to curriculum that we must teach. In all of this though, there are times when we find something that we believe needs to take priority; something that we know, if we take it on, will influence our learners, their learning, and maybe even their lives – success a definite probability. We know that we are going to need to sell it to our staff though; that we will need evidence, and an approach that will lead teachers to take this on in a meaningful way.
For me, I am focused on 21st century skills, on embedding inquiry learning into our framework; primarily – on student engagement. However, the key proponent that needs to underlie all of these things is for the students (our students) to believe that they are capable of achieving great things, that they can improve and that they will, with determination be successful. Consequently, I have been investigating Growth mindsets and Fixed mindsets, have implemented some surveys to gather data from our students, and attended some professional learning to further develop my own knowledge. (Some colleagues are on the journey with me, so that we can collaborate along the way).
I was first inspired to pursue this area when I joined up for a MOOC on Deeper Learning, earlier in the year, and was enthused by the idea that mindsets can and do make a difference.
We all know that we hold certain perceptions and values; some formed by our family relationships and experiences, some formed by our experiences at school. Some of us have that certain drive and determination, and we know that many simply cannot deal with challenge and give up if the task becomes too hard. Adults demonstrate these traits, and of course, so do our students. Call it resilience, drive, grit, determination; we all know that there are many young people today, particularly in our schools, who do not feel they can succeed. I know too, that there are many educators who articulate these same sentiments. It is quite the dilemma that so many appear to have a fixed mindset. What we need to develop is a growth mindset. We need our students to believe that they can improve, that is OK to make a mistake, that, with hard work and dedication, they can achieve greater than they did previously. We need teachers who can teach them how to do this, to model the processes and of course, teachers who do believe that all of their students CAN achieve more than they had previously.
With persistence, perseverance, practice and patience, we all have the power to achieve the goals we set. Nobody has achieved anything without all of these characteristics (and more). It gets down to the mindset that we have. You cannot become an Olympian without hard work and dedication; or a musician without practice, so, obviously, that applies to everything we do.
We have all heard and some of us have said that, “I was never good at maths…”, or “I can’t spell”, and some students will say.. “ Oh, I wish I was smart…”
I have heard many of our students, their parents and even other colleagues articulate these types of statements about themselves, and it can be a very difficult perception to change, but it is not impossible. We need to be fostering the concept of a Growth Mindset – that we are capable of improving in all of our intelligence areas – that we can develop through practice and hard work, skills in any area we wish to grow. Be that maths, art, music, running, and so on. We really are not just born with it; we can develop it!
Carol Dweck, is a leading researcher in her field – Mindsets and the following link will take you to just one of her presentations on this subject
How to Help every child fulfil their potential.
It should be our aim (parents, teachers, coaches) to ensure that we are fostering a growth mindset, rather than reinforcing the fixed mindset that many of us may have. It is definitely a learnt behaviour, no matter which way we think; there are strategies that we can put in place that help us not only to believe that we can achieve, but over time, to ensure that we will achieve, and this can be taught, learnt and modelled (by all). With the development of a growth mindset, (not just the power of positive thinking), we can all achieve.
I include for consideration, some snippets that highlight the research and purpose of this approach: An excerpt from an article by: Carol S. Dweck, (2007). The Secret to Raising Smart Kids. Scientific American Mind. “Fast Facts Growing Pains
- Many people assume that superior intelligence or ability is a key to success. But more than three decades of research shows that an overemphasis on intellect or talent – and the implication that such traits are innate and fixed – leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.
- Teaching people to have a “growth mind-set”, which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, produces high achievers in school and in life.
- Parents and teachers can engender a growth mind-set in children by praising them for their effort or persistence (rather than for their intelligence), by telling success stories that emphasize hard work and love of learning, and by teaching them about the brain as a learning machine.”
Further points for consideration taken from another article by: Carol S Dweck, Boosting Achievement with Messages that Motivate. Education Canada, Vol. 47 (2). www.cea-ace.ca “In other words, the cardinal rule of the growth mindset is: Learn! And like the fixed mindset, the growth mindset comes with three more rules that help students reach their goal.
- Take on challenges. We’ve often offered students a choice between a challenging task that they can learn from and a task that is sure to make them look smart. Students in a growth mindset do not want to waste their time looking smart on tasks that offer them nothing else. They overwhelmingly want tasks that stretch their abilities and teach them new things.
- Work hard. Rather than thinking that effort undermines ability, our seventh graders with a growth mindset believed that effort enhanced ability: “The harder you work at something, the better you’ll be at it.” They did not believe that inherent ability was the royal road to success, for even geniuses, they correctly believed, had to work hard for their successes.
- Confront your deficiencies and correct them. In just about every study we’ve done, students in a growth mindset are eager to remedy their deficiencies. They may be very disappointed by a poor performance, but they deal with it directly. Our seventh graders with a growth mindset, after a poor grade on a test, told us that they would study harder and try different study strategies next time. Our premed college students with a growth mindset recovered from an initially disappointing grade through their deeper and more extensive study strategies. Our University of Hong Kong freshmen wanted the remedial English course to shore up their language skills. And the growth-mindset students in our EEG experiment confronted their mistakes and sought new knowledge to rectify them.”
Take a Growth Mindset Test
There are many tests that can be undertaken to get a feel for where we are at and whether we have a growth or fixed mindset. One that I discovered in my learning this year, can be found at the following – Perts – Academic mindsets survey – http://survey.perts.net/share/dlmooc – it allows for application of the survey to individual classes and whole cohorts, as well as an individual assessment. It certainly provides some valuable insights into the learners that we have.
Evidence in much of the reading I have undertaken to date definitely reinforces the value of embracing this growth mindset approach and incorporating it into the teaching and learning process. I will be investigating further, and incorporating approaches within my own classes, as well as encouraging and teaching others about its merits. It can only benefit our students, which should always be our focus as educators.
Imagine the impact that this could have on a school community, as more teachers engage in the process.