- Dweck offers two key terms, Growth Mindset and Fixed Mindset. Explain these two concepts. Use a Dweck quote for each part of your explanation. Be sure to offer your explanation in a way that a friend might understand it.
A Growth Mindset is when your intellectual abilities are able to grow and expand. Dweck describes it as “They understood that their abilities could be developed. They had what I call a growth mindset” (around 00:35). This mindset is a way for the student to be able to enhance their way of thinking and understanding of material put out in front of them. Dweck also says “But on the right, you have the students with the growth mindset, the idea that abilities can be developed. They engage deeply. Their brain is on fire with yet. They engage deeply. They process the error. They learn from it and they correct it” (around 01:51). She is showing that students with this type of mindset are more willing to learn and to expand their knowledge and intellect. While a Fixed Mindset is when you don’t put in the effort to expand your knowledge. These types of students are fixed in their one way of thinking and don’t put in the effort to grow their understanding. Dweck described this mindset as “From their more fixed mindset perspective, their intelligence had been up for judgment, and they failed. Instead of luxuriating in the power of yet, they were gripped in the tyranny of now” (around 00:35). What she is saying here is that they are focused only on what they know at this moment in time and aren’t looking for ways to expand their knowledge and understanding. Dweck also says “On the left, you see the fixed-mindset students. There’s hardly any activity. They run from the error. They don’t engage with it” (around 01:51). What she is saying here is that these types of students when they are faced with a problem they don’t look for ways to fix it, they are stuck in their current ways and don’t have the type of understanding to fix the problem.
- Dweck names at least two ways to stimulate a Growth Mindset or to building a “bridge to yet” (3:53). What are they? Use a quote for each and offer a response. Do these seem reasonable? Does something about them bother you? Why?
Two ways to stimulate a Growth Mindset are to praise the students, but not praising them on their intelligence or their talent, and reward their effort, strategy and progress. In Dweck’s talk she says “First of all, we can praise wisely, not praising intelligence or talent. That has failed. Don’t do that anymore. But praising the process that kids engage in, their effort, their strategies, their focus, their perseverance, their improvement. This process praise creates kids who are hardy and resilient” (around 04:00). This is one way to stimulate the Growth Mindset, it shows that the educators are seeing the progress in their work and making the student feel empowered by what they are doing and so that they continue with this type of thinking. For her second point, Dweck says “There are other ways to reward yet. We recently teamed up with game scientists from the University of Washington to create a new online math game that rewarded yet. In this game, students were rewarded for effort, strategy and progress. The usual math game rewards you for getting answers right, right now, but this game rewarded process. And we got more effort, more strategies, more engagement over longer periods of time, and more perseverance when they hit really, really hard problems” (around 04:30). This is for her second idea, the reward for their effort, strategy and progress. This is that we give the students a reward for this different type of thinking so that they will continue to do it. Both of these ways to stimulate this mindset are very important, they are showing the students that the educators do care about them and the growth of their knowledge. These are both very reasonable ways to encourage a growth of learning. I agree with both of these ways to stimulate learning, if I had this kind of reassurance and care from some of my past teachers I would not have had such a hard time expanding my knowledge and ways to obtain this knowledge.
- Intelligence. Dweck’s ideas may suggest a notion of intelligence or smarts that is different from what many might think about when considering intelligence. How do you see her model of intelligence? Explain with evidence from the text.
Dweck’s idea of intelligence is more based on growth and understanding than getting A’s. She is more concerned with the students understanding the information and creating more ways for them to think at a higher level, without the pressure of getting the highest grades in the class. Dweck is for praise and reward for the students grasping a higher understanding of the material instead of rote memorization and then spitting the facts out onto a piece of paper when test time comes. She created games and problems that made the students think harder and challenge them. This process she has created and used will create better students, than the ones who just memorize. She wants to create a real contributing group of students into society that will be able to actually think for themselves.
- Write about a fixed mindset moment in your own learning history. If you have one from your reading and writing experience, consider using it as an example. Explain how that moment worked out for you. Be sure to offer enough detail for a reader to grasp the situation, your approach/experience, and the outcome. (We all have them at some point!) Make sure to explicitly link your experience to a specific idea (or ideas) in Dweck’s talk. You’ll be making what we call a “text to self” connection here.
I have had a few experiences of a fixed mindset moment in my schooling career. Never has it been in a reading/writing class because those classes I used were ways to get a better understanding of the text I was reading and working with. My fixed mindset moment happened a lot in Geometry in my eight grade year. I had a teacher that just wanted us to memorize and spit out the information but I wasn’t getting it. I thought I was doing it right but my test scores proved otherwise. I was stuck on this wrong way to complete the problem, and because of this I had to take the course again my freshman year of high school because I just could not grasp the ideas. But then I sat down with my high school teacher who pushed me and was trying her best to teach me the correct ways. And once I let go of the mentality “I just can’t do this class i’m not smart enough to do this,” I was able to grasp the concept. When Dweck talks about the students who ran away from the problems and wouldn’t try to find ways around the problem or ways to solve a problem in this fixed mindset, that was me in this course. I was running away from the problem and wasn’t trying to do better for myself. But once I sat down with a teacher and worked through my issues, and she praised me for starting it the right way and following the steps, the way Dweck talked about, I was able to truly understand what I was doing.
