- A fixed mindset can be described as hitting your limit and being wary of going out of your comfort zone. In Dweck’s ted talk she talked about an experiment she ran to see fixed mindsets and growth mindsets in children by giving them slightly harder math problems than what they are used to. When confronted with these problems, the children with fixed mindsets “felt it was tragic, catastrophic… their intelligence had been up for judgement and they failed.” These students were confronted with problems they had never seen before and got flustered thinking they needed to get the problem correct. On the other hand the students with growth mindset that were presented with the same problems had a way calmer approach, some of the students “reacted in a shockingly positive way… they understood that their abilities could be developed.” Students with growth mindsets confronted these new math problems in a completely different way. They knew they would try to solve the problem however they could and if they didn’t get it correct it wasn’t the end of the world.
- Dweck described 2 different ways to stimulate growth mindset in her ted talk. One way would be to praise students based on their process of getting to an answer, not just getting the correct answer. In Dweck’s words, “we can praise wisely, not praising intelligence or talent.” Another way to stimulate a growth mindset is to give the students an active way to be rewarded for taking the time to strategize and work through a problem. Dweck had teamed up with game scientists from the University of Washington to create a math game that rewarded the time for strategies and processes. The results showed that the students put in “more effort, more strategies, more engagement over longer periods of time, and more perseverance when they hit really, really hard problems.” These two ways of stimulating a growth mindset do seem pretty reasonable to me. I feel like some teachers already subtly use this method of praise when we get partial credit in math problems for having the right idea of how to get to the answer to a question even if we get the final answer wrong. But I don’t think we should completely switch to praising only the process to get to an answer, sometimes getting the write answer makes it concrete in your mind that you know how to do those problems.
- Dweck’s model of intelligence is very different from the one we all resort to in our own mind. Her model is shown not just by what you already know, but your power and ability to think through a problem. The students she observed, both with fixed and growth mindsets, were all intelligent but some were held back by the fear of failure and going out of their comfort zone/ thinking outside the box. Dweck’s studies revealed that “students who were not taught this growth mindset continued to show declining grades.” Dweck knows all students are intelligent, and she wants students to realize that it is okay to be challenged and that being challenged can be rewarding.
- For my fixed mindset moment I will focus on my Junior year Algebra 2 math class. This math class had been a turning point in my thinking and in my confidence. I struggled the whole year because no matter how hard I tried, I was still getting terrible grades. But my teacher kept reassuring me that I would and can do better. So, I stayed after school many times to get help and made sure I studied more for each test. But I kept getting the same results for a while. But nearing the end of the year my grades were going up not by a landslide but slowly enough to where I could see a difference. Throughout that whole year I learned to step out of my comfort zone because the class was really challenging for me. I created new studying strategies for myself, I made sure to check over my work more, and after a whole school year of working at it I got better! That class helped change my mindset of “I need to get this right the first time” to “If I get it wrong I just need to figure out why and fix it.”
Meep<3
