Growth Mindset

I was late getting started on this assignment. I searched and searched books that were about children with disabilities and listened to them being read on you tube. They weren’t doing it for me.  I looked at a couple of post from you, my class mates, and this helped me to think. “What is an issue that I feel like I am facing with my students daily?”  I decided at that point to think about growth mindset. So many of my students who have not done well in math in the past have no faith in their ability to learn math and be good at math. We discuss growth mindset regularly and I have shared a good video from Joe Boaler, about growth mindset. However, I still don’t feel like some of my students really believe it about themselves.  

I believe this issue becomes more evident as students are in school for more and more years. I feel like in younger grades students naturally want to learn and feel more comfortable trying. As students have years with little success they begin to lose hope and belief in their ability to learn. Students then develop a negative attitude toward the subject they feel overwhelmed by. Also as students grow they become more aware of the thoughts and opinions of their peers. If they are weak in a subject they put up a harder front and don’t feel comfortable making mistakes in front of the peers. Learning about a growth mindset will hopefully help them see they have the ability to do better and that their brain can learn the material. Hard work will be necessary but it is possible. There is tons of research about growth mindset yet so many of our students have not been exposed to it. It is important for our students to learn our intelligence isn’t fixed, it can change. It can get stronger or weaker depending on how hard we are willing to work.  

This book would be a good place to start helping students build a growth mindset because it teaches them the parts of the brain and what each part is responsible for. It also points out the need for hard work, practice and the value of making mistakes to learning.  

Do any of your students who haven’t been successful in math come in defeated? Do you all have any good books or strategies to build a growth mindset with your students? What do you all do to help foster a growth mindset with you students?

When researching this topic I found the mindset works website that was established by Carol Dweck and her colleagues.  Dweck says ”When students believe they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger. Therefore they put in extra time and effort and that leads to higher achievement.” She also says it’s important to not only emphasize the important of extra effort but discuss strategies and the willingness to analyze strategies and try new strategies. Just emphasizing on effort is sometimes detrimental because some students are trying very hard but are not successful because they are not equipped with the correct strategies. 

References: Mindsetworks

https://www.mindsetworks.com/science/