Growth Mindset News and Tips
Carol Dweck on Mindsets and The End-of-Year Slump:
Can we motivate students at the end of the year?
The year feels long, the students have been working for many months, and they sense the school year winding down—they can begin to feel the freedom and joys of summer. How can we keep them engaged in schoolwork? Research on mindsets gives some answers.
As most of you know, our research shows that students with a growth mindset (who believe their intelligence can be developed) show greater motivation to learn and greater achievement over the school year, compared to students with a fixed mindset (who believe their intelligence is fixed). This is because students with a growth mindset believe in effort and focus on learning and improvement.
We have also found over and over that praise for intelligence puts students into a fixed mindset and harms their motivation, but praise for process (effort, strategies, taking on challenges, persistence) puts them in a growth mindset and enhances their motivation and resilience.
So, how can we take advantage of these findings?
1. Focus on progress. The end of the year is a great time to emphasize all the progress students have made over the school year.
...READ MORE...
Mindset at Work
Emily Diehl, from Florin High-School, Sacramento, CA on her experience applying Mindset theory:
“Mindset opened my eyes to the possibilities in education to be systematic in creating real change for human beings.”
Tell us a bit about who you are, where you teach and what you do:
My business is change. I am an instructional coach working with teachers from K-12 in a high poverty region. Daily I have myriad duties, but the bottom line is change – get adults to change their practices, habits, and thinking. Tall order. This is what brought me to Mindset and Brainology.
How did you become interested in the Growth Mindset?
Before I learned about the Mindset framework, I would try to communicate the best practices I learned in the classroom to teachers I was assigned to coach, but felt like I got nowhere...
My school psychologist suggested reading Mindset and I quickly dove in. I had read some of Dweck’s articles and was already smitten. As I read Mindset, I saw that the Fixed Mindset appeared to be the explanation for why schools do not improve, why we have so much trouble reaching non-learning adolescents, and why teachers often refuse to collaborate with other teachers... I wanted answers for educators...
...READ MORE...
The Growth Minded Educator Contest
 The Growth Minded Educator contest is our way of saying thank you and recognizing the efforts educators put into instilling and cultivating a Growth Mindset environment.
How to participate in the contest?
Email us your answer to the contest question(see below). We’ll review each answer and announce the Growth Minded Educator in the following newsletter. Enter the contest and get a chance to win a Growth Mindset online seminar for your school, provided by Lisa Blackwell, or a one-on-one consultation with her. Your choice!
Enter our first Growth Minded Educator Contest!
Contest Question:
Please, tell us how the growth mindset has impacted your teaching and your students? (suggested length: 200 words or less)
Email your answers to newsletter@brainology.us by May 24th, 2011 11:59 PM [PST].
If you have any questions or feedback, email us at anytime to newsletter@brainology.us
Happy learning!
The Brainology Team
Mindset Works, Inc.
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