To get students thinking about this concept, a TED Talk called Amateur Hour and two articles about how students learn and approach learning were assigned to students prior to class. During class, students were split into groups and asked to analyze two additional articles, The Secret of Self-Assessed Learning and You Can Grow Intelligence. Each group was then asked to compare all of the resources they had utilized and share what they thought were three important thoughts/themes.
This activity got everyone into the idea that intelligence is something that can be grown through hard work and commitment. The brain is like a muscle, and if it is not exercised and challenged regularly, it cannot continue to grow and get stronger. Just like elite athletes regularly train and work their muscles to keep them in top form, successful students do the same thing to their brains. Self regulated learners understand the importance of consistently engaging their brain in new and different ways, and know that this hard work can pay off in the acquisition of new knowledge and skills, as well as the mastery of things that may once have seemed difficult.
Class members also identified that "yet" is a critical phrase to apply when someone says they don't know something and can serve as the difference between growth mindset and fixed mindset learners. Just because a student doesn't know something right now, doesn't mean that they cannot learn it over time. Growth mindset learners understand that just because they don't know or understand something right now, doesn't mean that they cannot learn it over time. Fixed mindset learners tend to quit or abandon things that are hard for them, and do not focus on the fact that such things could become easy over time if they were willing to work at them.
A real-world example for this concept would be someone who runs their first 5K and isn't happy with their time. A fixed mindset runner would be more likely to maintain the same training program that they did before the first race and then quit and say they would never be able to run faster when their time didn't change in the next race. A growth mindset runner would be more open to changing their training program to help them run faster, even if it were harder, and wouldn't get discouraged when their time didn't become faster right away.
A great Youtube video to help understand this idea further can be found here:
Growth vs. fixed mindset learning approaches are an important concept to remember as educators. The classroom is full of challenges: difficult students, varied types of learners, scheduling constraints etc., and if teachers maintained a fixed mindset, they would not be able to find success in the classroom. The best teachers are those who adopt and maintain the growth mindset perspective, and never stop pushing themselves to grow as educators.
Our students were challenged to maintain their growth mindset during their lab activity this week. They were tasked to teach a lesson on a topic that was unfamiliar to them and had a maximum of 15 minutes to present the topic and give an assessment and learning survey. They were not given any preface or directions on how to teach their lesson or any additional information on the topic they were assigned.
This experience could have been very frustrating if they were in the fixed mindset approach. However, because they were able to maintain their growth mindsets, they were able to walk out of the lab knowing that while they might have not been able to deliver the lesson that they wanted yet, if they work hard and implement the teaching strategies they will be taught, they will find success in the classroom.
As we end the first week of AEE 412, remember that the best is yet to come!
