Growth Mindset; - SPARK (PDF)

Growth Mindset: What is it? And why does it matter so much? Sarah Grison [email protected] March 2, 2017 Marsh Jones [email protected]  What are our goals today? Discover what it means to have a growth mindset Understand why it is beneficial for students (and us!) Discuss concrete ways to cultivate a growth mindset Do you believe this is true? We do! This is how we got interested in this topic.  What is a growth mindset? Psychological research describes two ways we can understand intelligence Entity view: Theory that a person’s mental ability is fixed and stable. Incremental view: Theory that one’s mental ability is fluid and changeable. Students do well (or badly) because they are smart (or not) Students do well (or badly) because they work hard, struggle, & persevere (or not) Teachers can only help students SHOW their innate mental ability (or lack thereof) Teachers can help students IMPROVE mental ability with hard work, practice, & failure Belief in this theory creates Fixed Mindsets in people Belief in this theory creates Growth Mindsets in people Psychologist Carol Dweck developed these theories and has described the two mindsets that result from them. Click here to see a description of this work.  The “Golden Nugget” of Growth Mindset Have you ever felt like you learned from a failure? If so, that’s they key to a growth mindset!  Growth Mindset: The Power Of “Yet”…. Click here to watch Carol Dweck’sTED talk on The Power Of Believing that You Can Improve Carol Dweck’s bestselling book on growth mindset Click to see Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk on Do Schools Kill Creativity? “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything creative Click here to see how Jo Boaler applies growth mindset to math education  What are our goals today? Discover what it means to have a growth mindset Understand why it is beneficial for students (and us!) Discuss concrete ways to cultivate a growth mindset  When have you experienced fixed and growth mindsets in education? How have you felt that these have affected learning? Click to hear about how different cultures and different teachers demonstrate fixed versus growth mindsets. A Person’s Mindset May Affect Learning  So how might struggle and failure help learning? Because neurons in the brain are the basis of learning and they are active when we make mistakes!! http://tinyurl.com/hfz3r4j  An over-simplified primer – Part 1 Is made up of billions of individual neurons The human brain…  An over-simplified primer-Part 2 They create vast networks that support rich information processing! Neurons connect together to communicate, and when specific ones “communicate” often…  Think of it this way…. The LA freeway is like neural communication in your brain… Exits you take often are like strong neural connections, but exits not used are like neural connections that are pruned.  So, wait…why do these tools work? So, over time, it seems to be that making mistakes changes our brains. See how neural connections change over the lifespan? First we develop connections, then we prune. This also shows learning!  And Research Shows That a Growth Mindset Influences Processing of Information in Our Brains! Click here to access a copy of Mangels’ et al (2007) research. Click here to access a copy of Moser et al’s (2011) research.  What are our goals today? Discover what it means to have a growth mindset Understand why it is beneficial for students (and us!) Discuss concrete ways to cultivate a growth mindset  How can we cultivate a growth mindset? What are some ways that we have seen people cultivate a growth mindset with their students?