Challenge and the Growth Mindset

"If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don't have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence." - Carol Dweck

Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has spent her career researching the difference between the fixed and growth mindsets and how cultivating one or the other can impact the growth and achievement of our students. In a fixed mindset, students believe that their intelligence and abilities are set and that they are either smart or not. These students don't feel a need to put in effort because they can't change who they are. A growth mindset, on the other hand, teaches students that they can continue to develop their brain and talents their whole lives and that by working their brain connections, they can become smarter [1].

One area of study that particularly interested me dealt with advanced students and stated that students become used to everything coming easily and when they become adults and actually encounter a situation that causes them to struggle, they don't know how to handle it. This is the experience that I had when I reached college and find that it is something that students aren't being prepared for in classrooms that are often focused mostly on the students that are struggling. Dweck's idea of having a personalized learning plan helps address this by ensuring that all students are working at a level that's challenging to them.

I was able to see the growth mindset in action this week using the math game "brain points", which Dweck helped develop to differentiate between the effects of different mindsets. In this game some students were given a model that discussed how their brain was growing and gave students points for trying new ideas and putting in effort, while the other students were given a model that was only the game [2]. Tonight, I had my son try the brain point version, which happened to align perfectly to the math he was currently doing in his 3rd grade classroom. He was very intrigued by the idea of getting points when your brain was being challenged. As the game started, he found it very easy. He would become annoyed with the brain points because they would be given to him when he felt he hadn't challenged himself or had to put in effort. At a later point, he did try what he felt was a novel idea and said "That time I really did try something new and hard. I deserved those brain points!" This really brought home to me the idea that our students know more about their process and abilities than we may be giving them credit for, and also, that in this "participation trophy" driven society that many feel today's students exist in, the students don't actually want to get things that they haven't earned. At another point he earned a challenge level, which was actually really hard. I had trouble figuring out how to solve it. It was very difficult for me to watch him struggle and work through the process of trial and error and figuring it out. I was pleased to see that while he would get frustrated at times, he never gave up. My son is often one that will quit if something is too hard, probably like many other gifted students, because he's used to everything being easy. He was very proud of himself when he was finally able to get it (after about 15 minutes) and expressed how much his mind must have grown.

I really love the idea of trying to cultivate this in my classroom and have a goal to really focus in on the process and the effort that students are using as the target for praise. I also hope to be able to embrace the personalized learning plans, because I want all of my students to feel challenged and this sense of accomplishment.

[1] Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.

[2] O'Rourke, E., Haimovitz, K., Ballwebber, C., Dweck, C., & Popovic, Z. (2014). Brain Points: A Growth Mindset Incentive Structure Boosts Persistence in an Educational Game. Center for Game Science, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington. Deptartment of Psychology, Stanford University. Retrieved from http://grail.cs.washington.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/orourke2014bpa.pdf