Growth Mindset/Fixed Mindset Assignment
- Dweck offers two key terms, Growth Mindset and Fixed Mindset. Explain these two concepts. Use a Dweck quote for each as part of your explanation. Be sure to offer your explanation in a way that a friend might understand it.
Growth mindset is engaging with challenges to learn and improve. Those who utilize a growth mindset may understand it to be “the idea that abilities can be developed”. However, a fixed mindset is more along the idea that students would “run from the error. They don’t engage with it”. In this mindset, challenges and learning would be of no use because there’s no way to develop the intelligence and abilities that come with a certain subject.
- Dweck names at least two ways to stimulate a Growth Mindset or to build a “bridge to yet” (3:53). What are they? Use a quote for each and offer a response. Do these seem reasonable? Does something about them bother you? Why?
Dweck tells the viewers that one of the ways we can build a bridge to “yet” is to “praise wisely, not praising intelligence or talent.” This seems like a very wise and influential change in normal parenting behavior. Praising intelligence or a talent in individual subjects can eventually lead to despair and feeling like those are the only subjects you can succeed in. It keeps people from trying new things for fear of failure. Like the saying goes, “jack of all trades, master of none, but better than a master of one”.
Another way we can get closer to “yet” is by leaving our comfort zones. Intelligence and the development of skill grew in the subjects from Dweck’s study when they were taught that “the neurons in their brain can form new, stronger connections, and over time, they can get smarter.” Brains, especially kids’ brains, are like a sponge, soaking up skills and information. Dweck’s study, and the quote pulled from her speech, are virtually impossible to disagree with. It’s rooted in scientific logic.
- Intelligence. Dweck’s ideas may suggest a notion of intelligence or smarts that is different from what many might think about when considering intelligence. How do you see her model of intelligence? Explain with evidence from the text.
While many think intelligence is knowledge and knowing the answers to questions, Dweck’s model seems to be much more arbitrary. From what I can infer from her speech, Dweck’s mindset of intelligence is more akin to engaging and making an effort to understand certain subjects. When she talked about the math game her team and game scientists from the University of Washington made, she said, “students were rewarded for effort, strategy and progress… this game rewarded process. And we got more effort, more strategies, more engagement over longer periods of time, and more perseverance when they hit really, really hard problems.” Maybe it isn’t exactly that Dweck has a different definition of intelligence. Instead, the concept just might not be as important to her as it is to other people, so much so that it shows in her writing.
- Write about a fixed mindset moment in your own learning history. Explain how that moment worked out for you. Be sure to offer enough detail for a reader to grasp the situation, your approach/experience, and the outcome. (We all have them at some point!) Make sure to explicitly link your experience to a specific idea (or ideas) in Dweck’s talk.
The only fixed mindset moment I can remember was actually from a few days ago, at the beginning of my first Statistics class. As I was sitting there, listening to the teacher, it felt like this course was going to be very easy for me. I took pre-calculus last year and math class had always been pretty simple, but then I thought back to all the people I knew who talked about how difficult the class was and how they’d failed. People are all different, but how could so many fail a course that seemed so easy? Then I realized if I kept thinking about how easy this was going to be, I was going to fail too. It was like a door opened in front of me, and I knew I would have to work and study to get through even the easy classes. I’m glad that door opened, because the homework from my stats class seems to be pretty difficult, even when I’m actively trying.
