Link: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/09/21/teachers-seize-on-growth-mindset-but-crave.html
Key Points: The article highlights the importance of teaching a growth mindset to students but counters this with data suggesting that many teachers are not well equipped to teach this important lesson. Researchers are faced with the challenge of maintaining the enthusiasm of the growth mindset movement while acknowledging the need to provide teachers with better training in this area. To this end, Stanford researchers have set up an online training module to help better inform educators on how to pass on a growth mindset to their students.
Intended Audience: Teachers, Administrators, and Parents
Relevance: Special Education teachers and their students can benefit from developing a growth mindset in their classrooms. This idea is often talked about by teachers at the beginning of the year and then set aside and rarely revisited. Researchers are imploring educators to become more familiar with techniques to enhance the growth mindset in their students.
In my new position Ihave just begun to learn about "growth mindset" so it was exciting to see an article posted about the topic. We have a program (AVID) at our school that is, in part, based around a positive "growth mindset". A group of math teachers at our school went to a conference based around the theory, and were very positive about all that they learned. My co-worker incorporates "growth mindset' into nearly every lesson. I do not believe at our school that it is something that is forgotten mid- year as the article states.
ReplyDeleteOne could almost equate the theory of growth mindset to throwing a student a life preserver. It isn't that a student can't complete the task at hand, it is just that they have not completed it YET. "Yet," being the distingushing premise of the theory. I believe similar to a life-preserver, the word "yet" gives a student hope. They will figure it out but not quite just yet. All in all, their is much to to be said for the implementation of growth mindset model into ons'e daily teaching.
I find it a little ironic that growth mindset, which I support, involves dedication and hard work leading to greater ability and successful outcomes, whereas meritocracy, a system that rewards ability and effort with success, is seen as a myth. If growth mindset can be valid, why is meritocracy not? This leads me to believe that people sometimes see certain elements of society through biased lenses – they see what they want to see. The TV sitcom “All in the Family” episode Season 3, Episode 21 - ("Everybody Tells the Truth") illustrates this concept as Archie and his son-in-law see wildly different versions of the same event.
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ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting article and one that I found relevant to me because the school I work at just spent some time as a staff discussing the growth mindset and how we can teach it. I'm now curious to see if our school will continue to provide us information and training pertaining to this concept because, as you pointed out, they will introduce it as school begins but rarely continue the discussion as the year progresses. I do think that is it something we should be trying to incorporate into our lessons and is something that would benefit student's learning.
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