For the past few weeks Sky Class has been learning about growth mindset. Growth mindset is a term coined by Carol Dweck after studying how thousands of children behaved when confronted with setbacks and failures in school. Growth mindset and fixed mindset describe the underlying beliefs individuals hold about learning and intelligence. A fixed mindset is associated with the belief that one's intelligence is 'fixed', as in you are either born a math person or you aren't. This mindset can result in children (and adults) giving up when they face setbacks or struggle to learn a new skill or understand a novel concept. Growth mindset on the other hand is associated with the belief that you can become smarter. Therefore, students who have a growth mindset believe that effort is a part of learning and they put forth greater effort when things are hard, which results in higher achievement over time.
In class, we watched several videos that chronicle a young monster named Mojo navigate school. Over the course of the five brief videos the students watched Mojo move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. The videos also touched on neuroscience research about brain plasticity and we discussed how the best way to exercise your brain and help it grow is to try hard things. Every time you try something new your neurons are making new connections and if you persevere and keep working at something those connections become stronger and you become more skillful at whatever you are learning. The kids also learned the power of yet, which is that when you cannot do something, it doesn't mean you'll never be able to do it, it just means you can't do it YET!
On Friday, we put our learning into practice by presenting the kids with a growth mindset challenge. Each child was shown a complex paper configuration that was made by cutting a paper three times and then folding it. The children were given five minutes to try to recreate the paper design. During this time Katie and Kate walked around the classroom and recorded what we heard kids saying during the challenge. After time was up we put some of the things we heard on the board and then had the class decide whether the comments indicated a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. We reminded kids that there is nothing wrong with having a fixed mindset and that we all have a fixed mindset from time to time. The challenge is to notice when we have a fixed mindset and hopefully begin to shift our internal dialogue to be more growth mindset oriented.
We will continue to explore growth mindset and encourage you to talk about it with your child. Here's a link to the Mojo videos and Mindset Works is a fantastic website with tons of recommendations for caregivers, teachers and more. I highly recommend watching Carol Dweck's TED talk if you are interested in learning more about her research on growth mindset.
