Analysis: Part II
In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Stanford University professor, Carol Dweck, discusses the difference between having a fixed or a growth mindset and why one is more advantageous for a person’s future success. People can either approach life with a fixed mindset, where they believe that “a person’s qualities are carved in stone” or they can have a growth mindset, which is “based on the belief that your most basic qualities are things you can cultivate through efforts” (Dweck, 2006, p. 7). In other words, people with a fixed mindset believe that one’s talents and abilities are unchanging, while individuals with a growth mindset believe that anyone can grow and develop their basic skills through hard work and dedication.
For students, learning how to foster and maintain a growth mindset is critical to their development as a learner. Unfortunately, many students are unaware of how their personal feelings about their own skills affect their ability to learn. In order to broach the subject of mindsets with my students, I asked them to test their own mindsets by completing a mindset activity, one that I borrowed from a fellow graduate student’s classroom mentor (Artifact #2A). The first part of the activity, students were given nine sets of statements. For each set of statements students were asked which statement best described them, the statement from the left or the statement from right column. All of the statements in the left column were statements associated with a growth mindset and all the statements in the right column were associated with a fixed mindset.
Once students completed the first part of the activity, they were directed to a website where they could learn more about mindsets and the differences between having a growth mindset and a fixed mindset (http://mindsetonline.com/). While the majority of students appeared to have growth mindsets, I noticed that during the activity many students struggled to identify with one of the two statements. Most students said that they did not know which statement to circle because they identified with being somewhere in the middle (Artifact #2C). Ultimately, the results from this mindset activity were somewhat inconclusive and made me reevaluate how I was going to determine which of my students actually had fixed mindsets and which ones had growth mindsets.
Even though I was unable to conclude much from the first part of the activity (Artifact #2A), the second part of the activity gave me valuable insight into my students and their respective mindsets (Artifact #2B). Question 5 of the activity asked students to write about an experience that they have had in a math class in which they have adopted a fixed mindset. One student admitted to developing a fixed mindset whenever she made a lot of mathematical mistakes. She said that, “when I make a lot of mistakes, I hate it and it makes me feel as though I can’t do math and I’m just not smart if everyone else gets it” (Artifact #2D). Another student said that she adopted a fixed mindset when her 6th grade math teacher called on her to answer questions and she “would always get it wrong” (Artifact #2D). The commonality between these two examples is that both students were afraid to make mistakes.
Due to the fact that my students were unable to definitively determine whether they had a fixed mindset or a growth mindset, I decided to revise Mindset Activity #1 (Artifact #2) and create Mindset Activity #2 (Artifact #3). The new mindset activity asked students the same questions as the original mindset activity. However, instead of asking them to pick which statement best described them, each statement was listed individually and students had to decide whether they strongly disagreed with the statement or strongly agreed with the statement on a five-point scale, 1 being that they strongly disagree and 5 being that they strongly agree. I averaged the fixed mindset and the growth mindsets statements separately and discovered that the average response for growth mindset statements was 3.73 out of 5 (Artifact #3A) and the average response for fixed mindset statements was 2.70 out of 5 (Artifact #3B). While these results show that the majority of students fell more towards the growth minded end of the spectrum, there were certain statements that stood out to me in which students sustained a fixed mindset. The average score on the statement, “I hate making mistakes,” was a 3.40 out of 5 (Artifact #3B). This statement evoked the most fixed minded responses out of any of the other statements from the mindset activity. Similarly, mindset activity #1 (Artifact #2D), illustrated a lot of students’ frustration with making mistakes.
While mistakes are useful learning tools and making mistakes is an important part of the learning process, they often cause students to lose faith in not only their intelligence, but also in their abilities. Some students become so fixated on the fact that they made a mistake that they fail to understand the mistake itself and as a result miss an opportunity to learn something. Individuals often equate intelligence with immediately answering a problem correctly. There is a common misconception that smart people are smart because they do not make mistakes. Yet, if a person is never making mistakes, what is that person actually learning? It is how people learn from their mistakes that define their intelligence, not their initial attempt.
Both mindset activities (Artifact #2 & Artifact #3) gave me good insight into my students, but the conversations that arose during the activities made me wonder how honest students were being when completing the mindset activities. I overheard one of my 9th graders tell one of his classmates that certain statements better characterized him (referring to the fixed mindset statements), but he “knew what the right answers were (referring to the growth mindset statements) and therefore wondered which statement to identify with” (Artifact #4). Again, the need to arrive at the “correct” answer instead of going through the learning process is evident. Clearly, some students completed the mindset activity with the intention of picking the “right” mindset instead of discovering what type of mindset they actually have. If a student completed the mindset activity honestly and discovered that they indeed have a fixed mindset, they could begin to understand why and think about ways in which they could develop more of a growth mindset. Unfortunately, if students completed the mindset dishonestly, they failed to gain valuable personal insight that could have greatly helped them develop as a learner.
For students, learning how to foster and maintain a growth mindset is critical to their development as a learner. Unfortunately, many students are unaware of how their personal feelings about their own skills affect their ability to learn. In order to broach the subject of mindsets with my students, I asked them to test their own mindsets by completing a mindset activity, one that I borrowed from a fellow graduate student’s classroom mentor (Artifact #2A). The first part of the activity, students were given nine sets of statements. For each set of statements students were asked which statement best described them, the statement from the left or the statement from right column. All of the statements in the left column were statements associated with a growth mindset and all the statements in the right column were associated with a fixed mindset.
Once students completed the first part of the activity, they were directed to a website where they could learn more about mindsets and the differences between having a growth mindset and a fixed mindset (http://mindsetonline.com/). While the majority of students appeared to have growth mindsets, I noticed that during the activity many students struggled to identify with one of the two statements. Most students said that they did not know which statement to circle because they identified with being somewhere in the middle (Artifact #2C). Ultimately, the results from this mindset activity were somewhat inconclusive and made me reevaluate how I was going to determine which of my students actually had fixed mindsets and which ones had growth mindsets.
Even though I was unable to conclude much from the first part of the activity (Artifact #2A), the second part of the activity gave me valuable insight into my students and their respective mindsets (Artifact #2B). Question 5 of the activity asked students to write about an experience that they have had in a math class in which they have adopted a fixed mindset. One student admitted to developing a fixed mindset whenever she made a lot of mathematical mistakes. She said that, “when I make a lot of mistakes, I hate it and it makes me feel as though I can’t do math and I’m just not smart if everyone else gets it” (Artifact #2D). Another student said that she adopted a fixed mindset when her 6th grade math teacher called on her to answer questions and she “would always get it wrong” (Artifact #2D). The commonality between these two examples is that both students were afraid to make mistakes.
Due to the fact that my students were unable to definitively determine whether they had a fixed mindset or a growth mindset, I decided to revise Mindset Activity #1 (Artifact #2) and create Mindset Activity #2 (Artifact #3). The new mindset activity asked students the same questions as the original mindset activity. However, instead of asking them to pick which statement best described them, each statement was listed individually and students had to decide whether they strongly disagreed with the statement or strongly agreed with the statement on a five-point scale, 1 being that they strongly disagree and 5 being that they strongly agree. I averaged the fixed mindset and the growth mindsets statements separately and discovered that the average response for growth mindset statements was 3.73 out of 5 (Artifact #3A) and the average response for fixed mindset statements was 2.70 out of 5 (Artifact #3B). While these results show that the majority of students fell more towards the growth minded end of the spectrum, there were certain statements that stood out to me in which students sustained a fixed mindset. The average score on the statement, “I hate making mistakes,” was a 3.40 out of 5 (Artifact #3B). This statement evoked the most fixed minded responses out of any of the other statements from the mindset activity. Similarly, mindset activity #1 (Artifact #2D), illustrated a lot of students’ frustration with making mistakes.
While mistakes are useful learning tools and making mistakes is an important part of the learning process, they often cause students to lose faith in not only their intelligence, but also in their abilities. Some students become so fixated on the fact that they made a mistake that they fail to understand the mistake itself and as a result miss an opportunity to learn something. Individuals often equate intelligence with immediately answering a problem correctly. There is a common misconception that smart people are smart because they do not make mistakes. Yet, if a person is never making mistakes, what is that person actually learning? It is how people learn from their mistakes that define their intelligence, not their initial attempt.
Both mindset activities (Artifact #2 & Artifact #3) gave me good insight into my students, but the conversations that arose during the activities made me wonder how honest students were being when completing the mindset activities. I overheard one of my 9th graders tell one of his classmates that certain statements better characterized him (referring to the fixed mindset statements), but he “knew what the right answers were (referring to the growth mindset statements) and therefore wondered which statement to identify with” (Artifact #4). Again, the need to arrive at the “correct” answer instead of going through the learning process is evident. Clearly, some students completed the mindset activity with the intention of picking the “right” mindset instead of discovering what type of mindset they actually have. If a student completed the mindset activity honestly and discovered that they indeed have a fixed mindset, they could begin to understand why and think about ways in which they could develop more of a growth mindset. Unfortunately, if students completed the mindset dishonestly, they failed to gain valuable personal insight that could have greatly helped them develop as a learner.