Embracing a Growth Mindset
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks…or can you? Spoiler alert: You can, when both you and the dog embrace a growth mindset. Dweck (2006) defines a fixed mindset as the belief that intelligence is limited by genetics. A growth mindset, on the other hand, is the belief that intelligence can be developed throughout one’s lifetime. Both college instructors and students have both growth and fixed mindsets depending on a variety of factors, including instructor biases, student self-image, and things like the subject matter, learning environment, and course delivery mode (Brainy Dose, 2019). As examples of a fixed mindset, an instructor might believe that students who transfer in from community colleges are not adequately prepared for a course; a student may consider herself “not a math person.” Instructors and students with a growth mindset, by contrast, will enter into a new learning endeavor determined to make the most of it.
The first thing effective college instructors do is make a commitment to a growth mindset for all students, keeping in mind that learning will advance at a different pace – and in different ways – for different students (Tomlinson, 1999). But a growth mindset is more than just an attitude. For students, a growth mindset requires effort and persistence; for instructors, it requires having a repertoire of strategies and approaches that recognize that students learn in different ways, and that can enable students’ pursuit toward mastery of the course learning objectives (Dweck, 2015). For example, if students arrive in a course inadequately prepared, a college instructor with a growth mindset might direct the student to academic support services, such as tutoring, and provide differentiated instructional opportunities, such as supplementary videos or before-class review sessions, in confidence that all students are capable of mastering the course content.
The most effective way for a person to overcome a fixed mindset, however, is to address it personally. Chew’s (2012) five-part video series on how to study is designed for college students but useful to college instructors as well. Even if you are an “old dog” who is afraid that it might be too late to learn new teaching “tricks,” Chew’s videos are very helpful to both students and instructors in terms of understanding how people learn as well as how to embrace a growth mindset.
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To follow up on any of these ideas, please contact me at fglazer@nyit.edu. This Weekly Teaching Note was adapted from a contribution to the Teaching and Learning Writing Consortium hosted at Western Kentucky University.
Contributor:
Jana Hunzicker, Ed.D.
Professor, Department of Education, Counseling, and Leadership
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, College of Education and Health Sciences
Bradley University, Peoria, IL