Growth Mindset

Description
Personal Reflection | 20 minutes

Growth Mindset pertains to the belief that your ability to understand math can improve with practice, hard work, and commitment over time. Students with a strong Growth Mindset value the learning process itself over right answers. They are also more motivated to see mistakes as opportunities to learn and to challenge themselves knowing that their effort will be rewarded in the long term.

In contrast, a Fixed Mindset pertains to the belief that your learning ability is innate and unchangeable, regardless of effort. Students with a Fixed Mindset often say things like “I am just not born a math person” or “I just can’t get math even if I really tried,” and they often give up more easily when facing math challenges. Both Growth and Fixed Mindsets are on a spectrum (instead of a have v. not-have dichotomy), and people usually have a blend of both. Click here to download this page as a PDF. This reflection activity, by prompting you to reflect on your own program through the lens of a Growth Mindset, can:

Help you identify practices that foster or hinder Growth Mindset in your program/classroom.
Help you brainstorm new teaching/tutoring practices to foster students’ Growth Mindsets.

spreadsheet with examples of Growth Mindsets

Instructions

1. What Growth Mindset practices do you want to keep?

More than likely, you are already fostering a Growth Mindset in your learning context. On the student level, this could be praising students for their effort and not for the quality of their answers. On a program level, you might already have curricula that range in difficulty and offer productive struggles.

Take a moment to reflect on how your own approach to tutoring and your program features can foster your student's Growth Mindset.

3. What Growth Mindset practices do you want to start?

Starting new practices can be as easy as asking students to explain their steps, even when they got the correct answer right away. On a program level, you could allocate more time for deep thinking and productive struggles, instead of timing students for correct answers.

Take a moment to brainstorm some ideas that you can start doing yourself, as well suggest your program to implement more broadly, that could facilitate students’ Growth Mindset.

2. What Fixed Mindset practices do you want to stop?

With as much objectivity as you can, review your own tutoring practices considering what choices and approaches might be actively working against a Growth Mindset in your learning context. On a student level, this might be dismissing mistakes hoping to not embarrass students. On a program level, this might be using fixed rubrics.

What are concrete steps to move away from practices that counter the development of Growth Mindsets?

Tips and Tricks

Tutoring with a Growth Mindset. Developing your own teaching/tutoring style and approach can be challenging. All of the same ideas about Growth Mindset apply here as well, and it can be useful to consider in what ways you embody a Growth Mindset in your own learning process. Do you see teaching mistakes as learning opportunities? Do you avoid self-talk like “I'm just a bad tutor” and other Fixed Mindset assumptions?

Going Deeper. Visit the online resource youcubed for a variety of content on Growth Mindsets in math including positive norms in math spaces and tips for building math mindsets.

Engaging Families. Send home a 1-page handout to encourage Growth Mindset languages at home.

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