The TECHnical Teacher

Developing a growth mindset can be challenging for some but can seem to come naturally to others. One of the most important things we can do for our students is to create an environment that is supportive of a growth mindset. What might this look like for your classroom?
 

• A safe place to make mistakes

• Focus on the process, not the result

• Using the power of "yet"

When creating significant learning environments, we must create a safe place for students to challenge themselves and be able to deal with and learn from failure. When students are given a safety net to land in when they fail, they will be more willing to take on more challenges. The challenges help foster significant learning that will last for years to come.

A person with a fixed minset may take things more personal, so it can make receiving feedback or critiques hard to hear. This feedback translates to a direct attack on their ability or their intelligence. This mindset can lead to an obsession with grades and not learning, students not pushing themselves to get better, or cheating to receive the grade they think will help them receive more praise. By focusing on the process instead of the result, this can help avoid these pitfalls caused by rewarding good grades. A student who began the year averaging a 55 may not be able to make it to an A by the end of the year. But if they are able to raise their grade, even to a 70, that shows a large amount of growth and should be recognized as an achievement.By taking the focus off of a fixed set of intelligence, a student can be inspired to keep trying and working hard to improve instead of being devastated by a low grade in a class. 

To help students foster this growth mindset, we can introduce the word "yet" into their vocabulary. By adding that word to the end of a sentence talking about ability, it completely changes the meaning. "I don't understand chemistry...yet." By adding yet to the end, you leave the situation open-ended. It is not definite. There is still room for growth. It may seem that this word is just a word, but it is an important first step in the process. But it is just that, a first step. The growth mindset cannot stop here. 

One thing that is important to teachers to remember about the growth mindset, is that it is more than just the word "yet" and more than just a few posters on the wall. I have heard this phrase for many years, it it just seemed like another term for having an open-mind and a willingness to learn. But it is so much more than that and the most crucial thing is that it is implemented correctly. Teachers talk about the growth mindset and establishing grit in their students but that usually takes the form of giving students more rigorous work/questions that they are not performing well on. Before long, the growth mindset will be chalked up as another one of those "fad" teaching concepts that caught on for a few years and then faded. Proper research and training for staff needs to take place for this to be implemented correctly so it will last and be built within our students. Building a growth mindset in the classroom is hard work and teachers must be consistent. We must have our own grit when facing this in the classroom to help our students build their own growth mindset and inspire the next generation of lifelong learners.