Thoughts on the "Growth Mindset"
Though I've not heard of Carol Dweck by name, I've certainly become familiar with her "Growth Mindset" during my time in the education system. The idea of manipulable intelligence was just beginning to catch on at my high school towards the tail end of my senior year and many professors at OU (notably the math department) are proponents of Dweck's ideology, administering surveys that primarily contain variations on the question, "Do you believe that you can get better at mathematics?"
I don't necessarily think that Dweck is wrong -- in fact, I see a lot of truth in her argument that our achievement-driven society can cultivate both a fear of failure and a fetishizing of tangible accomplishment. If I'm not careful, failure can seem like more of a public exhibition of my lack of merit, rather than simply an opportunity to learn. Does the world of National Merit scholarships and standardized testing and hyper-competitive admissions encourage this results-driven contingency Type A test-destroyers? Maybe. But it's a world that I've 100% bought into.
I have always struggled to find the logic in the statement "It's about the journey, not the destination." The gold medal is given to the runner who finishes first, not the runner who spends the most amount of time on the track, or the runner who has the most fun while he's out there. I realize that this isn't exactly the point that Dweck is making -- she's trying to encourage persistent effort in the face of failure, not discourage the pursuit of achievement -- but I still worry that shifting my focus from the destination to the journey (taking my eyes off of the prize, if you will) will result in me falling behind in a world that still prefers a winner.
All this being said, I think that the growth mindset can lend a much healthier outlook to those Type A's out there. Removing the self-loathing from failure -- as long as we are making legitimate efforts to improve -- can reduce some of the unhealthy pressures that we put on ourselves.
Furthermore, the growth mindset is intuitive in other activities. You wouldn't go to the gym for the first time, fail a squat rep of 485 and then give up on lifting forever -- it's implicitly understood that lifting weights follows a progression. You aren't a failure because you can't hit that weight right now, you just buckle down, follow your workout plan and work your way towards your goal. In fact, "reps until failure" is a common tool used by lifters to push their muscles past the point of fatigue and into the hypertrophy range, where new muscle fibers can be generated. If growth mindset principles are so intrinsic to activities like this, why is the classroom different?
In his article, Alfie Kohn posits* that when we praise effort over results, à la Dweck, feelings of failure can intensify. "Man, I must really be a loser if all they can compliment is my effort," a student might think. Similarly, I once had a football coach tell us that if all a coach has to say is "good effort," then you really have nothing to be proud of. Granted, the high school football locker room is not a fertile field for cultivating progressive thought, but his message rang true in our ears: we've learned that "participation medal" is synonymous with "not a winner." And it isn't. The best law schools don't admit the kids who spend the longest studying for the LSAT, they admit the kids with the highest scores. Admittedly, there's often a positive correlation between the two factors, but if you can simply skim some practice questions the night before, show up and knock out a perfect 180, you're still in over the kid who got a 165 after 80+ hours of tutoring.
The modern education system rewards kids who can skim the questions the night before and still get that 180. I am good at committing a chunk of information to memory, regurgitating it onto a Scantron or essay, and then wiping it from my mind once I'm out the door of the classroom so that I can rinse and repeat with my next exam. Keeping the GPA up; taking standardized tests; cranking out formulaic, yet "thoughtful" essay responses -- it's all a game, and once you figure out the rules, you can pass with flying colors. Until success is measured by effort invested instead of results achieved, I don't know if I'll ever be able to let go of my current mentality and methods of approaching school. Most of education is just not ready for the growth mindset.
That being said, the growth mindset is all about the belief that you can improve. Am I a seasoned pro at the Dweck method? No. In fact, I'm not sure if I like it that much. The fixed mindset devil on my shoulder is saying, "You don't need to change. What you're doing now works." However, I can recognize that allowing failure to be a tool for growth -- rather than a beast to be feared -- could really bring me some peace of mind. Because of this, I think I'm going to try to do one growth mindset assignment a week, in an effort to get more comfortable with the concept and implement it in my academics.
*https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/mindset/
I don't necessarily think that Dweck is wrong -- in fact, I see a lot of truth in her argument that our achievement-driven society can cultivate both a fear of failure and a fetishizing of tangible accomplishment. If I'm not careful, failure can seem like more of a public exhibition of my lack of merit, rather than simply an opportunity to learn. Does the world of National Merit scholarships and standardized testing and hyper-competitive admissions encourage this results-driven contingency Type A test-destroyers? Maybe. But it's a world that I've 100% bought into.
I have always struggled to find the logic in the statement "It's about the journey, not the destination." The gold medal is given to the runner who finishes first, not the runner who spends the most amount of time on the track, or the runner who has the most fun while he's out there. I realize that this isn't exactly the point that Dweck is making -- she's trying to encourage persistent effort in the face of failure, not discourage the pursuit of achievement -- but I still worry that shifting my focus from the destination to the journey (taking my eyes off of the prize, if you will) will result in me falling behind in a world that still prefers a winner.
All this being said, I think that the growth mindset can lend a much healthier outlook to those Type A's out there. Removing the self-loathing from failure -- as long as we are making legitimate efforts to improve -- can reduce some of the unhealthy pressures that we put on ourselves.
Furthermore, the growth mindset is intuitive in other activities. You wouldn't go to the gym for the first time, fail a squat rep of 485 and then give up on lifting forever -- it's implicitly understood that lifting weights follows a progression. You aren't a failure because you can't hit that weight right now, you just buckle down, follow your workout plan and work your way towards your goal. In fact, "reps until failure" is a common tool used by lifters to push their muscles past the point of fatigue and into the hypertrophy range, where new muscle fibers can be generated. If growth mindset principles are so intrinsic to activities like this, why is the classroom different?
In his article, Alfie Kohn posits* that when we praise effort over results, à la Dweck, feelings of failure can intensify. "Man, I must really be a loser if all they can compliment is my effort," a student might think. Similarly, I once had a football coach tell us that if all a coach has to say is "good effort," then you really have nothing to be proud of. Granted, the high school football locker room is not a fertile field for cultivating progressive thought, but his message rang true in our ears: we've learned that "participation medal" is synonymous with "not a winner." And it isn't. The best law schools don't admit the kids who spend the longest studying for the LSAT, they admit the kids with the highest scores. Admittedly, there's often a positive correlation between the two factors, but if you can simply skim some practice questions the night before, show up and knock out a perfect 180, you're still in over the kid who got a 165 after 80+ hours of tutoring.
The modern education system rewards kids who can skim the questions the night before and still get that 180. I am good at committing a chunk of information to memory, regurgitating it onto a Scantron or essay, and then wiping it from my mind once I'm out the door of the classroom so that I can rinse and repeat with my next exam. Keeping the GPA up; taking standardized tests; cranking out formulaic, yet "thoughtful" essay responses -- it's all a game, and once you figure out the rules, you can pass with flying colors. Until success is measured by effort invested instead of results achieved, I don't know if I'll ever be able to let go of my current mentality and methods of approaching school. Most of education is just not ready for the growth mindset.
That being said, the growth mindset is all about the belief that you can improve. Am I a seasoned pro at the Dweck method? No. In fact, I'm not sure if I like it that much. The fixed mindset devil on my shoulder is saying, "You don't need to change. What you're doing now works." However, I can recognize that allowing failure to be a tool for growth -- rather than a beast to be feared -- could really bring me some peace of mind. Because of this, I think I'm going to try to do one growth mindset assignment a week, in an effort to get more comfortable with the concept and implement it in my academics.
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| Me, getting ready to practice this growth mindset this semester. Source: Cheezburger. |
*https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/mindset/
I'm so glad when people start the class early, Spencer: I get to read and comment on all the blog posts (our class blogosphere explodes next week, and I won't have time to do that). Anyway, you are so right about math: math and writing are the two areas of education where growth mindset has really caught on, which often surprises people, since math and writing might seem like opposites. But what they have in common is that people often doubt their own abilities: "I'm not a math person" or "I'm a terrible writer" (it sounds like you don't have these doubts, but so many students do!). That's how I ended up with so much growth mindset design in this class: lots of writing, lots of writing revision, lots of feedback. And just the idea of MORE. Read more, write more. There is no 100% in the sense that nobody would or could ever do all the assignments in this class: there is always more to do (not because you need to do more for the grade but because you could choose to do more in order to learn more). And since there's no grading stress in this class, I hope you can use it to go wild, try some new experiments, choose to do something that is "out there" for you, and just see what happens! :-)
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