{"id":272,"date":"2014-08-19T06:47:17","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T10:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/?p=272"},"modified":"2014-08-19T06:47:17","modified_gmt":"2014-08-19T10:47:17","slug":"mindset-in-the-classroom-sending-messages-and-giving-feedback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/2014\/08\/19\/mindset-in-the-classroom-sending-messages-and-giving-feedback\/","title":{"rendered":"Mindset In The Classroom, Sending Messages And Giving Feedback"},"content":{"rendered":"

Discussion of growth mindset has been really popular lately. Both my school and my wife\u2019s school each gave us a copy of Carol Dweck\u2019s book as summer reading. In the downtime between my honeymoon trip to South East I read Carol Dweck\u2019s book Mindset as part of the Coast2Coast reading project. In my\u00a0previous post, Carol Dweck’s Mindset and My Teaching<\/a>, I summarized the fixed and the growth mindsets,\u00a0and what they are.<\/p>\n

In this post I want to\u00a0try and summarize the most significant parts of the book that relate to the classroom. \u00a0Mindset talks about learning, but the whole book isn’t\u00a0exactly relevant to classroom teachers. \u00a0Rather than spending the last week’s of August trying to rip through the whole book before your school’s book club, why not read this blog post about how to help your students this year?<\/p>\n

How Does\u00a0A Growth Mindset Affect Students?<\/h4>\n

After even a minimal look into Mindset it becomes clear that having a classroom full of students with growth mindsets would be ideal. Listen to this vignette from p. 61 where Dweck studied a group of College freshman taking their first chemistry class. She used a survey to determine their mindset, fixed or growth, and asked them about their approach to learning in the class.<\/p>\n

Once again we found that he students with the growth mindset earned better grades in the course. \u00a0Even when they did poorly on a particular test, they bounced back on the next ones. \u00a0When students with the fixed mindset did poorly, they often didn’t make a comeback.<\/p>\n

In this course everybody studied. \u00a0But there are different ways to study. \u00a0… [fixed mindset students] read the textbook and their class notes. \u00a0If the material is really hard they read them again. \u00a0Or they might try to memorize everything they can like a vacuum cleaner. … If they did poorly on the test they concluded that Chemistry was not their subject. \u00a0After all “I did everything possible, didn’t I?”<\/p>\n

… The students with growth mindset completely took charge of their learning\u00a0and motivation. \u00a0Instead of plunging into unthinking memorization of the course material, they said “I looked for themes and underlying principles across lectures,” and “I went over mistakes until I was certain I understood them.” \u00a0They were studying to learn<\/em><\/strong> not just to ace the test. [Emphasis Added]<\/p>\n

Instead of losing their motivation when the course got dry or difficult, they said: “I maintained my interest in the material.” “I stayed positive about taking chemistry.” “I kept myself motivated to study.” Even if they thought the textbook was boring or the instructor was a stiff, they didn’t let their motivation evaporate. That just made it all the more important to motivate themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The students who arrived at college with the growth mindset in this study had more than just better study habits than the fixed mindset students. \u00a0They had a belief in their own ability to learn that the other students lacked. Teachers have a great opportunity to challenge or support their students’ beliefs, and if those beliefs can sustain the students in their future challenges it would be worth our while to work towards shaping those beliefs appropriately.\u00a0How likely is it that some of these students who decided that chemistry was “not their subject” were the kinds of people who were told, or told others, that they were or weren’t “good at math” at some point in their life.<\/p>\n

Can Teacher’s Comments Really Make A Big Difference?<\/h4>\n

Another study\u00a0described on\u00a0page 71 of the book<\/a> describes in more detail how students are affected by the things we adults around a learning task. \u00a0In this study students were given a set of questions from a standard IQ test. When they finished one group was told “That’s a really good score, you must be smart at this!”, \u00a0while another group heard “That’s a really good score. \u00a0You must have worked really hard!” One group’s ability<\/strong> was praised, while the other group’s effort<\/strong> was praised. \u00a0Mindset repeatedly makes the connection between making judgements on a person’s ability, and the fixed mindset as opposed to talking about someone’s effort. \u00a0What happened next? \u00a0The experimenter offered\u00a0students the opportunity to try sets of harder\u00a0problems. \u00a0The first group was less likely to try\u00a0more problems, as they probably didn’t want to change their perception of themselves and their ability. \u00a0The second group was more likely to take more problems, looking forward to the chance to keep challenging themselves. \u00a0The feedback students received about their performance turned\u00a0the task into an assessment of their ability, of who they are,\u00a0<\/em>instead of an assessment of their effort, of what they did that one time, and it changed the way students thought about doing more of the tasks in the future.<\/p>\n

There was a stark difference that the groups of students in this experiment had towards the task they were learning. This experiment was done with hundreds of students in a clinical setting, where experimenters took care to treat students in both groups in a virtually identical manner. \u00a0The only consistent difference was whether\u00a0students\u00a0were told they were smart, or they had worked hard. \u00a0\u00a0What is even crazier about this study, is that the differences extended beyond just whether they wanted to try more problems. \u00a0Of the students who took the more difficult problems, the first group was more likely to see\u00a0their performance drop, to report that the problems weren’t fun, and to lie about their scores to other students afterwards.<\/p>\n

OK, It’s Bad. \u00a0We Get It. \u00a0What Do We Do<\/strong>\u00a0About It?<\/h4>\n

To avoid the negative effects of the fixed mindset, teachers can focus on the messages being sent to their class. \u00a0What messages are you sending your class.\u00a0the same time, using the language of ‘ability’ instead of the language of ‘effort’ sends messages to all of your students about what it means to learn in your class and in your subject area. \u00a0It can be daunting just to think about how to create the right set of messages to keep kids from thinking in this way.<\/p>\n

Here is one example from page 176 <\/a>from one of Dweck’s students who was reflecting on his history in school:<\/p>\n

I\u00a0remember often being praised for my intelligence rather than my efforts, and slowly but surely I developed an aversion to difficult challenges. \u00a0Most surprisingly, this extended beyond academic and even athletic challenges to emotional challenges. \u00a0This was my greatest learning disability–this tendency to see performance as a reflection of character and, if I could not accomplish something right away, to avoid that task or treat it with contempt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sending messages about ability and intelligence is setting kids up for trouble. \u00a0If their successes come from their ability, their intelligence, and their character, what happens to all those things when they fail?<\/p>\n

Instead, send messages about effort and hard work. \u00a0There may be some struggle from people, as a big part of the fixed mindset is believing that\u00a0hard work is only for people who don’t have ability or lack intelligence. \u00a0This type of thinking sets up an “either-or” belief\u00a0around work. \u00a0As Dweck describes on page 40<\/a>: “…this is part of the fixed mindset. \u00a0Effort is for those who don’t have the ability… ‘If you have to work at something you must not be good at it.'” \u00a0I often argue\u00a0a major purpose\u00a0of math in all\u00a0students’ course of study is so they can learn to expend effort on solving difficult problems. It follows\u00a0that the fixed mindset might be behind all of those people who believe the message that they are\u00a0“not good at math” when really they are doing work that is inherent to the field.<\/p>\n

What Kinds Of Feedback Foster Growth Mindsets<\/p>\n

In order to change the types of messages that students receive in the math classroom, there needs to be a change in the types of language that teachers use when giving students feedback. \u00a0There are a host of examples of positive student feedback on page 177<\/a>\u00a0and on her website<\/a>, and it is all centered around process and growth. \u00a0Praise them for “what they accomplished through practice, study, persistence, and good strategies.” \u00a0Here are some of her\u00a0examples:<\/p>\n