Mindset Works’ Blog

This article is re-posted with permission from Getting Smart, where it appeared in their Smart Parents series. It was also cross-posted in the Huffington Post Smart Parents Series in partnership with the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. 

Many of us want our children to understand that we love them, and to believe that life can be fulfilling. Developing those beliefs will help them prosper. There is another powerful, research-based belief that will help children thrive. It is called a growth mindset.

What is a growth mindset?

Discovered by Stanford Professor Carol Dweck, Ph.D., a growth mindset is the belief that we can develop our abilities, including our intelligence, which is our ability to think. It is distinguished from a fixed mindset, which is the belief that abilities can't change, such as thinking that some people can't improve in math, creativity, writing, relationship-building, leadership, sports, and the like.

A growth mindset about mistakes

We can deepen our own and our students' understanding of mistakes, which are not all created equal, and are not always desirable. After all, our ability to manage and learn from mistakes is not fixed. We can improve it.

If students are struggling, we want them to remain motivated, try harder, and stick with it. But what about the saying, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result"? If a student has tried to learn something, didn't succeed, tried the same thing again and again, and never felt progress, is he likely to think that trying yet again will yield results? And is that motivating or demotivating?

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." - William Bruce Cameron (and on a sign hanging in Albert Einstein's office)

"What is water?" said one fish to the other, illustrating that "the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about" (David Foster Wallace). One of these realities is that we teach competencies that can be easily tested and quantified rather than what is most important. This reality may seem obvious, but why do we keep doing it? If we strive to develop student agency, can we do a better job at taking agency ourselves for what we deem important?

What do students need in order to take the reins?

This article is adapted from the article "Mindsets and Student Agency" originally published in Unboxed, High Tech High Graduate School of Education's magazine, in their Spring 2013 issue.

Learning happens in the learner's mind. It always does. In fact, the only thing that determines how much learning takes place is what happens in the learner's mind. What happens outside of it is only meaningful to the extent it gives the brain material for it to think.

Wonderful opportunities for learning, such as great instruction, may exist in the classroom or elsewhere, but if the learner's mind is not attentive, not reflective, not engaged, then little learning happens. Yet an engaged mind will make the most out of learning opportunities and further enrich activities and discussions to generate even deeper learning.

But we can't force students to develop agency and drive their own learning. It must come from within. So how do we catalyze that?

Hierarchy of Learner Needs

A large body of research in psychology and education is uncovering the critical elements needed for students to drive their own learning. It points to two essential focus areas that hold the most promise: Learning Mindsets and Learning Strategies & Habits, highlighted in Figure 1 and discussed in the sections that follow.