*Updates following Creating Significant Learning Environments course*
Growth mindset is essential to meaningful learning and ensuring your learners take ownership of their learning. However, simply approaching learning with a growth mindset is not enough. As educators, we need to ensure that we cultivate a significant learning environment for our learners to grow in. Think of it as planting a garden. Even if you properly care for the plants, water them regularly, prune and fertilize them, their success boils down to the soil you root them in. We must ensure the soil is rich and opportunistic before the seed is even planted. This way, our learners have the greatest opportunity to flourish.
In order to make sure our growth mindset plan is effective, we need to develop innovative activities and experiences that form connections between students, their personal interests and lives. We need to ensure that students are encouraged to explore and create without repercussions of it negatively impacting them, specifically with grades.
Grades are important, however even the mention of them incites anxiety and panic in many students. Many students find that their priority shifts from learning to grades fairly early on. However, by giving students ample opportunities to grow from their mistakes and failures and not fixating on grades since they have many chances to prove their learning, the preoccupation with grades over learning dissipates.
Additionally, this will cut down on cheating. By facilitating a growth mindset through a significant learning environment, students will be encouraged to prove what they know, regardless of what stage they are at in their learning process, with the knowledge that learning is not a simple point A to point B journey. Learning is a continuous, life-long journey that all people move along at different speeds. There is no need to cheat; ultimately, those that cheat are robbing themselves of a proper education and robbing other students of their hard work by trying to take equal credit for it. Just because some students are not at the same level as others, doesn’t mean they won’t ever get there… they just aren’t there YET.
In order to get my students to believe and adopt a growth mindset and the power of “yet”, I need to buy into them and model the necessary attitude and behaviors to my students. It’s important that when I am faced with adversity and challenges, to not get frustrated when the solutions do not come to me immediately. I will need to showcase positivity, grit and dedication to my students so they see that it is possible to work through these moments. Grit is where passion meets perseverance; through hard work and intrinsic motivation, achieving goals through grit is possible. However, grit can quickly morph into rigor and lead to extremity and inflexibility. It’s important to understand that growth mindset is about remaining positive and working hard, but also, even more importantly, staying flexible and rolling with the punches. It’s not about how you fall, it’s about how you get back up.
So, to tie growth mindset through creating significant learning environments to my innovation plan, it is important to address my mission. The whole purpose of my innovation plan is to help students achieve their dreams of post-secondary school, specifically students of disadvantaged backgrounds. As stated in my research, the issue I am trying to address is not that these students are not able to get into college, it’s that they don’t even follow through with the application. Many of these students and their families lack the confidence and access to transparent information to take the leap and apply to colleges. Through the cultivation of a growth mindset by creating a significant learning environment, my students, their families, and the educators facilitating my program will feel informed, empowered, and encouraged to claim the education that they deserve.
Original Plan
Carol Dweck established growth mindset as a way to approach life with a more positive, constructive outlook. She teaches that taking risks and failing are critical parts to the educational process. Though I am still trying to adopt this mindset as my own, I have developed a plan for how I want to implement this mindset better with my own students. I know they will greatly benefit from these ideologies, both throughout our program as well as into their future. Please explore my plan discussing the importance of a growth mindset, how to communicate and implement it, resources to support these methods, and even how I will utilize a growth mindset and make it my own.
References
Barlow, T. (2018, September 29). Tom Barlow Online. Tom Barlow Online. https://tombarlowonline.com/growth-mindest-the-power-of-yet/
Duckworth, A. (2016c). Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Simon and Schuster.
Dweck, C. S. (2007). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books.
Harvard Business Review. (2022, February 9). What Having a “Growth Mindset” Actually Means [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0qpJxEhOP4
Jeffrey, S. (2020, June 23). Change Your Fixed Mindset into a Growth Mindset [Complete Guide]. Scott Jeffrey. https://scottjeffrey.com/change-your-fixed-mindset/
John Spencer. (2017, March 27). Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1CHPnZfFmU
Keener, H. (2022, July 4). The Power of yet Printable Poster Growth Mindset INSTANT – Etsy. Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/the-power-of-yet-printable-poster-growth-mindset-instant-etsy–41587996550973058/
Paparella, C. (2021, March 8). Approaching the College Admissions Process with a Growth Mindset — DC College Counseling. DC College Counseling. https://www.dccollegecounseling.com/blog/growthmindset
Science Impact. (n.d.). https://www.mindsetworks.com/science/Impact
Stanford Alumni. (2014b, October 9). Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiiEeMN7vbQ
Summaries, M. (2016). Summary of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol S. Dweck. Sapiens Editorial.
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