- Dweck offers two key terms, Growth Mindset and Fixed Mindset. Explain these two concepts. Use a Dweck quote for each as part of your explanation. Be sure to offer your explanation in a way that a friend might understand it. A Growth Mindset vs. a Fixed Mindset. A growth mindset is a mindset that strives for progress and of course growth. When someone with a growth mindset “fails”, they look to see what they can do to improve on that “failure”. People with a growth mindset get knocked down, but always get up. Dweck spoke about after failing a test what the people in the test group did next, the growth mindset people “engage deeply. They process the error. They learn from it and they correct it.” A Growth mindset is a developing and positive mindset. A fixed mindset is stagnant and negative. Someone with a fixed mindset will take a test, then after they fail or do poorly they will get down on themselves and find a way to not fail next time. Dweck said people with a fixed mindset “would probably cheat the next time instead of studying more if they failed a test.” A fixed mindset is stuck and does not expand.
- Dweck names at least two ways to stimulate a Growth Mindset or to building a “bridge to yet” (3:53). What are they? Use a quote for each and offer a response. Do these seem reasonable? Does something about them bother you? Why? The two ways to stimulate a Growth Mindset is too praise wisely, to praise the process, including effort, focus, attitude, and strategy. Dweck says “This process praise creates kids who are hardy and resilient.” This seems very reasonable, because they are teaching kids the valuable skills they will need to be an independent member of society who can think for themself. Nothing about this really bothers me. The other way is to use games that reward the process, the whole goal is to build self confidence in kids. Dweck wants to turn around the way traditional math games reward students and proposes her own idea of a game that “rewarded process. And we got more effort, more strategies, more engagement over longer periods of time” The way the game scores motivates kids to work harder and have more of a developing mindset. This seems pretty reasonable. This bothers me because I do not think the game should be scored by this but by right and wrong answers. I believe in Dweck’s ideas, but the students should be taught the process, and then thrown into the game and have to use strategies they learned to overcome their scores.
- Intelligence. Dweck’s ideas may suggest a notion of intelligence or smarts that is different from what many might think about when considering intelligence. How do you see her model of intelligence? Explain with evidence from the text. Dweck’s model of intelligence is a model of Growth Mindset which is the mindset needed for self sufficient working people. It includes trusting the process, believing in yourself, problem solving skills, and effort. All of these traits are needed for the real world. I see her model of intelligence as a logical model, that is crazy why it is not being used around the country. Obviously it is successful, because when they went into inner city programs and tested out this model, “A kindergarten class in Harlem, New York scored in the 95th percentile on the national achievement test.” This shows even the most poor public schooling, when using this method, it works.
- Write about a fixed mindset moment in your own learning history. Explain how that moment worked out for you. Be sure to offer enough detail for a reader to grasp the situation, your approach/experience, and the outcome. (We all have them at some point!) Make sure to explicitly link your experience to a specific idea (or ideas) in Dweck’s talk. The biggest fixed mindset moment in my own learning history is hands down the SAT’s. This test is a standardized test that basically determines your future. In high school it was the most important test to take besides AP exams, and it would tear me apart worrying about how I am going to do on the test so I can go to a good college. But this test literally has nothing to do with how smart you are, yet it determines your future. I took the test got an 1150, and I was so relieved that I didn’t bomb the test, and get an awful score, but I know I am smarter than being in the 50th percentile.
