Teaching With Growth Mindset Needs to Be the New Standard
The concept of growth mindset is fairly simple: learning is more effective if the student believes that they can learn. A student that believes that they can’t is harder to impact academically than one that believes they can regardless of their current intelligence or skill. Many teachers advocate for this in the classroom and believe in it but still many classrooms lack growth mindset in practice. While the concept is simple, like exercise, practice and integration can be more difficult.
Traditional school by design is anti-growth mindset. Think of all of the standardized testing done in schools and it makes sense. Students traditionally are judged on what they can or can’t get right the first time and they traditionally don’t get a chance to try again. More importantly, they often don’t get chances to go back and learn from their mistakes. But research shows that is where the real learning happens.
I saw the need for growth mindset as a standard in my own classroom when my own students had to take a test. My English department designed the test specifically for students to be challenged but to be very doable. We asked all these questions from “What if the student has a language or learning disability” to “What if the student needs extra help?” and we scaffolded for all those situations. I was really proud of the work that we did and I was actually excited to see the test results.
As the students started the test I noticed two of my Hispanic students that were English language learners put their heads down to go to sleep. Their translator was sick that day but I had still developed an alternate test in Spanish and gave them access to Google Translate. I walked by their desk and just tapped on it and reminded them of the tools they could use and walked back to my desk. What I saw was astounding and not in a good way. They gave up before they even got started. They sat there for an hour and never made an attempt to try. It was all because their translator/aid was gone that they believed they couldn’t do anything.
I, as well as my team, spent so much time and effort to make sure there was support for these English language learners only to have them not even make an attempt. It was at that point I know something was very wrong with my own teaching. Teachers can plan and scaffold really well but if a student doesn’t believe they can do it or that it is worth trying all that hard work accomplishes nothing. There is a need for teachers to learn about the psychology of teaching along with academics. Researchers agree that self-confidence plays a major role in academic performance.
In the past I had taught my class about growth mindset and asked them afterward “Will you have a growth mindset?” and the class unenthusiastically responded “Sure. Whatever.” The delivery of information didn’t change them. What changed my students and my classroom was when I no longer asked for them permission to do it and instead just designed activities that forced them to participate in having a growth mindset.
In my English class, I began to implement growth mindset through essay writing. Rather than only getting one chance to get the best score possible they participated in writing drafts and giving each other feedback and then using the feedback to make their essay better before the final draft. If I called on a student that didn’t know the answer to the question they were allowed to have a quick pow-wow with their group. I also began to talk to them in a way that reinforced that they would eventually get the skills if they didn’t the first try. I used some simple growth mindset tips to create a big change in how I taught.
All of this work changed my classroom into an environment where it was alright to fail and try again and my students understood that they would eventually get it. They trusted me to lead them there by the end of the school year. At the time I was working with students where over 75% were 2–3 grade levels behind in their reading and writing skills. By the end of the year, only 35% of the students were behind making a jump from 25% of the class on proficiency level to 65%.
Three of my students even went into honors the following year! Over the course of a year in my class, many students made 2-3 grade level increases in their English skills. I moved from traditional teaching to focusing on growth mindset and critical thinking and as you can see it made a big impact in just a year.
Like my two defeated Hispanic students, I see more and more perfectly capable students of all races and backgrounds give up before they even try. It is becoming an epidemic. One that can and should be addressed directly in the classroom.
Teachers can’t look at growth mindset as the extra mile anymore as students need to develop this to be successful in school and in life. Growth mindset needs to be the new standard to change classrooms and students. Beyond academics, we are teaching students to not give up on themselves, their lives, and their future. There is no better message that can be given to the youth of today than that.
