Mindset Playground

In this audio podcast (appx. 10 minutes), Carol Dweck talks about some mistaken approaches people sometimes take with growth mindset ,and she also shares a great strategy for managing your tendencies to get stuck in a fixed mindset.

This is good advice for teachers, and it's also something you can do for yourself as a student: 1. Tell them, over and over and over that 'Brains can get stronger.' 2. Pay attention to effort over results. 3. Catch them being persistent. 4. Be specific with praise. 5. Encourage a healthy attitude to failure and challenge. 6. Use the word 'yet', and use it often. 7. Show them that they don't always have to be successful to be okay. 8. Encourage them to keep the big picture in mind. 9. When they do well without effort … 10. And when they put in the effort but don't do so well … 11. Permission to fail.

QUOTE "You slowly pull back as the kids get better on their own, but not let them flail around so much that they get frustrated and give up."

This is a talk by Carol Dweck about the dangers of perfectionism. It starts with a great anecdote from her childhood: one of her teachers seated the students in IQ order!

QUOTE Perhaps most importantly, the resilient children had what psychologists call an "internal locus of control": they believed that they, and not their circumstances, affected their achievements. The resilient children saw themselves as the orchestrators of their own fates. In fact, on a scale that measured locus of control, they scored more than two standard deviations away from the standardization group.

This is a fabulous of 50 ideas to open your mind and grow your creativity. Pick one and give it a try!

This article discusses the research of Charan Ranganath (UC Davis) on the brain chemistry of curiosity and the role of dopamine. QUOTE "What Ranganath wants to know most is why some people seem naturally more curious than others. Lots of factors, including stress, aging and certain drugs can affect dopamine processing in the brain, he says."

This article by Eduardo Briceño categorizes mistakes this way: STRETCH: positive mistakes that happen when we're trying to expand our abilities (high intentionality, high learning opportunity) AHA: also a positive mistake, but one that results when the mistake comes as a surprise (low intentionality, high learning opportunity) SLOPPY: there are not good mistakes; they happen when we lose focus, don't pay attention (low intentionality, low learning opportunity) HIGH-STAKES: these are negative, potentially catastrophic mistakes, without a chance to learn and redo (high intentionality, low learning opportunity)

These two detailed posters present the notion of growth in Yoda's teaching, while Darth Vader opposes growth.

QUOTE "Watch for a fixed-mindset reaction when you face challenges," [Dweck] urged teachers. "Watch for it when you face a setback in your teaching, or when students aren't listening or learning. Do you feel incompetent or defeated? Do you look for an excuse? "Watch what happens when you see an educator who's better than you at something you value. Do you feel envious and threatened, or do you feel eager to learn?" When criticised, teachers should "learn from the feedback" rather than feeling "defensive, angry or crushed," she said.

Curiosity is one of the most important features of a growth mindset. Find out more about the importance of curiosity for a growth mindset, and learn more about what curiosity does to your brain.