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CULTIVATING ACADEMIC MINDSETS Educators often discuss the difficulty of teaching students who don’t seem to want to learn. Without internal motivation and curiosity, school can feel like a chore to many students. But there are concrete ways to help students develop motivation and other positive academic mindsets.“The key is that we can develop in students that inner drive, that motivation for them to make the most out of those learning experiences,” said Eduardo Briceño, CEO of Mindset Works, a non-profit started by Stanford Professor Carol Dweck based on her research. To develop a positive academic mindset, these are four key beliefs students must hold: I can change my intelligence and abilities through effort I can succeed I belong in this learning community This work has value and purpose for me

When those beliefs are present and paired with learning strategies to help with effective self-management, any student can be successful. “We have to be deliberate about creating environments that foster those beliefs and strategies in students so they take ownership of learning,” Briceno said. “There is not one way to create deeper learning, different schools can design themselves in different ways to create deeper learning experiences and outcomes for their students.”

There needs to be more creative ways to hold teachers accountable so that a school-wide focus on relevant learning becomes the norm. Teachers should no longer be forced to prepare students for a world that no longer exists and be held accountable through one-dimensional means. Teacher success should be judged on the products students create with real-world tools to solve real-world problems. If teaches are allowed to innovate and allow students to create artifacts of learning to demonstrate conceptual mastery, the end goal should be the acquisition of higher-order thinking skills.

It encompasses an understanding of what makes certain concepts difficult to learn and a recognition that teachers must develop a repertoire of teaching strategies to address the preconceptions and misconceptions that diverse students often bring to the course content (M. Cohn, personal communication, January 16, 2012).