- Professor Dweck claims that your ability to succeed comes from your mindset. How you think about yourself, your goals, and your relationships affects what you can achieve. Carol Dweck offers two key terms in her TED talk: Growth Mindset and Fixed Mindset. The concept of having a Growth mindset means you are more likely to succeed in the future. Having a growth mindset means understanding and believing that your “abilities could be developed.” This is the power behind “yet.” A growth mindset is the same as believing that your intelligence can develop over time, so while you may not comprehend something right now, there is always hope that you can. In a fixed mindset, there is only failure and error. This is the concept of believing if you’re not good at something now, you never can be. You are stuck. You “ run from difficulty.”
- In order to stimulate the growth mindset needed to encourage academic success, teachers have to learn to “praise wisely.” In the past, educators have rewarded talent. The focus of praise has to be rerouted. Instead we must praise effort, engagement, curiosity, and improvement. As a student who has grown up with academic anxiety, I agree wholeheartedly with Professor Dweck’s claims. If I had been rewarded more for the effort I made in my schoolwork instead of the final grade, I would be able to ask more questions and think more expansively. I wouldn’t be so anxious about my final projects and drafts. The key to creating growth mindsets in children is beginning the habit of rewarding for, ” more strategies, more engagement over longer periods of time, and more perseverance when they hit really, really hard problems,” within the learning process.
- Professor Dweck’s model of intelligence varies from the norm. Her understanding of “intelligence” comes from behavioral factors like perseverance, effort, and strategy. Professor Dweck states that by changing the connotation of effort and difficulty it encourages kids to grow, instead of give up. When they believe in “yet”, “Their neurons are making new connections, stronger connections. That’s when they’re getting smarter.“
- In 8th grade, I began my first high school class. Algebra. Oh, Algebra how you pained me. This was, by far, the most difficult course I had taken. I wasn’t “good” at it. Unlike all other subjects where answers came so easy, I couldn’t push myself through the studying of various equations and processes of solving complex problems. I would spend hours watching math videos, straining my eyes over homework and textbooks and screens. But I could never truly get it, and I began to fail. Fail?! I had never failed before! I felt shame and embarrassment. Instead of raising my hand more I slouched in the corner, wishing I could get rid of the tear induced headaches and the frustration of not understanding. I was kept after class to be spoken to about my failing grades, and I would insist that I was trying! But trying was not giving me 100s. I began to believe I could never understand, and I felt paralyzed in my understanding of anything. Then, I had a talk with my previous year’s math teacher and she told me that she believed in me. She wasn’t mad or upset with me like my parents had been, and eventually I treated myself and my mind with the same kindness, and all the pieces began to fall into place. That is the power of someone telling you, “I know you are trying, and I know you will understand.”
