Dockterman is an adjunct lecturer of education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and works for Scholastic Education as well. He walked us through definitions of a “fixed” mindset and a “growth” (or “incremental”), based on Carol Dweck’s research. He referred to one particular quote from Dweck: “The brain is a muscle. Giving it a hard workout makes it stronger.” He then emphasized that shifting students from a fixed to a growth mindset was critical to improving their learning.
He shared how we need to shift our language around mistakes. “You learned that quickly, I’m sorry I wasted your time” and “You really struggled to understand that, but you persevered and got it – can you tell me how you figured it out?” are quotes that both support the growth mindset rather than making failure a dead end.
He discussed how gaming environments are often growth mindset-driven, with rewards for effort not just completion and highlighted one example of an app that rewards effort: Slice It, which focuses on geometrical figures, and symmetry.
He then took session attendees through a quick multi-question quiz to determine how much of a growth mindset we have. He said that the questions and the assessment was available at MindsetWorks.
He then spent some time talking about Math 180, a Scholastic product. “Digital games, simulations, visual models provide immediate feedback and can be incredibly failure tolerant”, he said. He also said that telling our students that a topic is important for them doesn’t work, and can lower performance. He recommended having students share or write why something is important to them – this provides meaning and context and makes the learning “stick.”
Tanis Thiessen is a veteran educator who blogs at Joy of Education and tweets @tjthiessen.
