HONGYE DENGProfessor GundersonEnglish 101 Septemebr 30, 2018Compare Fixed and Growth MindsetsHave you ever think why students differ and what makes each and every one of them unique? There are many reason students differ.
But more often than not, the biggest challenge is how you sitting your brain. Our mind is a powerful thing, more and more research is showing that our brains change constantly with learning and experience and that this takes place throughout our lives.Does this have implications for students’ motivation and learning? According to psychologist Carol Dweck, ” all children develop a belief about their own intelligence”. ” whether they see their intelligence as something that’s fixed or something that can grow and change — has profound effects on their motivation, learning, and school achievement ” These different beliefs, or mindsets, create different psychological worlds: one in which students are afraid of challenges and devastated by setbacks, and one in which students relish challenges and are resilient in the face of setbacks.. Dweck mentions crucial points in a child’s academic life: Effort, Peers Criticism, and Praise.Dweck followed several hundred students across a difficult school transition–the transition to seventh grade. They found that students with the two mindsets had radically different beliefs about effort.
In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. That can be dangerous because a fixed mindset can often prevent important skill development and growth.
For example, if you tell yourself ” I’m not good at math” then that mind acts as an excuse for you to do no well on math or even not do it. Therefore, you may terminate that cheating is the best option. On the other hand, in a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching, and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it. Someone with a growth mindset would be willing to try math problems even if they failed at first. They see failure as an indication that they should keep developing their skills.
They learned something from that experience, not mean they are not good at it so just give up.Praise is something that every human likes. Most parents and schools believe if children felt good about themselves, they would be set for life. Even this is such an intuitively appealing idea, it could go wrong. Praise is something that a person with a fixed mindset would like to hear all the time. When you praise a person with a fixed mindset, they feel like they are better than everyone else. But the problem comes, when they have difficulties with anything they can not work out, they lose confidence.
Next time those students who with fixed mindset did not want to learn when they need to take a challenging task. Because in their deep mind, they think that intelligence is just something they have. They cannot accept failure, so they mostly choose to do easier things keep themself feel intelligent.
On the other hand, if they accept failure which means they are not smart anymore. A growth mindset person who is praised makes sure they know what they did to receive the praise. They can accept failure, they knew they can do it not because they are “smart”.
They know intelligence is something they can develop.When I was young, my math teacher tells me I’m really smart on math. After I heard the praise, I started not to do homework, I consider the work is too easy for me because I’m smart on math. Finally, my grades goes really bad and I began losing confidence on math.
Later, I realize these feel-good tasks aren’t harmful if you do them after working hard on all the real work. Fortunately, my math teacher timely find my problem and she talked to me something. That is we need to always be hungry about studying and persistent efforts. Don’t be self-assertiveness.
In short, I was a fixed mindset students before, but it’s ok to feel like you have messed up- accepting responsibility for your mistakes or shortcomings is healthy.In the end, no matter how intelligent you’re, how great you are being praised by other people. We need to know people who like Jordon, Einstein, on one successed withour effort. Maybe you saw somebody are smart on something, but you may not see how hard they’ve worked.
