Eclectic Technology

Do you teach your students about growth mindset? Is this a topic of discussion with other staff in your school? Jackie Gerstein has shared three excellent resources in this post that focuses on growth mindset.

She has created an infographic (image above) that looks at fixed mindset and growth mindset, showing how a student may identify based on their mindset.

The next step was putting the infographic into ThingLink and creating links to over 15 resources. Here is the link: ThingLink version of the infographic.

There is also a slideshow that provides additional resources (although some may be repeated in the ThingLink). The slideshow is split into four sections:

* Mindsets

* Historical Background

* The Educator with a Growth Mindset

* Teaching the Growth Mindset to your Learners

Since this post is based on a workshop she provided it is a great resource to share with teachers at your school (or other teachers whom you know). Make sure to check out the resources for students. You may find yourself creating a poster to help your students learn more about growth mindset.

The more times I watch Ted-ED videos the more impressed I am with the quality of the presentations...and the fact that they also supply questions (typically multiple choice and short answers), additional resources and a forum. This particular presentation is an individual sharing their disability, but it also addresses the concepts of fixed mindset and growth mindset, in a way that will engage students. I think it could be used to bring up these two concepts for a great classroom discussion.

This chart looks at the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset by looking at eight areas:

* Desire

* Evaluation of situations

* Dealing with setbacks

* Challenges

* Effort

* Criticism

* Success of others

* Result...

You may want to share this with students or other teachers at your school.

What do you think? Do your students come to you with a fixed mindset? Is there future pre-determined by birth? Is intelligence static? Or do you students come in with a growth mindset, with the knowledge that learning takes effort and time, the ability to try and fail, and try again (and again...)? Can intelligence be developed?

Gleeson provides an overview of the two mindsets and explores the infographic and the five categories within in it by asking each as a question. Below is one example...but you will find questins for each category in the post (challenges, obstacles, effort, criticism, success of others).

Quoting from the post:

OBSTACLES: Do we allow our children/ourselves to give up when learning becomes too difficult and stay in a growth- limiting ‘comfort zone’? OR Do we expect our childen/ourselves to persist until we overcome those obstacles and celebrate the achievement of success against all odds?And if you would like to watch a short video that discusses fixed mindset check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhLJPhxuvGM.