Growth Mindset
I have not heard of Carol Dweck or formally known of the growth mindset before. However, I feel that mindset is one that I try to adopt.
I can relate that many of my favorite classes are those that I find are easy and not as challenging. However, I understand that I am not really gaining anything from that. I see myself on the spectrum of growth-fixed mindset in orchestra especially more when I was younger. When I first started playing the violin in the 6th grade, other students had already started to learn how to play. Learning how to play the violin and read music was challenging at the time, and I became discouraged and did not want to play. Over the years, I started practicing once in the morning with some friends at school that also wanted to improve. I started seeing improvements and wanted to keep getting better. I played in the morning, afternoon, and once at night. My parents would hear the screeches of my violin and still encouraged me to play. My teacher would give us more and more difficult music as the class improved. After learning how to read basic music, I enjoyed trying the challenging music. When sight reading, I would play loud and confident even though I had no idea what I was playing. My teacher heard me loud and clear and would give me a lot of feedback. I was able to take his feedback, and I became a better musician because of it. I ended up being the concertmaster, and this led me to a lifelong hobby.
At OU, I learned that my brain has a lot more space than I thought. The biggest challenges I set about learning new things is to not stress. There is so much information in the world, and I will not be able to grab it all for one course. I have to pick and choose what information I want to retain and what I find is important to me. Many times I still have the growth-fixed mindset where I retain only the information that is important to me for a certain class to get an A rather than for understanding something relevant for my life. That is one thing I wish to change.
I am interested in learning more about the growth mindset. I think this mindset is one that most students know about but forget along the way. Most students are just looking to get a good grade and put in the least amount of work to achieve that. I am interested in challenging this mindset this semester.
My personal learning goal is to be more productive. I typically look over notes very briefly after class and only seriously study a week before a test. This semester, I want to hardcore study when I learn information and briefly look over it before the test. I am not too worried about any classes as of right now. I am more excited to learn information after what seemed like the longest summer break yet. I am excited for all of my courses.
Dave Paunesku points out a very persuasive psychological perspective that a student that has a growth-fixed mindset may influence the teacher's opinion of the student's abilities in the course. His perspective is also persuasive in examining the social determinants of education such as a support system.
I understand the Alfie Kohn's hesitance for accepting the growth mindset is very persuasive. The author discusses how the growth mindset also allows teachers to blame student's lack of effort and do not evaluate their own course. I am persuaded that we should look at both sides of the issue. I don't think this perspective completely rejects Dweck's perspective. I can agree that no one mindset can be helpful for each student because each person is so unique, but it may help some students. Wormeli also looks to socioeconomic determinants of education instead of just the mindset which is also persuasive and I feel important to look at. Essentially, all three perspectives find Dweck's perspective to be too simplified which I agree with. However, I do think mindset matters.
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