Like many Growth Mindset memes, there are truths to the infographic. Students with a Fixed Mindset do tend to engage in self-talk along the lines of “I can’t,” “I give up,” and, “This is too hard.” And students with a Growth Mindset tend to engage in self-talk along the lines of “I can’t yet,” “I’ll find another way,” and, “This may take some time and effort.”
But beyond that, this infographic isn’t useful. It may even do more harm than good. Let me explain.
It treats the symptoms, not the cause
This infographic describes the symptoms of a Fixed or Growth Mindset, not the actual Mindset. The Mindset is comprised of underlying beliefs. It’s those beliefs that cause students to say, “I can’t” or “I can’t yet.”
Asking someone to change his or her words simply masks the underlying Mindset. It doesn’t address their beliefs about their abilities. It’s akin to taking an aspirin when you’ve got the flu. Your fever might go away, but you’ve still got the flu that caused your fever. Left untreated, the flu will get worse.
But then …
When teachers ask students to change their words, it’s like they’re asking them to pretend they have a Growth Mindset. Teachers may feel they are seeing a Growth Mindset in their students, but it’s not real. It doesn’t last.
What happens after “not yet”? Without some sort of teacher intervention, it’s unlikely the student will achieve much growth. As I’ve written about before, “I can’t do it yet” too often becomes “ I still cant do it...YET!”
As I show in the table below, changing your words is a short-term fix that can lead to a long-term problem, as illustrated in the “But then …” column.
Between the Fixed and Growth Mindset is teacher action
Changing students’ words to change their mindset gets the order wrong. We need to change students’ beliefs about their abilities before they can change their words. We must treat the cause, not the symptoms.
For students to move from a Fixed Mindset to a more Growth Mindset, there must be teacher action that shows children how to grow. It’s not enough to simply tell students to repeat the mantra, “Mistakes help me learn.” We must show students how mistakes help them learn so they can correct them.
Similarly, telling students, “This may take some time,” isn’t helpful unless we tell them how their time needs to be spent.
When the student makes a Fixed Mindset statement (“I’m not good at this” or “This is too hard”), the teacher must create a positive Mindset Mover. A Band-Aid response of, “Don’t say that,” won’t work in the long run. The teacher’s response needs to show the student how to achieve growth.
When teachers intervene and show students how to achieve growth, and when students develop Learning Agility, the resulting changes in their abilities act as positive Mindset Movers. These create a more growth-oriented Mindset.
-Melissa Strout
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