My Thoughts on Growth Mindset
I had never heard about "growth mindset" or Carol Dweck before I watched the videos but I really liked her ideas about the whole "not yet" mindset when teaching kids in school, and not even just with kids in school, I can already apply this to myself with my own college work and I have been able to recognise that although I has never heard of this before, I have actually had this thought process before.
Her way of saying it would be "I can't do it, yet", but I have recognised myself and even my parents saying something similar like "I'll get there eventually" or "it's not the end of the world" after failing to do something new for the first time. Though I would never have thought of this having the impact it does on children, my parents might have known about it or known that it was a better way to raise a child.
I also agree with her that we should be challenging kids more.
However, there are some things that she mentioned that I don't 100% agree with.
She mentioned that kids with a "fixed mindset" as apposed to a growth mindset, their goal in school was to "look smart at all times". That immediately just made me say what? I have never in my life heard anyone say that their goal was to "look smart". I went to school with people that very obviously had a fixed mindset, but they never once tried to look smart, they more or less just tried to disrupt the class or take the mick, but they never "tried to look smart".
This was opposed to students with a growth mindset, who's goal was to "learn at all times", I'm not sure if you've ever met a secondary school kid or a "high school" kid but their goals are never to "look smart" or to "learn at all times", their goals are to finish school, get out to their friends, pass all their classes and get good grades, I assure you the thought of "looking smart" or "learning at all times" is quite dangerous in my opinion.
You cannot try and make a student, in a school of hundreds of kids, and for 6/8 hours a day "learn at all times", that is exhausting and quite irresponsible from Carol.
She also doesn't cover why students want quick and easy tasks to do, because they have been conditioned to. Through social media and even some video games to an extent, giving serotonin and dopamine boosts for completing small easy tasks, they have become accustomed to this.
"The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works", writes Trevor Haynes, a research technician in the Department of neurobiology at Harvard medical school, in his blog titled "Dopamine, Smartphones & You: A battle for your time."
Apart from these small points, I do think that this growth mindset that can be very helpful for people, especially for people that might be really self critical of their work and their performance or maybe for people that have "imposter syndrome". I think it can be really beneficial to someones mental health as it takes a lot of pressure off someones shoulders that they don't have to be good at something straight away, they can just say to themselves "I'm not there yet" or "I'll get there eventually".
Comments
Post a Comment