“The mind is everything. What you think your become”
Buddha
If we praise effort over progress, we are sending the wrong message. Affirming students’ potential without enabling them, and blaming their mindset instead of refocusing it, is what Dr. Dweck called the false growth mindset.
We cannot praise the effort alone. To achieve this, we must go through the process of hard work, focus, strategy, and perseverance.
Telling the students that they can do anything without having the knowledge, skills, and strategies is wrong. This can cause frustration and, even worse, think they are incapable. We must set up realistic goals.
We must not blame the students’ mindset for their failure to learn. We need to create a growth mindset classroom by giving them meaningful work, honest, helpful feedback, advice on future learning strategies, and opportunities to revise and show their learning.
To avoid a false growth mindset, we need to learn and cultivate a growth mindset daily. Since we are a mix of mindsets, identifying what triggers the shift from a growth to a fixed mindset is the key to improvement.
References
Dweck, C. (2016, January 11). Recognizing and Overcoming False Growth Mindset. Retrieved from Edutopia: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/recognizing-overcoming-false-growth-mindset-carol-dweck
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https://blogs.uww.edu/alexandrakarmis/
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