Post 9: Carol Dweck Part 1- Fixed vs. Growth Mindset

In Carol Dweck’s keystone book, “Mindset,” she explains that there are two different philosophies about human nature, intelligence, and talent.  First is the “fixed” mindset where people believe that you’re either born smart or dumb, talented or incapable, good or bad and there’s little or nothing that can be done about it.  Then there are those with a “growth” mindset who believe that with hard work, learning, and practice, you can literally increase your intelligence or talent.

People who have a fixed mindset are often resistant to change and defensive about feedback.  Since they believe that they have a fixed amount of intelligence, any feedback makes their ego crumble because they believe that it reflects an innate ability that they have no power to change.  What’s worse is that people with this mindset may also believe that students don’t have the ability to grow or change in their intelligence.  These are the teachers or principals who think that the only way to improve a school is to recruit better students.  These are the superintendents (think: Michelle Rhee) who think that it’s impossible for a teacher to improve, so instead we need to fire them if they’re not up to par.

People who have a growth mindset believe that they can change the intelligence of a student and thus the trajectory of their future by teaching them well and giving them good learning habits.  These are the principals who mentor the teachers that are under their care instead of trying to get rid of the “bad ones.”  These are the teachers who perform miracles with students who struggle in other classrooms.  Parents fall into these categories as well.  The growth-mindset parent will never say, “My kid is just no good at . . .” and will ask “What else can we do to improve his/her learning?”  It’s all about how to work harder to improve for those with the growth mindset.

This really sounds like a semantic difference, but it is not.  A fixed mindset is the end of the education conversation.  [I should note here before being misinterpreted that I do NOT believe that it is necessarily the teacher’s fault when a student fails to learn.  But I DO believe that the teacher is the only one with the power to fix it regardless of whose fault it may be.]  One of the hallmarks of the fixed mindset is blaming everyone else when results aren’t delivered.  I see this regularly in my school improvement work the teachers and principals who blame students, parents, the district, or the “system” for failure and concede that there is nothing that can be done about it.  When an educator believes this, then there is no reason to read a book (or a blog) or improve lesson plans or take professional development seriously or go to a conference or subscribe to a journal.  If it is someone else’s fault . . . why should they change?  This is not semantic, this is gigantic.

The next few posts in the blog series will explain how an administrator can recognize a fixed mindset and a growth mindset in teachers (or themselves) as well as how to transition the fixed mindset to a growth mindset.  This one change has the power to shift the entire culture of a school from “We do what we can with what walks through the door” to “We have to power to overcome any problems our students walk through the door with.”  One of my AVID Coordinators once told me “Give me two years with any student and I can get them back on track.  Give me three years and I can overcome any problem they have and make them successful.”  And she does exactly that!  Now that’s a growth mindset!!  Here’s an interview of one of her students who was first in her family to graduate high school, never mind go to college, and earned more than a dozen scholarships her senior year and now attends UCLA.

http://rimsavid.org/content/karen-villegas-ucla-mike-horton 

 
And here's a good video summary of the growth and fixed mindsets:

Read Part 2 here
Read Part 3 here