How to Recognize Fixed and Growth Mindsets in Teachers
In Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset, she describes the difference
between a Fixed Mindset and a Growth Mindset.
These mindsets apply to everyone from children, to celebrities, to
athletes, to CEOs and she gives examples from each of these groups. In listening to her description, I recognized
some of the characteristics in teachers and administrators that I’ve worked
with.
A person with a Fixed Mindset believes that an individual is
born with a certain amount of intelligence or talent and there is nothing that
can be done to change that. These people
don’t react well to failure and don’t see the point of practice, studying, or
attempts at self-improvement. The owner
of a Growth Mindset believes that talent and intelligence are factors that can
be improved with enough practice, studying, and hard work. They see a failure as an opportunity to learn
and improve, not as an insult to their intelligence or natural ability.
When I think of these two mindsets and some of the teachers and
administrators that I’ve worked with in the past, here are some of the characteristics
I’ve seen that would lead me to deduce which mindset they’ve adopted.
Response to Change:
We’ve all met people who we call “resistant to change.” These are likely Fixed Mindset people. They see change as threatening because they’ve
settled into the present system and any changes might upset that balance and
make them look bad. To a Fixed Mindset,
looking bad means that there is something innately wrong with them. Because they believe that characteristics are
inborn and cannot be improved, this new system may reveal some of their natural
weaknesses. It’s not change that they’re
resistant to; they resist new situations that might make them look bad.
Teachers with a Growth Mindset see change as an opportunity
to help more students succeed. Not only
do they see change as an opportunity to improve themselves because they have a
Growth Mindset for adults, but they also see the possibility that change might
also improve students because they have a Growth Mindset for children too. Sometimes change really, really isn’t good
for teachers or students, so these teachers don’t always automatically welcome
change. But if it seems to be good for
kids, Fixed Mindset teachers will gladly welcome such change.
Entire departments can have a growth mindset as well. I set up a group visit to a school once that
was doing great things with interventions.
They created post-tests for each essential standard, designed
after-school interventions to go with each one, and assigned students who were
not proficient on the essential standards to attend the intervention to earn
the right to re-take the test. That’s a
great Growth Mindset right there, but that’s not the real story. The department chair from another school
attended this visit and was very impressed.
She took the idea back to her school and invited the department to make
the program their own. They decided that
after school wasn’t the best model because students played sports, cared for
siblings, and had jobs after school. They
decided to try Saturday school. To make
a long story short, it didn’t work as well as they’d hoped, so they tried providing
the interventions during the school day.
This was a great step in the right direction because now the interventions
could be mandated. After each benchmark
exam, they built three “Interrichment” days into the pacing guide. Students who were proficient on the exams
would go to enrichment opportunities and students who were not proficient would
go to interventions and re-take the test on the third day. This worked much better and they studied how
the program affected students. They
still weren’t happy with the results.
So, they modified it involving honors and AP students in the interventions
as tutors. The results got even better. Every semester, they changed the program a
little bit, getting better and better each time. Not only was this a demonstration that they
believed that they could improve by changing and working hard, but it also
demonstrated the belief that with great lessons and enough of the correct
interventions, students can improve too!
Response to Failure:
Teachers with a Fixed Mindset believe that some students
will get the information and other students won’t. They are strong advocates of tight
pre-requisites for classes with few or no exceptions. They believe that honors students will be
successful despite what the teacher does and less-than-honors students will not
be successful no matter what the teacher does.
They attribute the difference between honors and non-honors students to
many different things like family life, poor preparation, ELD status, poverty,
etc. But even worse, they don’t believe that
anything can be done to make up for these deficiencies.
Teachers with a Growth Mindset believe that all students
have potential and can be successful if the teacher and student work together
hard enough. They believe that any deficiencies
that students have can be fixed regardless of whose fault they are. These teachers are constantly improving their
practice, their lesson plans, and their interventions. When a student isn’t successful, they ask
themselves, “What can I do differently next time?” They don’t get wrapped up in things they
cannot control and instead, devote their energy to closing achievement gaps. I work with AVID programs at schools and my
opinion is that much (most?) of the success of AVID is in putting a teacher
with a Growth Mindset at the front of the classroom who believes that all kids
can and should be successful.
Response to
Professional Development:
Teachers with a Fixed Mindset don’t think that Professional
Development accomplishes much because things like teacher quality and student
ability are inborn and nothing changes them.
They can be seen rolling their eyes and grading papers during
professional development and would never volunteer to be on a committee. You’ll never see a request from a Fixed
Mindset teacher to attend a conference or purchase a professional journal or
book because that would be admitting that they have room for improvement. I’ve seen Fixed Mindset administrators say
things like, “All the professional development in the world couldn’t make
so-and-so a great teacher.” That Fixed
Mindset comment is contagious and dangerous.
Teachers with a Growth Mindset read insatiably the latest research
and content updates. They cannot wait
for the newest professional journal to come out to see what new strategies they
might try. Then, best of all, they take
that research and try to improve their practice. They lead professional developments, take
college classes, and try new things regularly.
In my experience, the most successful administrators are also those who
take research and put it into practice.
They’re often found teaching education classes at the university or even
students working on administrative credentials.
Response to
Evaluations:
Teachers with a Fixed Mindset see evaluation as a thing that
must be done but has no value to them. Since
the characteristics measured in these evaluations (quality of teaching, success
of students) are beyond their control (in their minds), the feedback from these
evaluations isn’t of value to them. Fixed
Mindset teachers are completely against the idea of student achievement being
part of evaluations because they feel that student achievement is inborn and
the teacher doesn’t affect it. These are
the teachers who say things like, “What would happen if doctors were evaluated
on the outcomes of their patients? They
can’t make a patient take their medicine just like a teacher cannot make a kid
do their homework.” It turns out that
this is exactly how doctors are evaluated and not only that, but their pay is
directly affected by the outcomes of their patients. My family practitioner explained that if a
50-year old doesn’t get a prostate exam, a diabetic doesn’t get regular blood
tests and retinal exams, or a pregnant woman doesn’t get regular wellness
exams, her pay is directly affected and so is her public quality ranking.
Growth Mindset teachers don’t always look forward to
evaluations (who does?) but they do see them as opportunities for feedback and
. . . well . . . growth. These are the
teachers who say, “Sure, drop by my classroom anytime. You don’t need to tell me you’re coming.” They are the ones who email you 10 minutes
after you leave asking, “So, what did you think? Where could I improve?” It is incredibly important for you to give
these teachers the feedback that they hunger for. As a teacher, I had one evaluator who always
told me, “You’re a better teacher than I was.
I don’t know what to tell you.”
That wasn’t valuable information to me and I longed for feedback that
would help me grow.
Keep in mind that it does no good to just identify which
mindset a teacher has adopted and I do not believe (because I have a Growth
Mindset) that mindsets cannot change.
The power here is in learning how to hire and support those with a
Growth Mindset and try to move the Fixed Mindset teachers closer to a Growth
Mindset. That will be the topic of the
next series of posts, how to change a Fixed Mindset.
Read Part 1 here
Read Part 3 here
Read Part 1 here
Read Part 3 here
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