To approach a growth mindset, it is important to understand what mindset is.
A mindset is a set of attitudes and dispositions that influence human views regarding obstacles, challenges, and hard situations happening throughout our lives. Importantly, the way we define hindrances or obstacles might determine our actions afterward. According to Carol Dweck, there are three kinds of mindset which are fixed mindset, growth mindset, and mixed mindset combined the two prior mindsets.
By Thao Nguyen
Summary
1. Differences between Growth Mindset and Fixed Mindset
a. Fixed mindset
Fixed mindset people tend to believe that IQ is predetermined and static, thus they focus on the end task or results. From their perspective, the main indicators of success are good grades and positive feedback.
Fixed-mindset children feel threatened by their peers’ success and tend to blame outside factors for their failures. For example, saying something like “They did not teach us that” or “That was not on the study guide” is what they use as an excuse for their low learning performance.
b. Growth mindset
On the contrary, a growth mindset is a belief that hard work and effort can develop intelligence. People owning the growth mindset recognize the value of what they gain, learn and experience along the way.
Moreover, for them, low grades might be signals to work harder and negative feedback is an important tool to support their improvement. Those people are persistent and persevering to continue their learning by looking for ways to improve on the subsequent assessments.
c. Why growth mindset important to kids
The mindset we adopt also reflects how we think and feel about success. Indeed, children who believe that they must be successful, usually have high requirements for themselves to perform and complete tasks in an exceptional way. When a task looks hard, those children struggle to begin, continue and complete it, since being perfect and achieving accomplishment make them hesitate to take the necessary steps needed. As a result, they can feel worried or become overcome when there are many questions such as if they do it correctly, how to do it perfectly, if it will be done well, that might prevent them from starting.
Meanwhile, if children oppositely view success, their actions will be different. For example, if success is seen as just trying or learning something new, children can approach tasks with less pressure and more excitement. Those children can enjoy the learning process and are more willing to get out of their comfort zone to grow and develop themselves.
2. Myths about growth mindset
There are some myths regarding the growth mindset which need to be clarified.
First, a growth mindset is not just about effort. The effort is indeed a key for children’s learning achievement and a means to an end to the goal of learning and improving. However, the main value of the growth mindset is more than that. Besides effort, children need to be willing and ready to try new strategies and seek information resources from others when they get stuck.
Second, the growth mindset intends to help to close achievement gaps, not hide them. It means that parents can praise their children, but it is important to tell them their current achievement as well and then, discussing the ways to improve or become smarter.
Finally, “the path to a growth mindset is a journey, not a proclamation”. Everyone can have a growth mindset by practicing and receiving support from others. A growth mindset cannot be nurtured by only saying, it must be gone with actions and strategies. A person with a fixed mindset still can own a growth mindset by learning, adjusting, and getting assistance.
3. Benefits of Growth Mindset
Several studies have shown the positive effects of a growth mindset on self-efficacy and motivation.
Self-efficacy is defined as a belief in one’s own ability to be successful in specific circumstances. It affects not only people’s choices but also the extent of the willingness of people to strive and persevere to reach their achievements. With a greater level of academic self-efficacy, children are eager to take part in different activities, preserved through trials, and have less emotional frustrations or negative feelings when they get failures. A growth mindset might contribute to the increase in self-efficacy of children, thus those children tend to be determined to go through challenging tasks, instead of giving up.
Motivation has a strong positive connection with achievement, which means the more motivated students have, the more academic success they get. Therefore, it is seen as a possible predictor of how students perform academically. There are two kinds of motivation which are intrinsic and extrinsic. Children, motivated intrinsically to learn, are fascinated and inquired about the process, and focus on the task itself, instead of the final results. Conversely, extrinsically motivated students are concerned with the results (e.g., grades, prizes) more than the process of completing tasks. Through development stages, motivation changes with different ages as a result of different needs and desires of individuals. Students with a growth mindset might develop positive self-evaluations for themselves and be more ready to face perplexing tasks. Instead of choosing easy tasks to hide their weaknesses, they prefer to challenge themselves, explore their abilities, and be willing to get negative results.
4. How do we know whether we have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset?
The following questions might help you self-reflect which kind of mindset you have:
- Would you rather see your team win a game against a weaker team, or see it lose to a more advanced team that challenged you?
- Would you rather get a poor mark on a test that you studied hard for and learned a lot of cool information, or get a great mark on a test that was so easy you did not need to study?
- Would you rather stumble on a few words during your presentation as you present to the class, or get a pass and not have to present at all?
- Would you rather try something you have never tried before and might do it wrong, or would you rather not try it at all?
If your answers are the first option of each question, it means that you have a growth mindset since you accept to deal with and go through challenges optimistically. The second option of each question is related to the unwillingness of confronting setbacks in life. It means that walking away, giving up or complaining are priorities when facing difficulties.
5. How to have Growth Mindset as a parent?
The next questions might help you reflect on your Parenting Mindset:
- Is it okay if your children struggle?
- Is it okay if your children fail a test because they did not study?
- Would you rather your children bring a beautiful project to school because you did most of the work, or that your children hand in an incomplete project because they were not responsible for their homework?
- Would you rather your children never get upset at school because the teacher did not hold your children responsible for their actions, or that your children be held accountable for their actions and receive consequences?
- Would you rather get your children out of trouble at school by arguing your children’s side of the story, or allow your children to receive a consequence for their behavior at school?
- If your children complain about another child in the class, do you accept your children’s side of the story and give instructions for what your children should say to the other child, or do you encourage your children to reflect on the other side of the story and ask one thing that they wish they had not done?
By answering these questions, you might know which mindset you are developing for your children and then you can consider some strategies to adjust your parenting methods so that a growth mindset can be built for your children. The next blog, we will discuss more about the methods parents can practice to support the development of the growth mindset.
References:
Dweck, C. (2015). Carol Dweck revisits the growth mindset. Education Week, 35(5), 20-24.
Emily Rhew, Jody S. Piro, Pauline Goolkasian & Patricia Cosentino | (2018)
The effects of a growth mindset on self-efficacy and motivation, Cogent Education, 5:1, 1492337,
DOI: 10.1080/2331186X.2018.1492337Mandel, Joey. Keep Growing: How to encourage students to persevere, overcome setbacks, and develop a growth mindset, Pembroke Publishers, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/tampere/detail.action?docID=4851644.
At BiziVietnam, understanding the importance of the growth mindset, our teachers focus on the ways to help children realize that learning is a process, and results are only a small part of it. The matter is how to experience new things and enjoy the learning process, rather than focusing on the results or marks.
Children learn through activities in which they are motivated and encouraged to keep growing and maintaining their mother tongue. Besides, our varied clubs are expected to provide children opportunities to explore their abilities and extend their knowledge regarding their home country.
We believe that those opportunities will support their learning process as well as the development of the growth mindset. For parents, we create an exclusive material, named Tiếng Việt Vui, to help parents approach different educational information and tools to be associating with their children through the learning development.
The learning material is sent to parents monthly with a variety of content so that parents and children will have great moments to play and learn together. Beside that, becoming a member of BiziVietnam, each family will receive different discounts from our partners. Join us to maintain language and culture for your children.
About BiziVietnam
BiziVietnam is the first ever non-profit organisation in Finland dedicated to empowering cultural connections and strengthening the Vietnamese cultural footprint in locals, internationals and Vietnamese people in Finland; along with promoting cooperation opportunities between Finland and Vietnam. Follow us on Social Media for the latest news and upcoming events.
