Fostering a "Growth" Mindset in Students

Fostering a “Growth” Mindset in Students

Parents, teachers, and other adults shape young people’s mindsets by what they say about successes and failures. Praise for being “smart” leads kids to believe that learning should be easy – and if it feels difficult, they’re not smart. Praise for focusing and sticking with a task fosters a much more positive mindset – you can get smart through effective effort.

        Fisher and Frey say educators can foster students’ motivation by the way they talk to them about accomplishments, identity, and agency:

        • Accomplishments – “When teachers phrase compliments so that students understand their own roles in the accomplishment, they will begin to see that their efforts allow them to meet their goals,” say Fisher and Frey. “In doing so, teachers can guide students to ‘attend to their internal feelings of pride’ (Johnston,Choice Words, Stenhouse, 2004), which will build students’ internal motivation and reduce their need for external praise.” Some examples:

• “You figured that out. Feels good, huh? Tell me how you did it.”
• “I bet you are proud of yourself.”
• “Marcos, your group tells me that you were very helpful in figuring out the answer to this problem.”

• Identity – Teachers’ comments can help students build a sense of who they are in the world. Some examples:

• “How are you thinking like a historian today?”
• “Your opening line reminds me of one thing that other authors do. As a reader, I enjoy openings with a startling statement and you really captured that here.”
• “There are so many ways to solve this problem, and I see that you solved it two different ways… I’d bet it was fun to see it work out both ways.”

• Agency – This is the feeling that one’s efforts lead directly to accomplishments, as opposed to luck being the main variable. Teachers can build children’s sense of agency by talking to them in specific ways:

• Asking “Why?” is a helpful way to get students to connect actions to effects.
• “What might you do next?” helps students plan actions that will produce results and also communicates the teacher’s belief that students can and will succeed.
• “You did it, but tell me how,” a teacher might say. “I’m particularly interested in efforts that were and were not helpful.”

Fisher and Frey suggest that when principals visit classrooms, they should listen carefully to teachers’ language and see if it’s appropriately praising accomplishments and building identity and agency.

“Choice Words” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey in Principal Leadership, December 2012 (Vol. 13, #4, p. 57-59), http://www.nassp.org/tabid/3788/default.aspx?topic=Instructional_Leader_1212

The authors can be reached at dfisher@mail.sdsu.edu and nfrey@mail.sdsu.edu.

Stephen Anderson

Robert Marzano on Analyzing Complex Texts

(Originally titled “Analyzing Complex Texts”)

        In this Educational Leadership column, author/consultant Robert Marzano says that when students analyze a text’s structure, they should be aware of two levels: (a) the overall organization – for example, rising action, climax, falling action in literature or, in non-fiction, presenting and supporting a claim; and (b) the underlying relationship among ideas, including these four:

• Addition: one idea adds to or is similar to another – for example, She is dark and beautiful.
• Contrast: one idea is different or subtracts from another – for example, He is fast but doesn’t like to play sports.
• Time: one idea occurs before, during, or after another – for example, She walked away before he arrived.
• Cause: one idea leads to another – for example, He woke up because the garbage truck made a racket.

When students hear a complex sentence like: Mary called Bill after he left for work, but he didn’t get the call because his cell phone was off, they can probably follow the logic, but when they are reading, they may need guidance analyzing the relationship among ideas. Marzano says students should be explicitly taught the four types of relationships among ideas and use symbols to mark up passages: an equal sign for addition, a not-equal sign for contrast; an arrow for time; and a double-stemmed arrow for cause.

 

“Analyzing Complex Texts” by Robert Marzano in Educational Leadership, December 2012/January 2013 (Vol. 70, #4, p. 84-85), www.ascd.org

 

 

Stephen Anderson

How to Unleash Creativity

        “Most people are born creative,” say Tom Kelley (University of California/Berkeley and University of Tokyo) and David Kelley (Stanford University) in this thoughtful Harvard Business Review article. “As children, we revel in imaginary play, ask outlandish questions, draw blobs and call them dinosaurs.” But as the years pass, formal education takes its toll and many people no longer see themselves as creative.

Kelley and Kelley believe creativity is vital to getting results, and they’re in the business of helping people rediscover their creative confidence, defined as their “natural ability to come up with new ideas and the courage to try them out.” They use “guided mastery” to help people get past fears that inhibit creativity:

        • Fear of the messy unknown – One’s office is cozy and predictable, say Kelley and Kelley: “Out in the world, it’s more chaotic. You have to deal with unexpected findings, with uncertainty, and with irrational people who say things you don’t want to hear. But that is where you find insights – and creative breakthroughs.” Venturing out of one’s comfort zone and treating it like an anthropological expedition is a sure way to fire up creativity.

        • Fear of being judged – “If the scribbling, singing, dancing kindergartner symbolizes unfettered creative expression,” say Kelley and Kelley, “the awkward teenager represents the opposite: someone who cares –deeply – about what other people think. It takes only a few years to develop that fear of judgment, but it stays with us throughout our adult lives, often constraining our careers.” People self-censor ideas for fear they won’t be acceptable to peers or superiors, constantly undermining the creative process. Kelley and Kelley recommend keeping an idea notebook or whiteboard and scribbling ideas – good, bad, indifferent – with abandon. It’s amazing how much good stuff is written down by the end of each week. They also suggest scheduling “white space” time when the only task is to think and daydream – perhaps while taking a walk. It’s also important to reach an agreement with colleagues to use more supportive language in response to wild and crazy ideas, shifting from “That will never work” to “I wish…” or “This is just my opinion and I want to help.”

        • Fear of the first step – “Creative efforts are hardest at the beginning,” say Kelley and Kelley. “The writer faces the blank page; the teacher, the start of school; businesspeople, the first day of a new project… To overcome this inertia, good ideas are not enough. You need to stop planning and just get started – and the best way to do that is to stop focusing on the huge overall task and find a small piece you can tackle right away.” A boy who procrastinated on a school report on birds till the night before it was due was on the verge of a panic attack, but he got some great advice from his father: “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

        • Fear of losing control – Many people think they have to solve problems or come up with answers by themselves. Kelley and Kelley say that when we’re stuck, we need to let go and reach out for help. “Confidence doesn’t simply mean believing your ideas are good,” they write. “It means having the humility to let go of ideas that aren’t working and to accept good ideas from other people.” Call a meeting of people who are fresh to the topic and brainstorm. Let the most junior person in the room lead the meeting. Look for opportunities to let go and leverage different perspectives.

 

“Reclaim Your Creative Confidence” by Tom Kelley and David Kelley in Harvard Business Review, December 2012 (Vol. 90, #12, p. 115-118), no e-link available

 

Five Myths About the Common Core ELA Standards

(Originally titled “The Common Core Ate My Baby and Other Urban Legends”)

            In this important Educational Leadership article, literacy expert Timothy Shanahan (University of Illinois/Chicago) debunks five myths about the common core literacy standards:

            • Myth #1: The new standards prohibit teachers from setting purposes for reading or discussing prior knowledge. True, the original publishers’ criteria written by lead authors David Coleman and Susan Pimentel in 2011 suggested deemphasizing the common practice of spending time building up students’ background knowledge, establishing the purpose for reading a passage, and asking for students’ predictions. Facing a storm of protest, Coleman and Pimentel retreated and issued an April 2012 revision that eliminated admonitions against pre-teaching.

            “So to clarify, there simply is no ban on pre-reading in the Common Core State Standards,” says Shanahan. But there are significant changes – close reading and re-reading – which suggest that it’s a good idea to get students to plunge into texts without a lot of prior teaching. “The benefit of the pre-reading controversy,” says Shanahan, “is that it’s getting educators to take a hard look at how best to send students into a book – and this rethinking can help us clear up our pre-reading act… Preparing students to read a text… should be brief and should focus on providing students with the tools they need to make sense of the text on their own.”

            • Myth #2: Teachers are no longer required to teach phonological awareness, phonics, or fluency. Not true, says Shanahan. The common-core standards are strong on phonological awareness K-1, phonics K-3, and fluency K-5. So how did this myth get started? Perhaps because the new literacy standards began with comprehension, which is the reverse of the sequence in many previous standards documents.

            • Myth #3: English teachers can no longer teach literature in literature classes. Nonsense, says Shanahan. What the new standards do is give informational texts equal billing with novels, stories, poems, and plays in the elementary grades and 30 percent of classroom time in the upper grades – but that includes science and social studies. English teachers can continue to teach literature, as they have always done.

            • Myth #4: Teachers must teach students at frustration levels. It’s true that the common-core standards call for students to work with more-challenging material at each grade level than has been typical in basal readers in recent years. This is based on research showing that students make less progress when they read easier texts – and the urgent need to prepare students for the literacy demands of college and the workplace. But the higher reading levels in the new standards should not lead primary-grade teachers to push students beyond what is required by the common-core (which is similar to previous expectations) in order to prepare them for more-demanding grade 2 standards. And all teachers should give their students a mix of reading material – more-demanding material for close reading and direct instruction, easier material for fun reading.

            • Myth #5: Most schools are already teaching to the new standards. Baloney, says Shanahan: “We are going to have to make some real changes in our practices.” These include (a) less emphasis on pre-reading and more on close reading, re-reading, and follow-up;

(b) building students’ skills and motivation to tackle difficult texts without telling them what the texts say; (c) an increase in critical analysis and synthesis of information from multiple texts; (d) a greater emphasis on informational texts in upper-grade social studies and science classes; and (e) more student writing about the ideas from texts than personal thoughts.

“Each one of these changes is considerable and will require better and more appropriate professional development, instructional materials, and supervision,” says Shanahan. “Educators who shrug off these changes will face a harsh reality.” The fact is that 40 percent of students who currently meet state standards need remediation when they get to college and many fail to graduate. The new standards are in line with what students need to know and be able to do to succeed in college and careers. Shanahan believes they will give teachers, students, and parents a much more accurate picture of where students stand, and what they need to succeed.

“The Common Core Ate My Baby and Other Urban Legends” by Timothy Shanahan in Educational Leadership, December 2012 (Vol. 70, #4, p. 10-16), www.ascd.org; Shanahan can be reached at shanahan@uic.edu.