Mindset-growth vs fixed. Interventions
COMPILATION: Growth vs fixed mindset
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Date: Sat, 17 May 2014
From: John Clement
Subject: Who gets to graduate
I would highly recommend reading "Who gets to graduate" at nytimes.com
It is also in the weekend magazine section.
Essentially it shows how a professor at UT Austin found that his chem class had a bimodal distribution of students. He then found that the 2 groups differed in SAT scores, and the lower distribution tended to come from low SES homes with no previous college graduates.
He completely fixed the problem by segregating the low SES students into a smaller class with more support.
However a less draconian solution came from trying different messages at the pre-orientation session.
"In January 2013, when Yeager analyzed the first-semester data, he saw the advantaged students' results were exactly the same as they were every year. No matter which message they saw in the pre-orientation presentation, 90 percent of that group was on track. Similarly, the disadvantaged students in the control group, who saw the bland message about adjusting to Austin's culture and weather, did the same as disadvantaged students usually did: 82 percent were on track. But the disadvantaged students who had experienced the belonging and mind-set messages did significantly better: 86 percent of them had completed 12 credits or more by Christmas. They had cut the gap between themselves and the advantaged students in half."
So in addition to doing things to improve their thinking skills, there is now evidence that giving the right message up front can be helpful. One such message is convincing them that they can change the way they think. The UT research has other messages that might be helpful.
This of course does not mean that the right message has the same effect as the interactive engagement present in Modeling. Modeling alone produces much greater gains across the board. The right message should enhance the effect of Modeling and can help the lower students more than the upper ones, without giving the lower students more resources, or increasing your
workload. It is another way to work smarter rather than harder.
Please read this article.
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Date: Sun, 18 May 2014
From: Mark Hammond
John's message is important. At St. Andrew's, we have found that having students read The Talent Code and an article by Carol Dweck (about mindset) gives us a common language to discuss how learning and improving happens. We assign this as summer homework. The students like the reading quite a bit, probably because it is much quicker and easier to complete
than the novels they have to read! Students who for some reason don't get to the reading over the summer are often so intrigued with what their classmates are saying that they check the book out from the library and read at least part of it.
The key is to follow up often. Efforts to normalize mistakes needs to happen. Sharing techniques for turning "homework" into "deep practice" needs to happen weekly. Any moment or two that you spend discussing positive or negative mindet as it appears in the classroom is important.
We can get address these issues well before college orientation!
We are also very transparent about how we are teaching. Students know they are in a class unlike previous classes, so anything we can do to point out exactly why we do what we do is crucial. It brings them into the wider conversation. "How do I learn, how do you teach?" is a pretty powerful year-long conversation. Often my year-end evaluations included answers to "What is the most important thing that you learned this year?" that run along the lines of, "There's a different way to teach science, and it works really well." I'm guessing some of those students might be future teachers.
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Date: Sun, 18 May 2014
From: Marc Reif
I just looked up this book, and I love this idea!
I have had little success with attempts at physics-based summer assignments, kids simply don't (or claim they don't) understand enough to complete the assignments, even when I think I'm making them easy.
Probably too late for this year, but I'm going to buy this book and consider how I can use it next year.
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Date: Fri, 23 May 2014
From: John Clement <>
I would highly recommend reading "Who gets to graduate" at nytimes.com. It was
also in the last week weekend magazine section.
It shows a significant effect can be obtained for the lower students who tend to fail using attitudes. So in addition to doing things to improve thinking levels, and using Modeling, this might be the other factor to improving results. This a college-based study, but it has implications for HS as well.
One of the more interesting things is to have students read an "article" about how thinking skills can be improved, and are not fixed for life. Then have them turn in a short 1-page reflection where they explain this to another student. The article could be from the literature or it could be
something you wrote and handed out. This would be done on the first day, and would be assigned homework. The only grading would be skimming the papers to see if they are identical or just repeating the article. The grade would be 100% or zero as a daily grade. You would assure students that there would be no grading for grammar, just checking to see if they
read and understood the article.
There is other research which shows that when students change their paradigm from one of fixed intelligence to one of learned intelligence, they actually improve in their thinking skills.
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Date: Fri, 23 May 2014
From: Cheryl Litman
Along the lines of the fixed v growth mindset discussion, I'm curious whether people have seen the effects of "stereotype threat" in their classrooms. I find that my low level students fall back on attributing their difficulties to "you can't expect more from me, after all I'm in the "bobo" class". Before I came to this school, I'd never heard that term, or that sentiment. They seem to be very conscious of whether they are getting the same work as the level above them (college prep). Yet, when I reassure them that they are getting the same content, just slower, they talk themselves out of working hard enough to see success and tell me that I can't expect more from them because they are bobo. Circular arguments.
dpress.com/2014/04/28/stereotype-threat-a-summary-of-the-problem/ stereotype threat
dpress.com/2014/04/29/countering-stereotype-threat/
countering stereotype threat
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Monday, May 26, 2014
From: Jane Jackson
Adding to John Clement's post of last Friday: The May 2014 issue of PHYSICS TODAY has a very good article by Nobelist Carl Wieman and 2 associates. You can freely download it at:
nford.edu/~gwalton/home/Welcome_files/AguilarWaltonWieman2014.pdf
Physics Today (May 2014)
Psychological insights for improved physics teaching
by Lauren Aguilar, Greg Walton, and Carl Wieman
Physics Today 67(5), 43 (2014); doi: 10.1063/PT.3.2383
View online: .org/10.1063/PT.3.2383
I quote it:
... In a physics class, two psychological dynamics are particularly important to the academic success of students from underrepresented groups: beliefs about intelligence and awareness of negative stereotypes.
CAN I GET SMARTER?
How quickly students learn is affected to a large degree by whether they believe that ability in physics or some other area of interest is something that can grow and develop like a muscle (a “growth mindset”) or something you are born with and can do little to change (a “fixed mindset”).
Students with a fixed mindset who encounter a difficult problem or concept see that difficulty as evidence that they lack ability. Across many different research studies, such students tend to seek out easy problems (to prove their ability) and avoid challenging ones that would help them learn. They avoid speaking up in class or in group discussions so they don’t seem stupid. When they face setbacks, they lose motivation and turn their attention to subjects for which they feel more “natural” ability.
In contrast, students who have a growth mind-set see difficulties as opportunities to learn—“I love a good challenge!” So they work harder and ask more questions, which naturally improves their learning. In physics, students inevitably encounter material that they find demanding. Their mindset plays a substantial part in how they respond to that situation and their subsequent level of success.
... Another activity, the growth-mindset intervention, teaches students that intelligence is not a fixed quality—people aren’t “smart” or “dumb.” Instead, intelligence grows with hard work on challenging problems, help from others, and effective strategies. Those ideas can be conveyed in various ways—for example, with information from neuroscience about how the brain grows with learning or with testimonials from older students.
A USEFUL REFERENCE in that article:
9. D. S. Yeager et al., “How can we instill productive mindsets at scale? A review of the evidence and an initial R&D agenda,” white paper prepared for the White House meeting on “Excellence in Education: The Importance of Academic Mindsets,” available at
.utexas.edu/adrg/publications/Scroll down to the section called "Additional Writings". It is the first article in that section.
In that White Paper, specific interventions are discussed in three appendices:
a) Appendix 1, the section on Growth vs. Fixed Mindsets of Intelligence, lists 3 articles.
b) Appendix 2 (on page 36) shows three screenshots from the growth mindset intervention. It uses the metaphor that the brain is like a muscle.
c) Appendix 3 (on page 40) gives the text from Growth Mindset Intervention (Community College Trial).
Some of his journal articles can be freely downloaded, too. I found these two informative.
* Yeager, D.S., Walton, G., & Cohen, G.L. (2013). Addressing achievement gaps with psychological interventions. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(5), 62-65.
* Yeager, D.S. & Dweck, C.S. (2012). Mindsets that promote resilience: When students believe that personal characteristics can be developed. Educational Psychologist, 47, 1-13.
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Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2014
From: David Ennis
Subject: Whiteboarding and Homework Completion
Ryan Faith wrote:
> So this is something I have been struggling with for the past 5 years of teaching physics using Modeling. I work at a school where some of our students have big issues with homework completion. In my low-level physics class, students will do their homework only if they have a very firm grasp of what is going on but even then, it is a 50% rate ....
If you haven't read "Mindset" by Carol Dweck, I'd suggest that you do. I believe that a lot, if not most, of what I've seen along these lines squares with her research. I look forward to applying what I've learned about this next year. "The Talent Code" is another insightful book, this time based on informal (but, I think, diligent) world-trotting research and interviews that can be used to try to rally the self-doubters. I picked up on these books from a post by Mark Hammond (and a follow up by Marc Reif) here in the May 17 -18 listserv digest. Belated thanks, guys!
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