As much I would like to say that I am a part of the "Growth" mindset, I find myself in the "Fixed" one. A lot of my educational experience has placed the greatest value in receiving A's in every class, or learning just as much as I can to pass a test (standardized, AP, benchmarks, etc.). My frustrations with myself have come from not receiving the grade, not necessarily that I didn't learn the information.
I've learned a lot about my style of learning being at OU. I have found myself, in particular instances or classes, learning more towards the "Growth" mindset. Especially in the classes that I am the most passionate about, I find myself wanting to do all assignments to learn the most I can while I am in that class. The grade means less to me, as I feel it will automatically come after learning everything I can. I think it took the first couple of years of college to find that out, as I went through the process of changing my majors and finding what I truly wanted to study.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to take this class. I am in Latin right now and a lot of our curriculum is placed in Ancient Rome and certain mythological aspects of their history. I found myself at a complete loss when we would talk about these kinds of topics, so I sought out as way to combat that! Coming from that, I dropped a couple of classes I thought I wanted/needed to take in order to better root myself in courses that would keep my interest and begin to strengthen the "Growth" mindset in myself.
(Growth vs. Fixed, web source: Flickr)
I chose this picture because I really do feel like this is one of the best visual representations of this concept. A "Growth" mindset leads to endless opportunities and continual advancement while the "Fixed" mindset leaves you stuck worrying about failures or not meeting expectations that are sometimes unrealistically placed on children.
Hi!
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I completely agree with how a fixed growth mindset can be influenced (hindered) by school! Grades are everything, especially in college. Your GPA determinates if you can get internships and scholarships. This makes it hard to not be overly critical when you do something wrong. If professors made the classes more about the experience than the grade, I think overall attitude and outcomes would improve!
After Dweck’s mindset growth videos, I realized that my natural state is a fairly fixed mindset, too. I like doing well, so my first instinct is to stick to things I’m already fairly good at instead of branching out and improving on other things. I’ve realized now that that’s probably not going to lead on much of a life to look back on, though, so I’ve been working to improve on that. It’s awesome that you decided to take this class specifically to expand your horizons, too—that’s a great way to look at elective classes, and I imagine this was a great class to try it with.
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