1.3 Learning Mindsets

Cultivating a growth mind set benefit all educators in their professional development and teaching because they will constantly push themselves to new challenges. Therefore, they are not afraid of failure, because they know that failure is an opportunity to grow, learn and keep moving forward to improve themselves.

It is important that educators learn about growth mindset and apply the knowledge in their teaching because they could create a ripple effect to positively impact their students. Bringing the growth mind set to their classrooms will encourage their students to keep trying and working, helping them to define their academic goals and eventually find their career path.

Cultivating a growth mindset as an educator seems to be a great tool to model that the educator is a human being wiht flaws that can learn from others. Educators who present with an “I am always right” mentality may hinder students’ opportunities to share in the classroom if they are questioning or in oppostition to the Eductor.

I like the idea of envisioning the learner as “someone who has not yet” learned a skill but will acquire it through time and effort. This view of teaching/learning couples optimism coupled with work.

I remember when I first had the realization that promoting growth mindset for my students meant that I needed to embrace it for myself as an educator. This gave me a framework for pushing myself to not be stagnant in my teaching, but to invest time to learn about and experiment with new approaches and pedagogies. Embracing growth mindset also helps me to be patient with myself! It is easy to get overwhelmed by all of the changes that an educator could make in their teaching; it might be more practical to focus on implementing one or two small changes each semester and give yourself time to grow and become the educator you wish to be.

It’s important to see ourselves as going through the same process as our students – learning something new and applying new techniques to our development that we can use in our future “careers.”
I tell my students that my courses are still a work in process – I’m learning from them how to do this better and they shape future designs of the course. They are part of the community of students taking this class and have a role in where it goes.

This thread captures the essence of why cultivating a growth mindset is not just beneficial but essential for educators. It’s clear that when educators adopt this mindset, they’re better equipped to innovate in their teaching practices and more effectively support their students’ learning journeys.

The collective wisdom here underscores a fundamental truth: growth mindset isn’t just a tool for personal development but a cornerstone of effective teaching that can transform educational experiences and outcomes. By embracing this mindset, we not only improve as educators but also contribute to a more adaptive, innovative, and inclusive academic community.

In the module, I was struck by this paragraph:

Furthermore, many CUNY educators view as part of their mission helping students acquire competencies employers demand so they can improve their career prospects. NACE’s Competencies for a Career-Ready Workforce emphasizes the importance of continual personal and professional learning, self-awareness, and proactive career development. Clearly, a growth mindset is prerequisite to the development of these and other critical competencies.

I find that sometimes there is resistance to workforce readiness, which might be tied to a fixed mindset about what “our job” is as educators. I love the way the clear goals and skills of workforce readiness are embedded here and are so clearly tied to what happens in all of my courses from Composition 101 to literature courses. For me, this offered a “meta” moment thinking about how my own mindset has grown and needs to continue to grow to think about workforce skills alongside disciplinary skills. Has anyone else felt that growth in their own teaching?

Having a growth mindset benefits educators by promoting self-efficacy skills toward the power of decision making for learners of all ages. A growth mindset allows learners to have a flexible mindset, to be open and willing to change their mind based on evaluating text and critical data. This also works in tandem with teaching learners to listen well, to pause and to evaluate.

A growth mindset means that education never ends. It promotes curiosity in learning new things and sets stage for promoting lifelong learning.

How does this pertain to higher education? Reflective teaching is about professional development and thinking about one’s craft. But it is also about making key when teaching is not going well. For learners who are studying education or similar fields, it is crucial that they learn how be intentional about getting input from instructors, but also from advisors, peers and mentors in the field.

Growth mindset also benefits instructors and learners in that it takes the stigma out of failure and allows individuals to grow in a safe space. This is important for theoretical courses and field-based courses. It is important for learners to have modeling, guided practice and for there to be a gradual release when interning or completing a practicum course. Practicum-based courses and seminars or courses that align with the fieldwork are arenas for discussing how to grow as a budding professional.

Summarily, growth mindset increases positivity and reduces feeling a sense of not being good enough.   Setting up a growth culture is beneficial for Professors, K-12 educators and educators in adult education settings as it allows learners to feel a sense of accomplishment when they do well and identify where they need to grow. The spirit of growth mindedness cuts through perfectionism and feelings of futility. To implement a growth mindset well, educators can start slowly by creating a self-support team of mentors, friends and colleagues that will support them.

Having a growth mindset benefits educators by promoting self-efficacy skills toward the power of decision making for learners of all ages. A growth mindset allows learners to have a flexible mindset, to be open and willing to change their mind based on evaluating text and critical data. This also works in tandem with teaching learners to listen well, to pause and to evaluate.

A growth mindset means that education never ends. It promotes curiosity in learning new things and sets stage for promoting lifelong learning.

How does this pertain to higher education? Reflective teaching is about professional development and thinking about one’s craft. But it is also about making key when teaching is not going well. For learners who are studying education or similar fields, it is crucial that they learn how be intentional about getting input from instructors, but also from advisors, peers and mentors in the field.

Growth mindset also benefits instructors and learners in that it takes the stigma out of failure and allows individuals to grow in a safe space. This is important for theoretical courses and field-based courses. It is important for learners to have modeling, guided practice and for there to be a gradual release when interning or completing a practicum course. Practicum-based courses and seminars or courses that align with the fieldwork are arenas for discussing how to grow as a budding professional.

Summarily, growth mindset increases positivity and reduces feeling a sense of not being good enough.   Setting up a growth culture is beneficial for Professors, K-12 educators and educators in adult education settings as it allows learners to feel a sense of accomplishment when they do well and identify where they need to grow.

Since the beginning of my career, I struggled with fear of failure fed by me being a Hispanic woman with dyslexia. Learning about growth mindset in the past and now has allowed me to let go of feelings of shame or embarrassment when I underperform and has increase my productivity by letting go of paralyzing fear of failure. By incorporating teaching practices to develop growth mindsets I am practicing and reinforcing my own growth mindset.

In addition to helping my own development, I incorporate a sense to the class that mistakes are ok and are part of the learning process in my courses, to help other minority and non-minority students grow beyond the course content. My hope is that promoting growth mindset will help let go of the terminal feeling of failure and turn setbacks into growth opportunities. Importantly, cultivating growth mindset improves the course performance in untapped student groups that include minorities, women, neurodivergent, those with trauma, etc. and provides these groups a tool that can be used to improve themselves and their lives beyond college.

I discussed in the prior submodule some the approaches used in my genetics class to promote mindsets of growth (See quote below).

“In my course, I often do problems with the students on the board. I allow myself to make mistakes or even give the students problems answers with mistakes for them to fix. I want the students to see that it is ok to make mistakes, that I make mistakes, and that together we learn to understand genetic problems more deeply. I ask the students to solve in groups very difficult genetic problems. Much more difficult than they need to know for the exam. After they give the problem a good try as a team, we work it out together as a class. We go through the different solutions teams came up with and often combine approaches from different teams to solve the problem. After the problem is solved I ask the students to try to find the answer taking a different approach. The students are told that they are here to learn and that only in the assessments they need to perform but that to perform better they need to work out problems that are not cookie cutter problems. I never thought these activities and pedagogic approaches may be helping them develop a growth mindset. In the future, I will connect these activities and approaches directly to a growth mindset for the students. I think that students being cognisant of this connection will allow them to develop a growth mindset outside the course.”

I am a fairly new instructor making lots of mistakes and learning, learning, learning from my students and my mistakes. If I didn’t have a growth mindset, I would have had to throw the towel in after my first week of class!

I’m still teaching some courses for the first time and I always let my students know when it is the first time. I am open with them about the fact that I will make mistakes and also about what I will do differently the following semester. I also ask all of my classes for feedback on what I could do better. This not only helps me improve my teaching but it also tells my students that I value their experiences and opinions.

Cultivating a growth mindset is incredibly beneficial for us educators in both our professional development, teaching practices, and approach to student support.

When we adopt a growth mindset, we are more likely to seek out professional development opportunities, collaborate with colleagues, and stay open to new teaching strategies and technologies. I believe continuous learning allows us to better meet the diverse needs of our students and create a more dynamic and engaging educational environment.

For me, as an educator, understanding and applying growth mindset principles helps me foster a culture where mistakes are seen as learning opportunities, effort is celebrated, and students are encouraged to take on challenges without fear of failure. By modeling a growth mindset, I want to inspire my students to develop the same attitude, which is essential for their academic and personal growth.

How many times have I walked away from the classroom thinking, “Today I was the worst teacher in the world!”? A little dramatic perhaps, but the feeling of defeat is real, at least in the moment. But without a growth mindset, I would walk away from that classroom experience and just keep walking! The alternative is falling into a hole of unsuccessful or unresponsive teaching practices. My commitment to teaching requires a growth mindset.

When you promote a growth mindset culture in the classroom you are letting students know that it is ok to make mistakes or not know something. This encourages people to ask questions and to be more curious, rather than staying quiet when confused because they do not want to be judged for “not knowing.” I think it also allows the instructor the freedom and humility to admit when they don’t fully understand something and have open dialogue with the class.

I believe that cultivating a growth mindset can be beneficial for me and all educators in professional development and teaching practices. On a professional level, it is important to have a growth mindset in the nursing profession, which is grounded in best practice guidelines. To maintain currency in the profession, I need to attend conferences, read nursing journals, and attend workshops to acquire new knowledge. With the knowledge acquired, I will have to adjust in the way I perform some nursing skills, for example, patient-centered care and culturally responsive care.

In my teaching practice, it is also important for me to have a growth mindset to optimize students’ academic outcomes. Information technology plays a critical role in learning and can foster student engagement. To increase student engagement, I need to pivot to a flipped classroom, use technology during lectures for polling and research topics, and pay attention to end-of-course evaluations. These evaluations provide an opportunity for me to engage in self-reflection, learn from my mistakes, and formulate an action plan for future classes by focusing on student-centered learning.

Finally, a growth mindset is essential for motivating students to learn from setbacks and become effective, patient, and compassionate.

Cultivating a growth mindset benefits educators by looking at failures and even successes from a particular lens. Primarily, to see them as information to inform future action. For example, if a student excels/fails an exam, that’s information. I think it’s important to learn how to pass that ideology to students so that they can master a growth mindset and apply it to their own lives. For example, incorporating a reflection exercise on what actions/behaviors they engaged in that led to an assignment/exam outcome and what strategies they can apply if they want a different outcome. I think it’s important for me to understand the growth mindset so that my students would also learn and apply this mindset to their lives.

I think it is important for instructors to constantly consider which of their teaching practices are most effective for promoting student success. This can be as simple as a way of explaining complex content. By discussing certain practices with colleagues, instructors can compare and contrast what has worked and what hasn’t and can then incorporate the best practices into their teaching.

Education is a constant for any instructor. We always look for ways to improve our teaching method, so we attend workshops and conferences. Our students are exposed to other challenges nowadays, and some think they are not good at the subject we teach. So, talking to them or explaining the growth mindset concept and how they can use it will help them advance in our subjects and their other classes.

Before I ever heard any discussion of growth mindset, after I had been teaching seven or eight years, I began to notice how much students’ emotions had to do with their performance. I clearly remember a student who took a make up exam in my office, and just before she wrote the conclusion, she ran out of the office crying saying she couldn’t do it. I looked at the essay, and if she had completed it, it would have been a B+. Back when we had an exit exam for a developmental class, I had a student who never completed a practice exam. She would leave for the restroom for twenty minutes, go buy a bottle of soda, or other strange time wasters. She had done well writing each piece of the essay: introduction, body paragraphs, conclusions, but when it came to adding it all up, she was too anxious to finish. When I discussed this with her, she thanked me; she hadn’t realized. I think those of us who were strong students, as we professors were at least at some point in our student careers, may have a hard time imagining the fear and anxiety that drive some students’ strange behavior.

I’m honestly baffled by this not being the innate way of being, especially for people working in education even if not in the classroom. Having a growth mindset gives you the room to consider the many paths that can lead you to the same goal. Being an educator is only a small part of who we are as people and as a student I’ve always appreciated more my teachers/professors when they themselves acknowledge that they don’t have all the answers and are always learning.

I taught my first university class in Spring of 2006- since then, my teaching has evolved to be almost unrecognizable from where I started out. This is due naturally to the passage of time and changes in technology, but also to my reflecting on how well teaching the way I was taught (all lecture) was working for my students (not super well!). Adopting a growth mindset as an educator is important to me, as I have at least two more decades of teaching before I will retire, and I know that students’ needs and preferences (and thus the job of teaching) are likely to change substantially over that time.

Years ago, my late father once said to me something to the tune of “I bet you can predict the final grades students will get, after meeting them the first day.” Ouch. That’s a pretty extreme “fixed” mindset. I recall it took me a few minutes to really process what he was saying, and I responded sharply that if that were the case, I wouldn’t be doing my job, that I’m in the learning business. I don’t think I had articulated it to myself before that; even so, with a growth mindset, I recognize implicit biases. For example, in a course I taught in spring, I realized that I was making assumptions about students sitting in the back row — but they were the most engaged of all!

Sense of Belonging:

We shared about what our college experience was comparing then and now. We discussed what we can do as educators to make the students experience a sense of community. We also discuss how sharing our own personal experience can help our students. Share with a purpose when it makes sense.

It is important for educators to understand and apply the principles of a growth mindset in their teaching, as this can create a positive ripple effect on their students. By fostering a growth mindset in the classroom, teachers can motivate students to persist in their efforts, helping them set academic goals and, ultimately, discover their career paths.

In life, personally and professionally, we need to grow. It is growth that gives us satisfaction. So, just in the same way we want our students to succeed and have a growth mindset, we too will get greater satisfaction and joy when we grow by supporting our growth mindset.

And for our student, it is the same. I want my students to succeed in life and be happy. I would like to do what I can to help them believe in themselves using the principles underlying the growth mindset and know that we are capable of achieving higher heights.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by Mahatapa Palit.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by Mahatapa Palit.

I approach all education as an opportunity for a growth mindset, whether that is my own education or my students’–and really, since we should be learning from our students as we teach, I am invested in my own education while teaching. This is an extension of my own college experience, taking every opportunity to learn more about more things, and to develop new understandings of and approaches to material. This means that I am always open to new ideas, new experiences, and the potential intersections of material and contexts. Revelations emerge here.

Because I work on material produced in early medieval contexts, I also find that starting from questions is always a good approach. Whatever we think we know about the people at the time, we have no native witnesses to inform us, so we need to assume that we are always piecing together information and that every new question may afford us new insights. Moreover, this means that we can apply any kind of theoretical question or framework we care to and test it out (those we are studying are long dead, so they won’t mind and we can’t hurt them if there is a problem with the framework–you can’t say that about postcolonial or CRT or any other theory applied to living people).

As such, my students can ask any questions they have until they wrap their heads around very foreign material; they can try out ideas and apply their concerns; they can also come to see where earlier eras may resist many of the concerns we have but be open to analysis through others.