1.3 Learning Mindsets

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  Posted by CUNY Mindset Initiative on March 11, 2024 at 11:02 am

  💬  Reflection/Discussion:

  • How does cultivating a growth mindset benefit educators in their professional development and teaching practices? Why is it important to you as an educator to learn about and growth mindsets and apply that knowledge in your teaching?

• Careen Purcell

  Member

  July 15, 2024 at 3:16 pm

  Hi John,
  You are not alone. Sometimes, I invest a lot of time and resources into preparing materials, only to find that students do not grasp the concepts. I self-reflect and use course evaluation feedback to adjust my teaching strategies in such instances. What resonated with me today in the workshop is the idea of “purpose and relevance.” My key takeaway is that whatever I present to students to facilitate engagement and learning should be conveyed in a way they can relate to or see its relevance in the lab, clinical, and healthcare environments.
  Qin (She)

  Member

  July 15, 2024 at 7:12 pm

  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.
  Katherine Joubin

  Member

  July 23, 2024 at 11:53 am

  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.
  Thomas Michael Conroy

  Participant

  July 26, 2024 at 12:14 pm

  Hi Rachel,

  I just wanted to say that these are very good, insightful comments and underscore the idea that learning can be, and hopefully, is a life long pursuit. I also agree with the notion of mistakes as learning opportunities and probably need to remind myself of this more often, as our culture seems to emphasize results more than process.
  Mélida Sánchez

  Participant

  July 29, 2024 at 7:25 pm

  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.
  Lara Stapleton (She/her)

  Member

  August 13, 2024 at 4:48 pm

  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.
  Joan Castro

  Member

  August 14, 2024 at 11:59 am

  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.