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.
  Elana Effrat (she/her)

  Member

  August 20, 2024 at 11:49 am

  I love changing one small word to yet.

  I’m about to embark on my second semester of teaching and I’m learning as I go. Although I’ve been advised not to tell students I’m a new teacher, I do share with them that we are all growing together.
  Shawna M. Brandle (she/her)

  Member

  August 20, 2024 at 3:50 pm

  Sarah, this openness and honesty with your students is amazing!  I have found in my own experience that letting students know that I know I don’t know everything, and that I will make mistakes during our class, is extremely powerful (I only wish I had learned this earlier in my teaching career, as you have already figured out).
  Shawna M. Brandle (she/her)

  Member

  August 20, 2024 at 3:56 pm

  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.
  Cynthia Chris (she/her)

  Participant

  September 10, 2024 at 4:04 pm

  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!
  Rohan Gittens

  Member

  September 10, 2024 at 4:58 pm

  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.
  Jaime Chris Weida (She/Her)

  Member

  September 23, 2024 at 6:21 pm

  Thank you for bringing up Friere; I took a pedagogy course at the Grad Center with Ira Shor and he introduced me to Friere’s wonderful theories about teaching!
  Jaime Chris Weida (She/Her)

  Member

  September 23, 2024 at 8:21 pm

  I feel, regardless of terminology, the concept that a student (or anyone for that matter) can build on and grow their skills is vitally important. I reject the “empty vessel” model of teaching wherein instructors “pour” knowledge into a student. I also feel that it is unfair (and potentially discriminatory) to assume that there is a limit to what a student can learn and/or what they are capable of achieving.
  Mowmita Jabir (She/her)

  Member

  October 18, 2024 at 12:44 pm

  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.