Learning About Growth Mindset

I vaguely remember hearing my AP Psychology teacher in high school mention Carol Dweck's ideas, but no details of the discussion come to mind. So this course marks the first time I have heard in full about Dweck's growth mindset ideas. In my personal life, I have always been in the "fixed" mindset, unfortunately. In school, I was always taught that some children were capable of doing certain things and others were not and that it is best to stick to what you know you can do so you get good grades rather than branch out and try something you might fail at and risk getting bad grades. I knew that the only way I would be able to attend college without going into tremendous debt would be to get really great scholarships, so I worked to protect my GPA and to do well on standardized tests and actual learning fell by the wayside. This mindset has extended to most other areas of my life: I can either do something or I can't, and I should probably stick to the things I can do well.

While at OU, my appreciation for the act of learning and trying new things has increased tremendously. I now know the value of trying new things, even if I risk failure, though I do not always branch out as much as I should. The biggest challenge for me in regard to learning new things is this fear of failure, which still sticks with me even as an adult. For this reason, I am very interested in learning more about growth mindset throughout the semester and how, as adults, we can try and become less fixed in mindset. I believe learning about this could help in not just all of my other classes, but also in just about every aspect of life, including relationships, work, hobbies, and more.

My personal goals for this semester are to create a blog I can be proud of while learning and having fun. For another class, my goal is to write a capstone paper that interests me and that I can feel good about, not just one that is good enough for me to pass the class. As this is my last semester, I am taking classes that truly interest me, so I look forward to learning and having fun while doing so!

As far as criticism of Dweck goes, I found Alfie Kohn's article interesting in that he points out that focusing too much on mindset does nothing to alleviate structural and institutional barriers to people's success. I agree with this, but I also do not think Dweck is advocating ignoring these institutional barriers. Rather, she is advocating a new value system that will help promote lifelong love of learning and personal growth. Obviously, her ideas will not fix every issue in modern society, but I think they are a vital step in helping raise new generations that are excited to learn and to grow their abilities throughout their lives.

An infograph created by Islam Abudaoud. Source: Visual