It's Not So Simple as Adopting a Growth Mindset
I am of two minds about this idea of a "Growth Mindset".
On one hand, I have experienced the pitfalls of having a fixed mindset. There's a fairly large community online of people my age who were high-achieving children, reading way above their grade level, aceing tests with little to no studying, you get the idea. I relate to them. We were praised for being so smart, and for our achievements. But freshman year, I struggled a lot. I didn't have study skills, because I had never had to study before. I felt discouraged when things didn't come to me easily. I wasn't used to having to work for my grades, and it was a huge blow to my esteem that this quality of "smart" which I held as so important to my identity didn't seem to apply now that I was competing with more than just those in my small, rural hometown. A growth mindset would have helped me embrace these harder classes that actually challenged me rather than just labeling myself as not good enough.
But it's more complicated than that. Because even if I did have a growth mindset, I still wouldn't have entered college with adequate study skills. If my parents and teachers had tried to praise my effort rather than just my intelligence, I don't know if I would have worked any harder in high school. The school just didn't have the resources to challenge me, so why work harder if it wouldn't get me any better results?
One problem with Dweck's work is that she focuses on struggling groups, and challenging groups. How does one promote a growth mindset in groups that, for whatever reason, aren't struggling, and aren't being challenged? Do you encourage them to make work for themselves to challenge themselves? Of course, the root problem in this scenario is not the mindset of the individuals, but rather a failure of the system. Dweck disregards things like standardized tests or grades. The focus is not on achieving, but on learning. Perhaps she believes we should do away with standardized tests completely. But then what do we use to determine whether someone had learned a sufficient amount? She assumes that those with a growth mindset will just learn what they need to. Her data seems to support that; She saw struggling, disadvantaged kids suddenly overtake their successful, more advantaged peers. But without some, semi-objective measure of proficiency, it can't be guaranteed.
The other problem with Dweck's theory is that it assumes that whatever is being taught is worth learning, so if we can teach people to learn well and to want to learn, it is an objectively good thing. However not all curriculums are created equally, and we see things like non-eurocentric histories being erased.
I do believe that Dweck's ideas have merit. They can help promote enthusiastic learning. They can, empirically, improve achievement. They can improve self-esteem. I do believe that they should be utilized. But it is important to be conscious of the limitations of the Growth Mindset. It can solve certain problems, but for those that it cannot solve, they should be approached and dealt with independently.
SO TRUE, Alex! The pitfalls you have pointed out here are true not just on the individual level (once you realize you can reach your goals through your own efforts, how will you decide what goals to work on?), but also on the level of the school itself in terms of the curriculum, the degrees, etc. One of the reasons I build lots of choice into this class is because people really do have different goals: my goal is for everybody in this class to experience growth, yes, but whether that is growth in reading, in writing, in creativity, in technology... well, that's up to you! I really like teaching online because it's possible to build that flexibility into the class, and growth (real growth) demands some flexibility in the curriculum. Unlike so much of traditional schooling where students are just told what to do and everybody is tested on the same thing, using the same measuring stick. With the freedom of being online we can just go wild, and focus on results that are really important to us, deciding what measures and feedback we need to just keep on learning, more and more and more. I am a learning omnivore, so for me it's fun having lots of choice in this class because it makes every semester new and different. :-)
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