I have never heard of the growth mindset or Carol Dweck before. After watching her videos and reading some more I think that this is a good surface level concept. Personally, I don't think I fall on either side of the growth or fixed mindset spectrum, I think it often changes. The first class I ever took at OU was a social deviance class, the first paper I wrote at OU I got a D on. To say I was devastated is an understatement, I thought I was at least a decent writer. I was clearly not prepared like I thought I was so I had no choice but to practice and do research on how to be a better writer. It did not stop here for me, the following semester I had the toughest professor I had ever had. She was brilliant but had a no tolerance attitude and no problem critiquing everything you wrote, said, or did. I was terrified when I left her class that first day. But, guess what? I got a 97% on my first paper with her. Through the class I had with her I learned so much about my own learning style and what works for me and what doesn't. But I wouldn't have done this on my own just to learn, I had a reason to learn and better myself which is why I would put myself in the middle of the growth and fixed mindset spectrum.
The 'not yet' idea was very intriguing to me, it is something I wish more people would adopt in their lives. It is an idea I am definitely going to take into my personal life. Being a parent, I can see the difference in my child's behavior when he "failed" and when he just "didn't get it right the first time," your verbiage matters! I agree with many of the things Dweck said but it also reminded me a lot of the saying "pull yourself up by your bootstraps." My favorite professor I've ever had once told me, "you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don't have any boots to begin with." This idea can be applied to the growth mindset as well I believe. Being a social work major the first thing I thought of when I was listening to Dweck was "person in environment." The environment of a person largely impacts them and how they make decisions, perform, and go on with their daily lives. We can say all it takes is changing a child's mindset to make them perform better in school but doing do so neglects many factors that go into a child being successful in school. Many kids suffer from learning disabilities, depending on the child and the learning challenges a change in mindset may not do the trick. Some children have experienced trauma and/or have difficult home lives, the last thing on their mind is school often times. This is the reality of many children and while I do agree with Dweck on many things, there isn't one thing that works for everyone. I think the growth mindset is a great place to start in the classroom especially, but as we know there are many things that need to be done in terms of education that cannot be solved by only a change of mindset.
I am very interested in this topic and I am looking forward to reading and doing extra credit assignments involving the growth mindset.
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