Growth Mindset: Improving Teaching and Learning

From the ancient world through the Renaissance, and even today – artistic and intellectual ability is often viewed as an intuitive gift rather than the result of effort. To what end? Mindsets powerfully impact learning behaviour. Learners with a growth mindset work harder, embrace challenge, persist for longer and learn from criticism, whereas the fixed mindset develops undesirable learning dispositions and character traits, ultimately under-achieving. Teacher mindsets result in teacher expectations impacting student achievement. It is important that teachers understand the impact their beliefs, words and actions have on cultivating the learning disposition of students.

Growth mindset impacts teacher expectations because teachers teach from the perspective of their mindset. A teacher cannot cultivate a growth mindset among students if they believe that certain students have fixed learning traits. Take music for example. The majority of music teachers subscribe to a theory that superior achievement in music is due to genetic endowment. If a teacher believes that some people are more talented than others, then how do they teach and interact with the others? When teachers have high expectations of a student, they invest more attention in them, relate more positively, wait longer for a student to answer a question, and provide extra mentoring and learning opportunities. Hence, achievement becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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