Archives for November 2021

This is part of a series called, Ask a Psychologist at Education Week
July 08, 2020 – Jamie Carroll and David Yeager

Question: During distance learning, I think I’ve been teaching my students to use a growth mindset. But how do I know when it’s working—and when it’s not?

In the classroom, teachers can usually tell when a student is feeling discouraged. Maybe they put their head down. Maybe they throw their hands up in defeat. Or start copying answers. If you’ve been establishing a growth-mindset culture, you can emphasize everyone’s potential to learn, even when the work is hard.

But it’s harder to see the early-warning signs of disengagement—and sustain a culture of learning—in remote or blended learning contexts.

We asked Dana Stiles, an OnRamps statistics teacher at Bowie High School in Austin, Texas, about how she handled this challenge during COVID-19.

First, the good news: Dana thinks that distance learning might have improved some students’ growth-mindset behaviors, such as help-seeking, because it removes a lot of the social comparisons that teens are especially apt to make. In a regular classroom, some students are afraid to ask for help because they don’t want to look dumb in front of their peers or they think they are bothering you.

But distance made it harder for her to know who needed more support. “In the classroom, I was able to take their temperature [metaphorically] by standing at the door as they walked in—knowing where their head is at and any personal battles they’re facing and challenges they’re dealing with,” she explained. But during COVID-19, she had to reach out to students proactively to see how they were doing.

She started by sending personal, physical letters in the mail to students she knew had challenging home lives or other factors that might get in the way of learning. She used Calendly to give students the opportunity to sign up for one-on-one video meetings. Using the Remind app, she sent personal messages to students who were not engaging in material with specific questions they had to respond to.

In the video meetings, she could keep the discussion personal and brief, covering just two questions: How are you doing and feeling? And how can I support you as you meet the ambitious learning goals in this class? These two questions let students know that you care about them as people and that your priority is their learning—not evaluating or judging them.

Students can then feel free to challenge themselves and reach out for help when they’re stuck. 

Contacting students individually is time-consuming and challenging, but Dana says it’s well worth the effort you put in: “The kids actually thank you for it because you’re personalizing what they need to do based on their results and their reflections.”

This is part of a series called, Ask a Psychologist at Education Week
July 1, 2020 – Jamie Carroll and David Yeager

How can I stop students from thinking that making a mistake means they’re stupid?

The last thing students need right now is to think they have failed. When kids make an error in class, they can see it as a signal that they’re not smart enough and will never be successful. Add the stress of distance learning and concerns about racial justice, and a simple mistake might cause a student to disengage from school.

Research on growth mindset tells us that students who understand that mistakes are a part of the learning process are more likely to persevere in the face of failure. But if educators have a failure mindset—the belief that failure hurts learning rather than helps by providing a growth opportunity—then students may think making mistakes means they can’t do the work. What can teachers do to convey that mistakes are not a problem but fuel for growth?

We asked Brad Branham, a veteran high school math teacher in Columbus, Ind., and a part of the National Mindset Innovation Network.

“The best way to connect with my students is for them to see my face every day,” Brad explains. On the first day of distance learning, he started a YouTube channel and posted videos of himself making mistakes. “I [wanted] to show them that I’m going to put myself out there and that making mistakes is a normal part of learning.”

But wait, aren’t teachers supposed to show students how to get the right answer? Not in Brad’s class. His students are used to getting the answer keys and working backward to figure out the process, not just the answer. This strategy puts students in charge of reflecting on their own understanding of the material to help them become independent learners, which is essential in distance learning.

So he created a video series called “Overconfident Mathematicians” featuring his children, a stuffed bear from a local university, and the animated character Pikachu saying they’re too smart to mess up. But they do. Imagine a “Where’s Waldo” for mistakes: The students know there’s a mistake in there, but they have to find it on their own.

Making mistakes can make you feel vulnerable in front of your students, which is scary. But it can help students realize that mistakes are not a big deal; they’re inevitable if you’re taking risks and challenging yourself to grow. By using mistakes as an instructional tool, you convey to students that mistakes help them learn. This tool can also build students’ confidence in their own skills. When they find a mistake, they realize that they know more than those overconfident mathematicians..

To learn more, you can watch our interviews with Brad and other educators from the National Mindset Innovation Network here. And if you have other great mindset practices to share, please tweet us at @NIMN_UT with #MindsetTeaching.

This is part of a series called, Ask a Psychologist at Education Week
June 24, 2020 – Jamie Carroll and David Yeager

How can I support a growth mindset for underrepresented minority students when the system doesn’t treat them like they can all learn?

If you ask most educators, “Do you think every student can learn?,” the answer is a resounding “YES.” But Black and Latinx students don’t always know this. The American education system has often told students of color, directly or indirectly, that they shouldn’t be in the same school as white students, in the same classroom with white students, and in the same college with white students. This de facto segregation has promoted racial and ethnic stereotypes that students of color have lower potential. Students might wonder how much their teachers believe these stereotypes, even in part.

An authentic growth-mindset culture can help. Most teachers know that a growth mindset is the belief that intelligence is not fixed. But this complex idea has sometimes been reduced to a slogan (“just try harder!”) or a single lecture. That is not what we are talking about. Instead, we are talking about growth-mindset cultures, which include consistent words, deeds, and values that directly and unequivocally convey the message that all students can grow their knowledge and skills.

The psychologist Claude Steele argued that if teachers think that intelligence can be developed and grown, then students do not need to be as concerned about confirming the stereotype that members of their group have lower levels of intelligence. The growth-mindset culture robs stereotypes of their power, at least in that classroom. Students can then feel safer to take intellectual risks (asking for help, seeking harder content), and learn more.

Ina recent SXSW EDU keynote, psychologist Mary Murphy showed that Black and Latinx students in courses taught by professors with a fixed mindset (the belief that intelligence cannot change) were less engaged, performed worse, and were less interested in pursuing STEM careers than white or Asian students. But when faculty had a growth mindset, these inequities were narrowed by half or more.

This is important in part because it means that white teachers can create equitable, anti-racist classrooms when they commit to authentic growth-mindset cultures. One vivid example comes from Uri Treisman, a mathematician at the University of Texas at Austin who is a MacArthur Fellow and was recently featured in the book The Years That Matter Most by Paul Tough. Triesman teaches a legendary calculus class that leads many students of color to pursue STEM majors.

From day one, Treisman contradicts the stereotype that only some students will have a hard time in calculus. He says things like, “Everybody in this class will struggle,” and “No matter who you are, questions are going to be flying at you that you can’t answer. If you don’t understand that [struggle is a pathway to learning], you’ll think it means, ‘Oh [no], I don’t belong here.” He challenges all of his students through intensely rigorous material but does not ignore differences in their background, confidence, and skills. He gets to know each student’s struggles and fears, then works with them, at all hours, to help them overcome these obstacles. Students who get answers wrong on tests have the chance to earn back points and still end up at the top of the class. And his teaching assistants are often former students who can serve as role models to show that, yes, you can do this.

As a teacher, you can’t just tell your students of color to “have a growth mindset” and ignore the messages they are getting from an unequal world. But you can build your own classroom cultures so that equity is a fact, not an aspiration. You can convey that all students are capable of excellence—and then do anything and everything to help get them there.

This is part of a series called, Ask a Psychologist at Education Week
September 30, 2020 – David Yeager

This piece was originally published at characterlab.org in December 2019, but it’s still relevant today.

Question: What can I do to help students make the transition into high school?

Starting high school is hard. One 9th grader recently described seeing her old middle school friends walk by her in the hallway “without a hi or a smile.”

“I felt invisible,” she told me. To kids, minor incidents like this can seem like a sign of more bad things to come. As another teen said to me: “It makes me feel like I won’t have any friends at my high school reunion.”

As a scientist, I want to help kids stay optimistic during tough transitions in life. We’ve learned that if kids think that you can’t change the kind of person you are—a “bully” or a “victim,” a “good” person or a “bad” one—then they believe small difficulties predict the rest of their life.

Unfortunately, helping teens deal with stress isn’t as easy as telling them things will get better. What does work is giving teens reasons to hope that people’s underlying character can truly be transformed for the better. We call this a “growth mindset” about personality, and it boils down to a simple message: People can change.

In a series of experiments, we taught teens that labels like “winner” or “loser” are false and don’t define you. As a result, the students were less stressed if they got excluded, were better able to pay attention in school and got better grades, and were less likely to be depressed at the end of the year. (If you have an 8th or 9th grader, they can try out this online activity, which is available for beta testing.)

Don’t try to comfort stressed-out kids with platitudes (“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine”) or labeling kids in ways that imply they will never change (such as, “They’re just bullies” or “You’re a good person, and they aren’t”).

Do help kids see that even though it might take a long time, people can change for the better. And rather than telling them what to think, ask them to explain to you (or their friends) why this conception of personality could be true. Honoring their perspectives makes them more likely to hold on to the growth-mindset message.

This is part of a series called, Ask a Psychologist at Education Week
July 22, 2020 – Jamie Carroll and David Yeager

Question: Why do my students think I am punishing them when I assign challenging homework?

We know that students with a growth mindset—they believe they can improve their academic abilities with time and effort—persist longer and ultimately can earn better grades than those who believe that intelligence is fixed and they can’t do much to change it.

But even students with growth mindsets won’t succeed if their classroom isn’t set up so they can learn and grow. Recent research shows that the mindset cultures teachers create in their classrooms directly affect students’ motivation, learning, and performance.

Here are three suggestions from teachers on how they put the research into practice during distance learning:

Use a buddy system. Mario, a math teacher, creates a community of learners in his class to make students feel more connected and accountable to each other. If a student misses an online learning session, their class buddies check in and encourage them to come back.

Set up breakout rooms. Sandra set aside time for students to connect with each other in online breakout rooms, so they could share learning strategies and develop their understanding together. Some students are more likely to ask questions from a peer than a teacher.

Make mistakes common. Others use the “My Favorite Mistake” practice: When giving back assignments or tests, they showcase and praise common mistakes that show students’ thinking. Then, they help students to understand and solve the problem correctly.

Just as important: Teachers should tell students why they engage in those practices and communicate how difficult concepts, homework, and critical feedback will help them learn and grow. They can say things like, “I assign these practice problems so you can practice what you have learned, identify parts you don’t yet fully understand, and then try new strategies to understand those parts.”

Otherwise, students may think, “Maybe my teacher assigned that homework because she doesn’t think we are smart” or “Homework is just busy work” and feel unengaged. Some students who draw these conclusions—such as Black or Hispanic students who already face negative stereotypes about their academic abilities—may feel like teachers are judging their capacity to learn. For these students, these conclusions are even more important: Growth-mindset teachers significantly increase equity in academic outcomes.

Students around the country are suffering from significant inequalities and struggling to stay engaged in distance learning. By creating growth-mindset cultures, teachers can support and sustain the motivation and performance of students from all backgrounds.