What is Growth Mindset?

 

An example of growth mindset in the cat world.

Image from Growth Mindset & Feedback Cats.

    Personally, I have never heard of Carol Dweck and her growth mindset speeches before; however, I have heard of a growth mindset. School is largely built upon grades and achieving an A or waiting for the next test score to come back to see what you got. I have always thought of school this way as well. I thought that an A meant I was smart and anything less was unacceptable. Over time I realized that this is untrue. An A does not always measure how smart you are. Sometimes, it is your ability to accept what you have done, be positive about the outcome, and grow from that experience. From my experiences as a student at OU, I have realized that growth mindset is hard to achieve in a traditional grading environment. A lot of my professors use traditional grading, but some of them decide to alter the grading a little bit to better help the growth mindset. I think that growth mindset can be beneficial for future learning; however, it is hard to implement this type of learning in middle or high school settings. Overall, I am excited to learn about growth mindset more in the future.