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Growth mindset

Preparing for #initiate19, which takes place on June 7th at the Zürich Tram-Museum, I stumbled over this tweet by Daniela Lozza about the transformation from teacher to coach. I was curious to learn more about this as it is a topic I have looked into myself, for example here and here. As some point in the chat, Daniela mentioned this in a tweet:

How about teaching less content and being more patient? We can create learning experiences in which students are producers, not just consumers, of knowledge. And we can facilitate meaning making without delivering the answers.
These ideas by Daniela made it particularly interesting, I found. And reflecting on what Daniela wrote, I almost instantly thought about Hal Gregersen's work on asking questions. And I was so happy, as Hal Gregersen mentioned growth mindset in this tweet. Why did it make me happy? Because I find that Carol Dweck's book Mindset is one of the better books I have read.

One of the several aspects about Growth Mindset, which I like, is what we can say and questions we can ask to help children and others to develop growth mindset - a topic which Carol Dweck touches on around page 176. Here are five examples:

  1. I like the way you tried different ways of finding solutions to that problem.
  2. I admire how you concentrated as you did the work you did.
  3. I was impressed about the time and energy you invested to better understand this issue. Your improvement shows it.
  4. I found you showed great passion as you worked on improving that skill. How do you feel about how you worked?
  5. Everybody learns in a different way. Let's keep trying to find out what learning strategies work for you.

Reading Maria Popova's great posting about Growth Mindset, which Hal Gregersen sent a link to in his tweet, I read that at the heart of what makes the growth mindset so winsome is, Dweck found, that it creates a passion for learning rather than a hunger for approval. In a growth mindset, the internal monologue is not one of judgment but one of voracious appetite for learning, constantly seeking out the kind of input that you can metabolize into learning and constructive action.

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