Growth Mindset

I would first like to define the growth mindset in my own words. From my understanding, a growth mindset is to push students' minds to strive for improvement within their knowledge through work that should challenge them to think outside the box, rather than giving students easy assignments that provide a false sense of achievement. 

( My interpretation of growth mindset is a way to exercise your brain to work at its highest potential- image provided by One Mind) 

This definition is what I gathered through watching these two videos, so it may not be 100% accurate to what Carol Dweck promotes, but I think it is pretty close. With that said, I would say I understand the perspective she is coming from but personally find many flaws in this approach. But, most of these flaws can be easily addressed!

 Firstly, like one of the counterargument articles points out, if we are constantly challenging our students, how do we measure their grade level performance and actual achievement. For example, if we constantly give students challenging work but then give them a generalized test that is "easy" for them to complete, would that not be conflicting for students? If we alternate between rigorous work and easy work, I feel this would be more detrimental to students rather then beneficial. Furthermore, how do we promote this mindset without addressing the parents' point of view? I feel the reason students nowadays are so stressed is partially by pressure from families that WANT to see the A's and the achievements. So in what ways can we improve parents' understanding of the growth mindset concept? 

On the positive side, I understand what Dweck is trying to say. Her example about "everyone wanting the next A" resonates a lot with college students because we are constantly being pressured to overachieve and strive for these tangible achievements, like grades and promotions. In doing so, we are very single-minded, not considering thinking outside the box methods. I think the growth mindset challenges "focus on feedback" and "learn from others" are the two best ways for the growth mindset to be implemented in classrooms. These do not take away from the standardized component of learning but still provide students with the opportunity to explore different perspectives. Overall, I think this is a great approach but there are different aspects of the theory that need to be refined for it to better work in modern society. As a psychology major, this topic interests me and I hope it is something I can explore in the future!