Learners with a Fixed Mindset believe people are born with a fixed amount of ability and talent. When it comes to intelligence, they’ve either got it or they don’t. If they do well in school, it’s because they’re smart. If they don’t do well in school, it’s because they aren’t. By contrast, learners with a Growth Mindset believe that intelligence is like a muscle- it gets stronger the more it’s used. The more we exercise our brains, the more neural networks are created and the “smarter” we become. When students with a Fixed Mindset experience a challenge, setback, or failure, their inner chatter judges them (i.e., I’m just not smart enough) and they may give up. In contrast, a Growth Mindset encourages us to accept challenges, to work hard, to learn from mistakes, to change course if needed, to ask for help from resources, and to keep going despite setbacks and failures.
Everyone has failed at something. Victims rarely learn anything from their failures; worse, they may develop a fixed mindset– a belief that their learning ability is fixed and cannot grow. Creators, on the other hand, learn from their failures and develop a growth mindset. Creators know that failures are just learning opportunities.
Assignment:
- Share one of your failures. Remember that discussions are visible to all, so be sure to write about something you are comfortable sharing with the class.
- Then write about the valuable life lesson you learned from the failure you described above
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