The College Classroom (Wi14) Week 5: Fixed and growth mindsets and assessment that supports learning

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collegeclassroom.ucsd.edu

#tccucsd

on target by hans_s on flickr CC-BY-ND

Week 5: Fixed vs. growth mindset and
assessments that support learning
The College Classroom
February 4 and 6, 2014

Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed
under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Vocabulary Check: Mindsets [1]
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Entity, Performance-oriented,

Mastery-oriented, Incremental,

helpless, Fixed

Malleable, Growth

The helpless [children]
believe that intelligence is
a fixed trait: you have
only a certain amount,
and that’s that.

The mastery-oriented
children think intelligence
is malleable and can be
developed through
education and hard work.


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Clicker question: In your experience, which of these
best describes people’s fixed and growth mindsets?
4

(X and Y are activities/concepts like “playing the
guitar” or “speaking a foreign language”)
A) Some people have a fixed mindset about X and
enjoy doing it
B) Some people have a growth mindset about X and
hate doing it
C) Some people have a fixed mindset about everything
D) Some people have fixed mindset about X and a
growth mindset about Y

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Clicker question: How many of these
are signs of a fixed mindset?
5

[challenges] “playing it safe” / low-risk participation
[obstacles] will not give up when challenged
[effort] practices enough to meet required standard
[feedback] does not seek feedback
[success] studies/analyzes success of others
A) 1 of these


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B) 2

C) 3

D) 4

E) all 5

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Graphic by Nigel Holmes [2]

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Agency “Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make
choices. It is normally contrasted to natural forces, which are
causes involving only unthinking deterministic processes.”
Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(philosophy)
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more
expert-like

deliberate
practice

growth mindset?

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Clicker question: growth mindset and
deliberate practice
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In your opinion, which of these is true?
A) [necessary] you need a growth mindset to engage in
deliberate practice
B) [sufficient] if you have a growth mindset, then you’ll
engage in deliberate practice
C) [necessary and sufficient] you engage in deliberate
practice if, and only if, you have a growth mindset
D) [neither] no relationship between mindset and
deliberate practice

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If a growth mindset is necessary for us to engage in
deliberate practice to become more expert-like in our
disciplines…
…what about your students? What is their mindset
towards your class? Most likely a mix of fixed and
growth.

How do you help your students
become more expert-like?

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Feedback and Practice that Enhance
Learning (How Learning Works [3])
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When Practice Does Not Make Perfect…
Students’ writing in public policy course

They Just Do Not Listen!
Students’ presentations in medical anthropology course

The instructors don’t recognize
their own expertize, fail to
give useful practice and
feedback.
“expert blindness”
“curse of knowledge”

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Learning (How Learning Works[3])
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Goal-directed practice coupled with targeted feedback
are critical to learning.

Excellent Shot by Varsity Life on flickr CC


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Music by Piulet on flickr CC

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[G]oals can direct the nature of focused practice, provide
the basis for evaluating observed performance, and shape
the targeted feedback that guides students’ future efforts.
[p. 127]
[T]argeted feedback gives students prioritized information
about how their performance does or does not meet the
criteria so they can understand how to improve their future
performance.
[p. 141]
collegeclassroom.ucsd.edu #tccucsd

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




practice is goal-directed
productive practice
timely feedback
feedback at appropriate level


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Aside: exploring these characteristics
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 analogy
Students come to the classroom with preconceptions
about how the world works…Teachers must draw out
and work with the preexisting understandings that their
students bring with them.
(How People Learn [4])
 contrasting cases
Teachers must teach some subject matter in depth,
providing many examples in which the same concept is
at work and providing a firm foundation of factual
knowledge
(How People Learn [4])

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Scenarios
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In a moment but not yet, find 2 or 3 others
with the same colored sheet as you. Together,
think of examples/scenarios of both cases, in
sports/hobbies and in teaching and learning.

feedback at feedback not at
appropriate level appropriate level
productive practice unproductive practice
practice is goal-directed practice not goal-directed
timely feedback untimely feedback


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teaching and learning

sport/hobby

Feedback at Appropriate Level

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Feedback not at Appropriate Level


sport/hobby

Productive Practice

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Unproductive Practice


sport/hobby

Practice Goal-directed

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Practice not Goal-directed


sport/hobby

Timely Feedback

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Untimely Feedback

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What kind of assessment gives
timely feedback at an
appropriate level to support
goal-directed and
productive practice?


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Clicker question
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Does this rubric foster a
A) fixed mindset (“performance-oriented”)
B) growth mindset (“mastery-oriented”)
C) neither
D) both


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Teaching Statement Rubric
Excellent

Needs
Work

Goals for student learning

Enactment of goals (teaching method)

Assessment of goals (measuring student learning)
Creating an inclusive learning environment
Structure, rhetoric and language
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Weak

Rubric = Instructional Scaffolding
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 support growth mindsets
 path to improvement
 goal-directed
[G]oals can direct the nature of focused practice,
provide the basis for evaluating observed performance,
and shape the targeted feedback that guides students’
future efforts.
 targeted feedback
[T]argeted feedback gives students prioritized
information about how their performance does or does
not meet the criteria so they can understand how to
improve their future performance.

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Instructional Scaffolding
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 Needs to be given BEFORE and BUILT INTO
assignment





Outlines what it takes to improve
Supports Zone of Proximal Development [5]
(“reasonable yet challenging goal” [3])
James Paul Gee [6] “What video games
have to teach us about learning and
literacy”
angrybirds.com


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Take Away
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 Plan your course (learning outcomes, activities and
assessments)
What should
students
learn?

What are
students
learning?

What instructional
approaches
help students
learn?

Carl Wieman
Science Education Initiative
cwsei.ubc.ca


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Take Away
34

 Plan your course (learning outcomes, activities and
assessments)
 Motivation and Expertise


growth mindset is necessary for deliberate practice,
development of expertise

 How YOU behave in the classroom



rewarding errors, etc.
take care to support and be sensitive to minority
experiences


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Mindset for your students
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You
must foster
a growth mindset
in your students.


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Mindset for your students and you
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You
must foster
a growth mindset
in your students.
You must have a growth
mindset about your students’
ability to learn.

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References
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1.

Dweck, C.S. (2007). The Secret to Raising Smart Kids. Scientific American,
18, 6, 36-43.

2.

Nigel Holmes http://nigelholmes.com/home.htm

3.

Ambrose, S.A., Bridges, M.W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M.C., & Norman, M.K.
(2010). How Learning Works. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass.

4.

National Research Council (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind,
Experience, and School: Expanded Edition. J.D. Bransford, A.L Brown & R.R.
Cocking (Eds.),Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

5.

Wertsch, J.V. (1984). The zone of proximal development: Some conceptual
issues. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 1984, 23,
7–18.

6.

Gee, J.P. (2005). Learning by Design: good video games as learning
machines. E-Learning 2, 1, 5-16.


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Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Time: 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
Place: CSB 003
Speaker: Erik Andersen

Title: Designing Engaging Learning Experiences
A key challenge in education is designing course content that keeps students engaged.
To do this, we need ways to design learning experiences so that they can be tailored to
the needs of each student and optimized with user data. In this talk, I will discuss lessons
learned from the development of Refraction, a free online video game for learning
fractions that has attracted one million players. I will show how we can automatically
generate progressions of practice problems for teaching a procedural skill through
analysis of that procedure.
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