9. Fixed Mindset
• Believe that intelligence is static
• you ‘are the way you are’
• Still desire a positive self image
• but they have a different approach to
achieving that than the Gordon’s
• Motivated to ‘get a good mark’ over
improving one’s abilities
10. Fixed Mindset
• Avoid challenges
• Easily give up when facing obstacles
• Dislike criticism
• Threatened by success of others
13. Growth Mindset
• Believe that intelligence can be developed
• The brain is like a muscle that can be
trained
• abilities reflect time and effort
• motivated to improve abilities over ‘getting
a good mark’
14. Growth Mindset
• Challenges are embraced
• Obstacles do not discourage
• Effort is the path to success
• Criticism and feedback welcome
• Less jealous of success
15. Growth Mindset
• Ultimately, people with a growth mindset
achieve more over the long term because
they continuously improve
18. Mindset
• That’s why the terms are Growth and Fixed
MINDSET
• The way you intrinsically believe the world
works (the human works) determines your
behaviour.
19.
20.
21. Example 1
• 2001 study by Aronson et al
• Earlier research showed that negative
stereotypes impugning black students’
intellectual ability is tied to
underperformance when compared to
white students.
22. Example 2
• Blackwell, Trzesniewski and Dweck, 2007
• Two studies looking at the role of implicit
theories of intelligence in adolescents
• Study 1 - 373 7th graders observed over 2
years
• Study 2 - intervention with 48 7th graders
(control = 43)
23. Example 3
• Heyman, G.D., Martyna, B. and Bhatia, S.,
2002
• 238 college engineering students - looking
at gender differences
24.
25. Double Edged Sword
• It isn’t as simple as ‘teach growth mindset
and students improve’
• It is possible for courses to foster a fixed
mindset by default!
26. • Cutts et al (2010) and Rogerson & Scott
(2010) both show evidence that the nature
of programming courses can actual reduce
growth mindset.
• That is - over time - students (as a body)
trend towards having a fixed mindset when
studying introductory programming.
27. Cutts (2010)
• Particularly interesting
• 3 interventions intending to promote a
growth mindset in 1st year students
• By week 6, showed enough of an impact to
roll out across entire student body
• Needed to be taught but ALSO
REINFORCED
29. • A belief that intelligence can grow, and is
malleable, that performance is the result of
hard work, will behave in a way that results
in greater effort being applied and
ultimately will achieve higher - throughout a
whole academic career and beyond.
30. • A belief that intelligence is ultimately fixed
and that you are good at what you are
good at will lead to behaviours consistent
with that - avoiding obstacles and ultimately
failing to engage in hard work which can
lead to a lower attainment.
31. • It is possible (although perhaps, not easy)
to change one’s mindset.
33. Jesper Juul
• Examined role of failure in games
• Found it NECESSARY to enjoyment
• Players preferred to feel responsible
• Growth is ‘the core attraction of
videogames’
34. Huizinga
• Magic Circle
• What happens in the game stays in the
game.
• By definition, play is ‘outside’ the real
world.
35. Affective impact of GBL
• Play may be a state of mind - that shares
characteristics with a growth mindset.
• On of the benefits of using GBL may be
that is promotes this state of mind.
• This is something I'm planning on exploring
further.
36. References
• Aronson, J., Fried, C.B., & Good, C. ‘Reducing stereotype threat and boosting academic achievement
of African- American students: The role of conceptions of intelligence’, Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 38, 113-125, 2002.
• Blackwell, L.S., Trzesniewski, C.H., Dweck, C.S. Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Intelligence
across an Adolescent Transition: a Longitudinal Study and an Intervention, Child Development, 78(1),
246-263, 2007.
• Heyman, G.D., Martyna, B. and Bhatia, S. Gender and Achievement-related beliefs among engineering
students. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 8:41-52, 2002.
• Cutts, Quintin, Emily Cutts, Stephen Draper, Patrick O’Donnell, and Peter Saffrey. “Manipulating
mindset to positively influence introductory programming performance.” In Proceedings of the 41st
ACM technical symposium on Computer science education, 431–435. SIGCSE ’10. New York, NY,
USA: ACM, 2010.
• Rogerson, C., and E. Scott. “The Fear Factor: How It Affects Students Learning to Program in a Tertiary
Environment.” Journal of Information Technology Education 9 (2010).
• Juul, J. âFear of Failing? The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Video Games. In The Video Game Theory
Reader 2, edited by Mark J P Wolf and Bernard Perron, 2:237-252. New York, USA: Routledge, 2009
• Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: a study of the play element in culture. The Beacon Press, 1950.
Notes de l'éditeur
affective / emotional side of learning\none might ask - "what emotional side?"\n\nMy argument (in general) is that there is something special about play that can help manage a learner's emotions such that they may experience a successful learning experience.\n
My PhD isn’t yet fully fleshed out\nAlso, it’s a big topic\nAffective GBL == young\nOutside concept \n
The concept of mindsets is really interesting and I think there is a parallel the play experience and the non-gamey concept of mindsets.\n
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Easily Frustrated by error messages\nDespite help, still has errors\nSeems almost angry when she struggles\nSeems uncomfortable with problems she doesn’t understand\nWhen paired with an able partner, lets the partner do most of the work\nObject is to COMPLETE the exercise and get the mark, even is she doesn’t learn much in the process\n
Gordon was high attainer at school and expected to excel at uni.\nHis first few tests were poor and he barely scraped a pass.\nHowever, instead of quitting, he dug his heels in and engaged with reading and homework\nHe asked questions and when he got compiler errors, calmly and deliberately engaged with each one\nAccepted help when studying and when paired with more able students, asked about process of getting result rather than letting partner answer for both.\n
Both of these characters are fictional - but they each represent a fundamentally opposing world view.\n
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By definition a challenge is hard - so rather than risking failing and impacting their self-image, they may avoid challenges and stick to what they KNOW they can do well.\nThey IGNORE or GET ANGRY when receiving negative feedback - fixed mindset means any criticism is a CRITICISM OF YOU\nSuccess is seen as a benchmark by which they may not look good\nThey may look for ways of putting other person down “ah, but did you know THIS?”\nJealousy of students who are fast\n
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You know you’ll come out stronger after facing a challenge\nSelf image is not tied to success - failure is an opportunity to learn\nWhere effort is a sign of weakness to fixed, it is fundamental and necessary for success in growth\nCriticism and feedback are useful sources of information\nwhich doesn’t mean they never get offended when criticised\nrather that the feedback isn’t about THEM AS A PERSON - but their current abilities\nSuccess is not a zero-sum game - and is a source of inspiration and information\n
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Important to notice\nThis IS NOT about ability \n
Important to notice\nThis IS NOT about ability \nAchievement is instead tied to a way of believing HOW THINGS WORK\n
Performance is tied to effort rather than intelligence\n
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The term Mindsets was coined by Carole Dweck as a concept that encapsulates over 30 years of research into why some people exel and some don’t.\nThis kind of work has been termed self-image or self-efficacy and there is a body of work to support it.\n
This earlier finding holds across socio-economic groups.\nThey performed an intervention that encouraged the view that intelligence is malleable.\n3 sessions advocating this view in their intervention.\nWere able to create an “Enduring and beneficial change in their own attitudes about intelligence. This change improved their academic performance to a significant degree”\n
Study 1 - a malleable view predicted an upward trajectory in grades over 2 years where a belief that intelligence is fixed predicted a flat trajectory.\nStudy 2 - intervention - taught a growth mindset. Experimental group showed an upward trajectory - control group a downward trajectory.\n
Found that women were more likely to identify with a fixed ability mindset. \nWomen more emphasis on extrinsic factors of success\nThis belief was associated with poorer performance AND a tendency to drop classes when faced with difficulty.\n
These studies (and others) don’t JUST show a link between mindset and attainment.\nThey show you can CHANGE mindsets\nMindset can be thought of as a motivation framework. \nChanging a student’s mindset can lead to a behaviour change and ultimately improvement.\n
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Originally planned as a 24 week intervention\nTaught mindset in 4 15 minute sessions\nReminded with rubric at point of feedback.\n
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I'm not sure how obvious this is to everyone else but it seems very relevant to me because I see parallels in the mindset concept and what it means to 'play'.\n
Ludologist Jesper Juul examined the role of failure in games and found that failure was NECESSARY to enjoyment in games. Player PREFERRED games where they felt responsible for failure. Failure is more than the contrast of winning, "rather failure is central to the experience of depth in a game, to the experience of improving skills".\n\nHe argues that GROWTH is "the core attraction of video games" (a similar idea to what Nicole Lazzaro calls "hard fun" and what McGonigal calls "eustress")\n\n
what I think may be happening is that playing games offers a kind of outside space - a space in which we leave our fixed mindset at the door - and engage in a play-delimited kind of growth mindset. \n\nPeople think that they are 'just playing' and therefore expect to improve their skills, expect to get better with effort, and thus are more willing to engage in tackling difficult challenges.\n\n\n
From this, one of the main benefits of using games as an educational tool may be simply that play can temporarily convert someone who is normally fixed into having a growth mindset for the duration of the play experience.\n\n