Our mindsets – they guide us, shape our actions and inform our perspectives. They ‘set’ our way of thinking, being, engaging, and doing. They are powerful and dominating. So, how could we encourage less ‘set’ and more ‘stretch’, in ourselves, and in our learners? Actually, do we need to?
My response to this is, ‘Yes, yes we do!’ This quote from Carol-Anne Tomlinson below impresses just how crucial it is that we consider our mindsets.
“……work in neuroscience and psychology reveals two findings that should be central in educational planning. First, virtually all brains are malleable. When we teach as though students are smart, they become smarter. Second, a related but separate body of research indicates that teachers who believe firmly in the untapped capacity of each learner, and thus set out to demonstrate to students that by working hard and working smart they can achieve impressive goals, get far better results than teachers who believe some students are smart, others are not, and little can be done to change that.”
Carol Anne Tomlinson
This power that we hold in our beliefs is enormous and yet we rarely explicitly reflect on the impact it has on learning and on our learners, either positive or negative. In schools we often talk about holding high expectations, I re-orientated myself to think of these rather as ‘high beliefs’ as I wrote about previously in this blog post.
The knowledge that how we think about, how we talk about, how we consider our learners can itself impact their capacity for successes is a humbling one. The same goes for our colleagues. How we think about, talk about, and consider, their capacities impacts the collective success of any team.
We all may have been in situations where we have overheard comments such as: ‘this group is just not able to do it’ – ‘this student is not smart enough to be able to’ – ‘the top group can do the project work while the bottom group practice skills’.
I believe in being an advocate of learners, of learning, in essence this demands that we are advocates of ‘mind-stretch’ and a growth mindset. It is crucial to truly enable learning fulfilment in our communities.
The work of Carol Dweck on having a ‘Growth Mindset‘ has shaped learning design and engagements in classrooms around the world. It has shaped approaches to parenting, coaching, and collegial relationships. Encouraging a growth mindset has become a core part of our conversation and how we reflect on our learning and growth.
There is an ongoing need to challenge the assumptions and biases we hold and make sure that our conversations shape dialogue around embracing capacity, around harnessing potential, and help shine a spotlight on how our own mindsets have the power to supercharge or hinder our own and others’s learning.
3 Prompts
The following questions/wonderings are designed to actively shape community thinking and help practice more more mind-stretch – ultimately leading to the development of a Growth Mindset. Imagine the context being during a busy group discussion activity or independent project task in a learning space.
Self-Reflective Prompts
Being Mindful: What do I notice and can spotlight about the learning and learners around me at this moment?
Being Active: Who could I invite to take the lead and share a new perspective?
Being Intentional: How can we frame this in a different way? What language would shift our understanding?
Community Prompts
Being Mindful: Let’s pause, look around, and notice. What learning is happening? Take a moment to think about what you notice. What compliments can you share? We like to see through each others’ eyes.
Being Active: We have heard from many different voices so far. I would like to invite three new voices to share ( Names). When you are ready please share your thoughts with us. We are curious to consider different viewpoints.
Being Intentional: Let’s review what we just heard and understood. (Name) let’s hear your understanding so far. We want to learn from each other.
In using these prompts to guide strengthening our mind-stretch capacity we also need to remember to lean into connecting with our emotions. Wrapping up a discussion or lesson with asking ourselves and others ‘What did I experience? What am I feeling?’ can only add to the power of practicing mind-stretch and embedding this into our ways of being, doing and interacting as a community.
Jenny O'Fee 
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