Spencer's Thinkpad

A Dozen Tools to Foster Growth Mindset and Prevent Learned Helplessness - Page 2

4. Allow Make-Up Tests and Assignments

Supporting the "not yet" perseverance philosophy, we can allow students to take make-up tests and to re-do and improve assignments. If a student does not pass a test, or simply wishes to improve her/his grade, we can allow the student to study what they have missed and retake the test. Similarly, after giving feedback on a written assignments or projects, we can allow our students make-up opportunities.

5. Praise Effort, Not IQ

How we praise students has a dramatic impact on their mindset. Praising effort promotes a growth mindset; praising IQ promotes a fixed mindset. This finding has been established through carefully controlled research. After solving problems, students were praised in one of two ways. They were told either that they were smart or that they had worked hard. In a control condition they were simply told they had done well with no attribution to intelligence or effort. Students were then assessed on having a fixed or growth mindset. The findings were almost identical in two separate studies. Students who were praised for being smart adopted a fixed mindset far more than those who were praised for their effort.²³ See Graph: Praising Intelligence vs. Effort Impact on Fixed vs. Growth Mindset.

Further evidence that how we praise has a dramatic impact on student effort and performance comes from the same study. Students who were praised for effort enhanced their performance; those who were praised for intelligence diminished their performance. This finding held across four replications.²⁴

6. Teach Perseverance

We can foster a growth mindset by sharing with students the power of perseverance. This can be done through literature and inspiring examples.

Literature. Have students read and reflect on stories that have as a moral the virtue of perseverance. Among the possibilities:

The little Engine That Could
The Rabbit and the Hare

Inspiring Examples. Another way to promote perseverance is by examples of famous individuals who have succeeded because of their perseverance in the face of setbacks. For examples,

• Colonel Sanders was rejected 1,009 times before a restaurant accepted his recipe.
• Thomas Edison had 9,000 experiments that did not succeed before creating a successful light bulb.
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team sophomore year. He came back to become the greatest basketball player ever.
• Steve Jobs at 30 years old was fired from Apple Computers, the company he founded. He came back to revolutionize the music industry, the phone industry, and personal computing.
• Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper. The reason: he "lacked imagination" and "had no original ideas." His first animation studio went bankrupt.
• Oprah Winfrey was demoted from her job as a news anchor. The reason: "she wasn't fit for television." She went on to host the highest ranked TV show of it's kind, became a media billionaire and renowned philanthropist.
• Charles Schultz's drawings were rejected by his high school yearbook. His Peanuts cartoons and product revenues generated over 1 billion a year. His high school now has a statue of snoopy in the main office.
• Steven Spielberg was rejected both times he applied to attend film school at the University of Southern California.
• Albert Einstein was evaluated by a teacher as someone who "would never amount to much."
• The Beatles were rejected by Decca recording studios. The reasons: "We don't like their sound" and "They have no future in show business."
• Milton Hershey's first two businesses went bankrupt. He went on to found the Hershey Chocolate Company, a worldwide success. Hershey created a foundation, the Milton Hershey School for at-risk children.
• J. K. Rowling persisted after a dozen publishers rejected her first Harry Potter manuscript. She is now a billionaire.

7. Teach Growth Mindset Language and Self-Talk

Language. We can promote a growth mindset by the language we use and don't use in our classrooms. For example, we can tell students that our class is a "failure free" classroom. That is we will never use the word "failure." We never have failures, we only have setbacks.

Rather than saying "This is a problem," we teach students to say, "This is a challenge." We approach problems with reluctance and with the belief they may not be solved, but we approach challenges more eagerly, and with anticipation of success.

Rather than saying, "This problem is hard." Teach students to say, "This problem is growing my brain."

Another language alteration that promotes an optimistic growth mindset is to eliminate the word "try." Rather than saying, "I will try to do my homework tonight." Teach students to leave out the word "try" and instead say, "I will do my homework tonight."

When possible catch students and have students catch each other to align their language with a growth mindset.

Self-Talk. We can share with students the power of self-talk. What we say to ourselves determines our behavior. Ask students what a student is likely to do if, after a learning setback, the student says to himself or herself:

1. I am just not smart enough.
vs.
2. I need to try harder.

Point out that one self-statement leads the student to give up and the other leads the student to persist. Point out further than both statements support self-fulfilling prophecies. After sharing with students the importance of effort oriented self-talk, share with students that in our class we want to release the power of self-talk. We can provide students with self-talk statements, post them, and, have students practice growth mindset self-talk statements like those below.

"The harder I try the more I grow my brain."
"I learn from my mistakes."
"My effort makes a difference."
"If I didn't make mistakes, I would not be learning."
"If it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you."
"Persistence grows my brain."
"My brain is like a muscle. I am working it out."
"I never fail. I have temporary setbacks."
"My brain is making new connections!"
"Smarts weigh an ounce. Effort weighs a pound."

8. Display Growth Mindset Posters

We can post or have students create growth mindset posters. A search on the web under the topic "Growth Mindset Posters" produces literally hundreds of possibilities. The posters can be the form of a quote. We can have the students search for quotes and then illustrate them to create their team poster. Some possibilities:

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right. ”
—Henry Ford

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. ”
—Albert Einstein

“I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. ”
—Michael Jordan

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”
—Margaret Thatcher

“Choose to be optimistic, it feels better.”
—Dalai Lama XIV

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. ”
—Anne Frank

“For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.”
—Winston Churchill

“I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”
—Jimmy Dean

“When you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.”
—Theodore Roosevelt

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
—Helen Keller

“One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”
—Lucille Ball

“They can because they think they can.”
—Virgil

“Persistence melts resistance.”
—Spencer Kagan

9. Teach Students to Dispute Pessimism

Martin Seligman and his associates have identified the three components of pessimistic beliefs that lead to helplessness.²⁵ When a setback occurs the pessimist believes it will be permanent, universal (effect everything) and internal (due to their own inadequacy). In contrast the optimist believes the setback is temporary, specific, and external. Contrast the beliefs of a pessimist and an optimist following a poor test performance:

Pessimist: "I will never be good at test taking. It will ruin my whole life. And it is because I am dumb."
Optimist: "I scored low on this test, but I won't let it happen again. This one test won't ruin my course grade. I think the test didn't really cover the assigned content."

We can teach students about the power of having an optimistic explanatory style and have them practice disputing their own pessimistic self-talk. Useful in this process is the form: Learned Optimism: 3 Ways to Dispute a Pessimistic Belief.

10. Force Performance

Seligman and Maier first demonstrated the power of forced performance in their experiments with dogs. What they did was repeatedly drag the dogs to the safe area until the dogs began responding on their own. Once the helpless dogs learned their actions could avoid the shock, they were no longer helpless; they spontaneously moved to the safe area as soon as they heard the warning sound.²⁶ The procedure has cured helplessness in rats as well as dogs.²⁷

Interestingly, it was only with great initial effort that forced performance worked:

After from 25 to 200 draggings, all dogs began to respond on their own….The recovery from helplessness was complete and lasting…. The behavior during leash pulling was noteworthy. At the beginning of the procedure, we had to exert a good deal of force to pull the dog across the center of the shuttle box. Usually the whole dead weight of the dog had to be dragged; in some cases the dog resisted. Less and less force was needed as training progressed. Typically, we reached a stage in which a slight nudge of the leash would drive the dog into action. Finally, each dog initiated its own response, and thereafter never failed to escape.²⁸

This direct approach to overcoming helplessness, forced performance, is employed in various ways by very strong teachers. One of the simplest approaches is to call for all students to respond via choral response.

Choral Response, like many Kagan Structures, causes all students to perform. The teacher stops mid-sentence and has students in unison complete the sentence. If not all students respond, the teacher says, "I didn't hear everyone," and then repeats the first part of the sentence, stopping for the students to fill in the missing word or phrase. The process is repeated until all students respond.

Choral Response is a favorite strategy of Marva Collins who is an expert at moving students from helplessness to mastery. Marva used the technique both with individual students and with the class as a whole. While teaching the meaning of Emerson's essay on Self-Reliance, Marva used Choral Response to get the whole class responding:²⁹

"Now," she said, "self-reliance means to believe in yourself. What does self-reliance mean? To be ______________."
"To believe in yourself," echoed a few faint voices.
"Everybody, in big outdoors voices, what does it mean?"
"To believe in yourself," the children said, more boldly.

An example of her using Forced Performance with an individual student occurred during the same lesson:

"Freddie, tell me what you learned from Mr. Emerson's essay."
Freddie looked attentively at Marva but didn't answer.
"You have a right to your opinion. You say what you think," Marva told him. "Don't care what anyone else thinks. What's inside of you is important."
"I learned about self-reliance," Freddie whispered.
"Speak in a big voice, peach. What does self-reliance mean? Believing in ———."
"Believing in yourself?"
"Of course it does, but say it with confidence so we all know you believe in what you're saying. Let us know how bright you are," Marva said, nodding.

Marva Collins simply insisted on performance. If a student was not responding, Marva cajoled or demanded performance, depending on the student and the situation.³⁰ In response to a student who was refusing to go to the blackboard to do some problems, Collins stated, "Sweetheart, what are you going to do? Use your life or throw it away?" The boy went to the board, but did not do the writing, stating, "I'm not going to do any damn work." Collins responded,

"I am not going to give up on you. I am not going to let you give up on yourself. If you sit there leaning against this wall all day, you are going to end up leaning on something or someone all your life. And all that brilliance bottled up inside, you will go to waste."

The boy went to the blackboard, but refused to begin the required writing. Collins demanded performance:

"If you do not want to participate, go to the telephone and tell your mother 'Mother in this school we have to learn, and Mrs. Collins says I can't fool around, so will you please pick me up.'" At that the boy began writing.³¹

Collins simply insisted on performance. She would not take no for an answer. On the first day of class, she approached a second grade student, who wanted no part of school,

Come on, peach, she said to him, cupping his face in her hands, "We have work to do. You can't just sit in a seat and grow smart…. I promise, you are going to do, and your are going to produce. I am not going to let you fail."³²

Forced performance in the classroom is not unique to Marva Collins. Many very strong and successful teachers demand specific performance from their students. Jaime Escalante, whose students performed at previously unimaginable levels on the national Advanced Placement Calculus Test, demanded students perform exactly as instructed:

He checked their work. When he found a student who had not followed his form to the last decimal point, he would yell loudly, only a few inches from the accused's ear: Burro! Why waste my time? This got to be done. You don't understand me? This is the way you have to do it! Not that way, my way."³³

It is extremely important to note, forced performance will backfire and generate even greater resistance among students unless it is coupled with love. The student must feel the teacher is on their side, trying to help them. The student needs to feel the teacher is trying to help them achieve something that will benefit the student, not simply have the student jump through hoops set up by the teacher. Students don't care how much a teacher knows or can teach until they know how much a teacher cares and is there to help them reach their goals. Escalante yelled at students and called them Burro, but he also demonstrated in many ways that all of that was in the service of helping them rise out of poverty and become successful.

Marva Collins was very strict and demanding, but she coupled demands for performance with expressions of love. She repeatedly let her students know her demands were out of her wanting the students to grow and develop. She was on their side. For example, when she saw a student playing with a locket and chain while Marva was reading a story, she said, "You knew how to play with a chain when you came to school. Playing with a chain is a good way to get a job, isn't it? Put it away and listen to the story…." Marva followed the reprimand by putting it in the context of love: "I love you children all the time, even though I may correct you or disagree with you some of the time."³⁴

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