Growth Mindset Question Answers

1. A. Growth mindset is the belief in the term “yet.” It’s the understanding that “you’re on a learning curve” says professor Dweck. Having a growth mindset implies that you persevere and value hard work and effort over getting your desired outcome.

B. A fixed mindset is a mindset where people feel the level of progress or intelligence they have is set in stone. It eliminates the idea of progression in the future and causes people to be “gripped in the tyranny of now.”

2. Professor Dweck states that there are two ways to “build that bridge to yet.” The first is to “praise wisely.” Dweck says that praise shouldn’t focus on “intelligence or talent” but instead on perseverance and improvement. The other is rewarding students for “effort, strategy, and progress.” Personally, I feel both of these ideas seem reasonable in degrees. Although I agree perseverance and strategy should be more praised in the academic world, I think it is only fair to praise intelligence and talent as well. It is unfair to reward the journey and completely ignore the destination. If the goal is to help educate students, why would we completely avoid praising them for reaching the skills that the growth mindset is supposed to help them reach? It feels counter intuitive.
3. Dweck seems to imply that intelligence is something that everyone has, but it feels as though she implies that some people just are born with more. She groups the terms “intelligence …{and} talent” in an attempt to make them appear almost similar. Dweck acts as if intelligence isn’t earned, it’s given. This further implies that she defines intelligence as the smarts you have, not the smarts you’ve worked for.
4. A fixed mindset moment I have had was my senior year of highschool. I was a fully remote student due to the Covid-19 pandemic which made learning difficult for me. My grades began to decline and I was unsure what to do. Instead of “understanding I was on a learning curve” as Dweck says, I became “gripped in the tyranny of now.” I started to believe that I was simply not smart enough to get through my classes and felt stuck. Eventually, I realized that although my grades weren’t where I wanted them, I had the potential to get them back up. I realized that just because I didn’t understand something yet, didn’t mean that I would never understand the topic at all. I began to praise myself for just trying and suddenly succeeding didn’t feel like such a large task.