Mindset, Carol S. Dweck

First book review: Growth Mindset by Carol S. Dweck.

This book has become recommended reading in our school board. In fact, after I ordered a copy with the TLLP money I found out that the school already had 4 copies. 

The first bit of informational gold which I took away from this wonderful book was a piece of educational history. Did you know that, when Alfred Binet designed his IQ test in 1908, it was meant to identify students at risk for interventions? I feel that we have missed the mark on that one, and continue to. While I do think we have grown a lot in education, honouring many different pathways and accommodating students at risk, I don't think that we have done a great job at real interventions. Students who score low overall score on the WISC (current version of IQ) test in grade 3 will, generally, score the same or lower when we retest them in high school. I guess this is the root of growth mindset and the reappearing theme of this book. Are we born "hardwired" to be good at some things and bad at others or is there space for change?

Binet has found over and over in her research that there is space for growth. She found that people who practiced a growth mindset made more advances in all fields: business, academic, sports and relationships. She helps define what a growth mindset is; as a belief in the learning opportunities found in challenges and setbacks. In the importance of effort over talent. Someone who practices a growth mindset is able to self reflect and recognize their strengths AND weaknesses acurately and honestly. They also see those weaknesses as opportunities to improve. She tells story after story of incredible sucesses by athletes, teachers and entrepreneurs who hold this belief and use it to reach the tops of their fields.

It made me wonder if the great success of intense intervention programs for learning disabilities comes from the program itself, or, simply from the change in belief. Does practicing fine motor skills ACTUALLY help with attention and self-regulation (as Janette Farmer claims with Retrain Your Brain) or is it simply that students are being told that they can change and improve. I'm not sure how we measure which has more impact, the physical practice or the change in mindset... and perhaps they always go hand in hand.

What I did take away from Mindset was the absolute importance of our dialogue with students. One of Binet's most inspiring stories comes out of a elementary school in the United States and one teacher who changed the future for a whole class of students at risk. Her dialogue with them was "I promise you are going to do, you are going to produce and I am not going to give up on you". The neurologists are positive... the brain is plastic and can change and grow at any age. Now we have to convince our schools and our students that that is really true.