Mind sets
Student Services
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Stay Motivated 2012
Angela Dierks
We would like to thank Napier University’s Centre for
Confidence and Wellbeing for generously
allowing us to use their resources.
Student Services
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
What do you think: is intelligence innate?
•Discuss in your small group whether you think that people are born smart or become smart?
•Do you think that intelligence is something basic about you that can’t be changed or that you can always substantially change how intelligent your are?
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Two mind sets
• People are born smart
• People are made, not born this way
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Winston Churchill
Student Services
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
•Repeated a grade in primary school
•Was placed in the lowest division of the lowest grade
Ludwig van Beethoven
Student Services
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
His teacher called him a hopeless composer
Albert Einstein
Student Services
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Was described as ‘academically subnormal’.
There are two mindsets
Fixed mindset: intelligence is innate.Ability cannot change.
Growth mind:You become intelligent through
learning. Ability can change.
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
What is your mindset?Do you agree with the following statements?• You are a certain kind of person and there
isn’t much to be done to really change that.• No matter what kind of person you are, you
can always change substantially.• You can do things differently, but the
important parts of who you are can’t be changed.
• You can always change basic things about the way you are.
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Your mindset
• Creates a whole mental map for your related to your belief in ability
• A study of children tested on their mindset showed that children who were praised for ability rather than effort did less well on their enjoyment and performance scores.
• Our mind set is often the result of being praised for being clever as children rather than being praised for making an effort.
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
The motivational framework supporting
mindsets includes• Goals
• Responses
• Effort
• Strategies
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Goals - what we aim for
• Those with a FIXED MINDSET tend to create PERFORMANCE goals.
• They believe that a person’s POTENTIAL can be MEASURED. They aim to receive validation from others.
• Receiving low marks mean that they are not smart.
• Both success and failure cause ANXIETY.
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Responses – how do you react to a disappointing
event?
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Responses – thought record
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Responses – feeling helpless
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
When faced with failure or challenge, people with a FIXED mindset:
• do not pay attention to learning information• get depressed, become de-energised and lose self-
esteem• denigrate their intelligence: ‘I am stupid’, they’ll think• under-represent past successes and over-represent
failures (pessimism)• explain the cause of events as something stable about
them.
Responses – mastering the situation
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
When faced with failure or challenge, people with a GROWTH mindset:
•Pay attention to learning information, and so do better on future tests.•Focus on what they are learning, rather than focusing on how they feel.•Try out new ways of doing things.•Use self-motivating statements such as ‘ the harder it gets the harder I try’.•When faced with tests which are impossible to pass they will factor in other reasons and not blame their intellect i.e. this test was beyond my ability for now
EffortEffort
Fixed mindset• Effort is viewed as
reflection of low intelligence.
• If you have to work hard this indicates that you ‘don’t get it’.
• Effort means lack of ability.
Growth mindset• Effort is a necessary
part of success.• When faced with
challenge they try harder.
• Effort is associated with success and with overcoming difficulties..
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Strategies – fixed mindset• Carol Dweck has found that students with a fixed
mindset keep using the wrong strategy when faced with a problem.
• Then they disengage from the problem.
• Finally, they give up.
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Strategies – growth mindset• People adopting a growth mindset tend to generate
other, and new, ways to do things.
• If one route doesn’t work they will try others.
• They will think ‘outside of the box’ to solve problems because they believe that they ‘can’.
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Creative thinking
Below are four simple questions. Try to answer all of them before looking at the answers.
#1: How do you put a giraffe into a fridge?
#2: How do you put an elephant into a fridge?
#3: The King of the Jungle is holding a meeting for all of the animals. One of them is not there. Which one?
#4: You are standing on the bank of an alligator infested river and have to get to the other side. What do you do?
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Creative thinking And now for the answers to the four questions:
#1: Open the fridge, put the giraffe inside, and then close the fridge.
#2: Open the fridge, remove the giraffe, put the elephant inside, and close the fridge.
#3: The elephant. The elephant is in the fridge.
#4: You swim across the river because all the alligators are attending the meeting.
This is what the questions are trying to find out:
#1 checks to see if you try to make simple things complicated and make assumptions about problem boundaries. Nobody actually said that the fridge was not big enough to put a giraffe inside!
#2 tests your ability to consider previous actions. Who says that they are four separate questions?
#3 simply tests your memory.
#4 checks to see how quickly you learn. After all, you must have answered question 4 correctly.
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Change the way you think
1. Pay attention to your fixed mindset ‘voice’.
2. Recognise that you have a choice.
3. Talk back with your growth mindset ‘voice’.
4. Take the growth mindset action.www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Some learning from neuroscience
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
All of the areas of the brain …like sound, communication, problem-solving…
are made of cells calledNEURONS
They transmit information around the brain.
Some learning from neuroscience
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Neurons pass information through connection with other neurons at synapses:
Some learning from neuroscience
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
The more we learn the more connections our neurons make:
Some learning from neuroscience
www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck
Student Services
Look at babies: their brain has to develop millions of connections. This is called learning.
