A question of mindsets

I'm currently reading Mindset, by Carol Dweck. It's a book that I've been meaning to read for quite some time now, having heard much about the ideas in workshops and from other colleagues. Our Middle and High School Head asked her faculty to read it as part of their professional reading this year and I was able to get my hands on a spare copy.

The general idea is fairly straightforward. There are two mindsets (the view or attitude that someone adopts) about oursleves: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Fixed mindset people believe that you are born with a specific amount of talent and ability for something and that no matter how hard you work you won't be able to really change this level. They believe that 'abilities are carved in stone' (pg. 6). Fixed mindset people constantly feel as though they have to prove themselves. This is because if they can't appear clever and smart then the only alternative is that they appear dumb, seeing as they can't do anything about their current ability levels. Therefore, they generally choose tasks that are just difficult enough for them.

Those who hold a growth mindset believe that you are born with a specific level of talent and ability for something but this can be altered by practising and honing your skills, knowledge and understanding of particular disciplines. They don't believe that your traits are 'simply a hand you're dealt with and have to live with' (pg. 7). Growth minded people believe that a person's qualities can  be cultivated through their efforts and that everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

When I first heard about these two mindsets, and as I began reading the book, I considered myself to be firmly in the 'growth' party. I definitely believe that I can improve myself by working harder and thrive on challenges to my thinking and abilities in the work that I do. This is also recognisable in the people that I choose to associate closely with. My wife is an amazing woman. But I'm not attracted to her purely for her gorgeous looks, fabulous singing voice and sense of humour. She is someone (probably more than anyone else) that sees my faults and helps me to work on them, challenges me to be a better person and encourages me to learn new things. She doesn't undermine my self-esteem but she does foster my self-development. I also thrive on learning opportunities. This weekend we have an EAL expert coming to our school to run a workshop on EAL learning styles and to give us some ideas and techniques about how to teach EAL students. Some of our teachers are upset that they have to give up their weekend. Sure, this is an inconvenience for all of us. But Dr. Rojas has a busy schedule and cannot come at any other time. Even though it is on the weekend, this is still a great opportunity to learn and improve our skills, knowledge and understanding of teaching EAL students - and our entire student body are EAL (save a handful of students). These are all attributes of someone who has a growth mindset. I will say though, that I don't always adopt this stance. If I'm confronted with difficulties in things that I'm not passionate about then I'm far less inclined the put the effort in to improve, especially if my starting point is fairly low. Anyone who has seen me dance would agree with this.

I'm only part-way through the book, however, and I'm starting to discover some interesting elements to the mindsets. Perhaps I'm not as growth oriented as I first thought. Apart from choosing particular tasks that allow them to prove themselves to their peers, fixed mindsetters also regularly ask themsleves evaluative questions such as: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser? They feel smart when something comes easily for them (and others struggle with it), when they finish something and its perfect, and when they don't make any mistakes (pg. 24). I can admit to asking myself these questions and I definitely feel the same way about some of the answers above that have come from people with a fixed mindset. Does this mean that I'm not a growth-minded person after all? Probably not. The fact that I'm even asking myself these questions indicates that I don't believe that someone is born one way.

Carol's message is at the beginning of the book is that 'everyone has the ability to change their mindset'. My current stage of understanding is that I appear to be on some sort of mindset continuum. I would predict that I'm more towards the growth end of the spectrum, and I don't feel like there's a clear cut position of being totally in one or the other (for me at least). I do feel smart when I can do things that others have difficulty with. But I also believe that this is a result of the hard work that I've put in over many years - it hasn't just happened. I also don't feel that because I can do something well that it doesn't mean that I can't still improve at it.

So this all points to me having more of a growth mindset than a fixed one. I am curious to find out more about the intricacies of each mindset and I wonder if, as my understanding of each continues to develop, my idea of where I place on the mindset continuum will change?


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Scaffolding Action

At the beginning of our school year here at BHA, our Elementary Principal spoke to us about the development of a service culture within our school. This is one of our school wide goals for the 2013/14 year so she wanted to give us the opportunity to work on some ideas before the students arrived. Seeing as we're in the PYP part of the IB, we figured that service would best be developed through the Action component of our units of inquiry.

Taking action can be a tricky element at times. Aside from the personal risks and challenges that someone must take in order to organise and implement meaningful action, there are also preconceptions from teachers to deal with. I bought one of these preconceptions with me. It's something that I'd never considered too much but now that I've had the opportunity to think through things in a more focused way, my understanding has moved to a new (hopefully better) place. I was of the opinion that teacher generated action was not worthy of a PYP classroom. The reason for this is that it simply wasn't meaningful to students if it didn't come from their own inquiry.

One of the readings that we were given helped me to move my understanding forward. It was a combination of sections from a book called Educating for Global Citizenship by Boyd Roberts. One part described a perspective of student participation that was defined by Hart's ladder of participation. You can see in the diagram below that there are eight levels. The first three are defined as non-participation and the top five indicate different levels of student participation. What this tool has helped me to realise is that, while we want our students to think, act and reflect independently, they need modelling to see what this looks like - just like anything else. It means that it's ok for adults to suggest and even initiate action in our classrooms and schools.

Seeing as we're inquiring into systems for our current UOI, my teaching partner in Gr. 5 and I decided that we would take advantage of a couple of authentic challenges that had recently arisen in our school community and see if the students could develop some systems that would help to solve them. We used Hart's ladder to identify where we landed in terms of student participation - to make sure that what we were planning was still considered as being participatory. We think we're at level six - Adult initiated, shared decisions with youth.

The two challenges that we posed to the students were (1) Find a way to organise, collect and store recyclable materials for use in our Maker Space (which is currently under construction) and (2) Develop a system that could help us organise how the students in Residence use the Branksome Hall Bikes (they were being left all over the campus and not being returned).

We then gave the students a lot of autonomy in the process. They could choose which cause they wanted to work for and collated their ideas with the other members in their group.  We thought is was important for the girls to recognise that once an idea was put on the table then it belonged to the group and could be improved on -  the girls were very good with this and, as a result there were some fantastic suggestions.  For the bikes group, some ideas included fixing GPS monitors to each bike and having them send information back to a central location (e.g. the security office) so that they always knew where each bike was; developing Branksome Hall Asia currency  that each student could use to pay a deposit on each bike they borrow; and creating a bike borrowing list that everyone had to sign up on before they could borrow. The Maker Space group wanted to create a commerical to be shown at Assembly so everyone could see what they wanted; they contacted journalism club to get them to write an article about our challenge for the school newsletter; and they are in the process of designing a Branksome Hall Asia recycling bag that will be given out free of charge to everyone at school to encourage them to bring in materials from home.

Although these ideas were initiated by the classroom teachers, it is clear that the decisions are being made by the students. They still have ownership over the action that they are taking and it is meaningful for them. Our hope as classroom teachers is now that the students have seen what this looks like then they will be able to initiate action of their own accord. They may still need more examples - and that is fine - the important thing is that they are involved as an active part of the process.

Developing Essential Agreements

At the beginning of the year many classrooms create Essential Agreements - a class consenus that will guide the behavioural expectations throughout the year. At best these are student centered (and led) notions that are meaningful and real. At worst they are a hastily put together list of rules that a teacher expects students to abide by.

These can be an important product for a classroom. They make a statement about the sort of culture that everyone feels should be developed throughout the year. My teaching partner this year in Grade Five (along with others from previous years and schools also), and I felt that this was important enough to spend at least a week on in class. Below is the outline of what we tried this year. So far it has worked, but we might change some things for next year.

Provocation:

This is a popular video that I'm sure has been shown many times in many different classrooms, workshops and offices. Nonetheless, it contains many underlying themes and messages that can be very useful to tune into. Below are some of the answers that our students came up with (although there are many more that could also be raised).






It hooked the students into thinking about the types of behaviours that the PYP and inquiry based classrooms encourage.

The Dot Game: This is a game that I played at a workshop about Group Dynamics. Everyone pulls a piece of paper out of a hat that is either blank or has a dot on it. There are less dots than non-dots. The game has a few simple rules: Non dots must tell the truth. Dots can choose whether to tell the truth or lie. The aim of the game is to form the biggest group of non-dots possible before the time is up. If a group has just one person in there that is a dot then the entire group is out of the game. Once the time runs out, each group reveals how many members they have and any dots can reveal themselves and see how many groups they managed to knock out.

The game reveals many different social lessons:  establishing the truth can be difficult, whether reputations count, trust, faith, should you always believe the people that you’re working with? Are there hidden agendas? Alliances/cliques, the importance of listening to other ideas, irrational exclusion, the difficulty of making decisions without the facts or data to back it up, the importance of a sense of belonging. This game is also a good platform from which to raise the important beliefs about how we should treat each other. 

Freyer Model: Another task we ask the students to complete is using a Freyer Model to help define each element of the Learner Profile in order to come up with a definition that is meaningful for the students. Although its difficult to read, I've included an example from the 'Inquirer group' for this year. I've also used this organiser with Grade Three classes but haven't tried with any students younger than that. I've found that it helps the students to make stronger connections with what we're asking them to model. If students don't know what it is they're aiming for then there's little chance of them achieving it. That's also a metaphor for teaching in general, I believe.

So, below are our Essential Agreements for this year. They took just over a week to develop and I think the students have a solid grounding in what they stand for, and will continue to build meaning throughout the year.

A new renaissance

Last week I found this article via twitter that gathered the opinions of a variety of people (including one of the Muppets). They were all asked what the one tangible idea about education they felt was worth spreading. Their answers were interesting to read and ranged from removing homework, to differentiation, to teacher training to university graduation.

The university opinion stuck in my mind for a couple of reasons - (i) I believe that this has a 'tail wags the dog' effect on education where many reform movements get stifled by the time they reach the stage of higher education because of the requirements to enter places such as Universities. If students need to be ranked in order to get into these places then society has generally fallen back on the only way they know how to do this - through summative testing. There seems to be a slow push towards a more formative approach over the past 10 years (give or take) with some education systems placing greater emphasis on the year (or in some cases years) long work of students. Some higher education institutions also now place greater value on 'non-academic' (for use of a better word at 6am in the morning!) entrance qualifications, such as service programs. Others are moving away from exam-based entrance results, preferring to observe a larger snapshot of student work through alternative reporting tools, such as portfolios. This is generally a positive move in my opinion.
(ii) I read a post just this morning on a friends blog where she talked about a university revolution - where universities face transformations over the next 20 years. You can read more about it here.

Have a read through the list of ideas here and see which ones interest you the most. Whichever you choose, it appears that we are approaching or are already in a renaissance period of education, where interest is renewed and many ideas are generated. These periods can be confusing for education practitioners due to the large amounts of new information available to them. They have to decide where they lie in terms of these new perspectives and practices. But it is not only teachers - and this is what makes it so difficult. If there is an Art renaissance then the artists themselves are redefining what art means and the consumers do just that - consume. This has an affect on the period at the time but doesn't really impact on those people's (the consumers) day to day lives. But in education our students aren't merely consumers - they are active builders of the renaissance. What happens every day can affect them for their entire life. They have years to experience the development of Impressionism but they only get one year of Grade Five. So we have to remind ourselves that we're not only going through these changes ourselves, but that our actions also impact the lives of many students, parents, friends - and everyone has an opinion.

So renaissance periods can be difficult times. But they're also very exciting.

Photo Credit: Prabhu B Doss via Compfight cc

A new start

Today was the first day with students at my new school - Branksome Hall Asia. This photo was taken just as I walked out of the Upper Junior School Pod, looking back to the School Centre with the Performing Arts building on the left. We spent the day interviewing all returning and new students. This gave them the chance to get to know me a little bit, me the chance to get to know them a little bit, and also for the parents and I to meet. This is especially important for our residence students as their parents will leave tonight back to their homes in other parts of the world. While its been a busy two weeks here its also been reasonably casual - I certainly can't recall a calmer start to a school year for me personally. This is partly due to the way that JoAn (our Principal) has organised the induction and collaborative weeks, and also partly due to the fact that we are only in our second year as a school so there are some things that are not set up that we don't have to worry about yet. That said, its going to be a very busy year as we prepare for PYP and MYP accreditation in October, following our confirmation last year as an IB World school. We'll also be charged with developing planners, setting up routines and structures and also working to establish a culture that best enables us to deliver the program to our students.

Although I signed with BHA in January, I've been keeping abreast of the school's updates over the last six months. We had a smooth arrival to Jeju and have settled into our new house comfortably. The usual induction week activities (setting up bank accounts, internet, photos etc) were interjected with a couple of bright spot moments:

(1) Service learning & Inclusion: I'll admit that when I signed on one thing that concerned me about the school is that it will essentially be an educational opportunity for the rich. This is true, in part, but the school recognises this and one their school goals this year is to develop a service learning culture. Our Director, Peter Kenny, spoke to the staff and reiterated that a culture of service has to develop from within the attitudes of the student body itself. He said that it must be reflective and also must involve some form of action. I noticed his referral to the core elements of the PYP. To help foster this attitude, the school offers scholarships to Korean students who would otherwise be unable to attend BHA. In a breakout session with JoAn she spoke about Hart's ladder of participation and after our discussions we were given time in our grade teams to plan for action in our first UOI. This was a very effective way of getting us to explicitly plan for one of the five key elements. She had also used the same technique in a session the day prior when we'd discussed concept based learning. The article about participation cam from a book called 'Educating the Global Citizen' which I'm keen to get hold of. This session in particular helped us as a staff to understand ways that we could foster action and participation with our students. Certainly in my own practice I've often expected that action should come solely from the students and that if it didn't happen then there wasn't much that I could do about it. I've now been thinking of possible ways that I can model and engage the students in action from the start of the year. This will hopefully help to encourage them to take their own action as the year progresses.

(2) Doing things differently - In the introduction for the new staff only, and again once the existing faculty returned, we were all told that the leadership of the school has full faith in us as practitioners. We were told that the school wants to live its vision of being the 'pre-eminent educational community of globally minded learners and leaders'. To this end we were told that, although we are aligned with our philosophical beliefs of the IB, we were encouraged and expected to do things 'a little differently'. This means taking risks, learning from failures and supporting each other in our initiatives. Glen Radojkovich, our Head of school & his wife, JoAn, both mentioned this next part on different occasions without knowing that the other had said it. It was certainly inspiring to hear the same clear message from our leaders.

(3) The Learner Profile - Another things that was mentioned on the very first session of the very first day was the  importance of the Learner Profile and how it is central to everything we do in this school. This was especially good to hear after working in schools who's standard line were 'we aren't an IB school, we're a school that offers the IB'. The current staff here are a mixture of nationalities, some having experience in other International Schools and others coming directly from their home countries. The important thing about them all, however, is that no matter where they come from, they're all willing to try and learn about the PYP and try new things out - not just bring their 'suitcase curriculum' with them.

I'm very excited to get started with all of the students tomorrow and am looking forward to testing myself, trying out new things and learning from my failures this year.