Fixed and Growth Mindset

 Fixed and Growth Mindset 

For today's blog I read two articles. One of them is "Students' Mindsets for Learning and Their Neural Underpinnings." The other one is "Problems in the pipeline: Stereotype threat and women's achievement in high-level math courses" by Good, Aronson and Harder. 

They both talked about the fixed and growth mindset. The first article explains how "entity mindset" (or fixed mindset) limits an individual in many areas of their life. They focus in explaining this idea in the education area. People with an entity mindset believed that their intelligence is fixed, and they cannot be more intelligent. They believe that they cannot improve with effort. Consequently, they don't handle failure well; they avoid challenges and risk-taking challenges; they adopt maladaptive strategies. 

On the other hand, people with "incremental mindset" (or growth mindset) believe that they can increase their abilities, intelligence by working harder. These people handle failures with a positive attitude (either consciously or unconsciously). Also, people with this type of mindset tend to have lower aggression and stress levels.

On the second article, it is explained how stereotypes can affect people's mindset. For example, they focus in the gender stereotype: there are less women in the STEM fields than men. The experiment shows that this is not the only factor that affects women, but a strong one. 

Both articles mention factors that affect the mindset of people. One can be cultural, an idea that is already set from past generations. Another one is the parent's opinions and support. A third one is the school way of teaching: reassuring students that they can improve rather that they failed. 

Personal experience:

I believe that I was raised with a fixed mindset. My overall focus was in getting A+ in every subject since Kindergarten. Whenever I had something below, I would be to scared for the punishment, instead of reviewing the materials. I tended to love challenges but I became more scare of the failure that I only focus in what I was able to do. After I finished high school. I tried to be part of something. Unfortunately, I failed. I'm sure I could've succeed, but I already had a fixed mindset. Whenever I failed in a task, I just gave up. I rarely tried to improved. For this reason, I failed at accomplishing my goal. When I came back to school, I spent 2-3 years enrolling and dropping classes without a goal in mind.

However, once I enrolled in ASU, New College, I started to have a more malleable mindset now. I still have problems, but I work on them most of the time. My parents' mindset changed too. After my mom enrolled in college, she understood the pressure of school, and became more flexible with my sister's and my progress. I think changing your mind is difficult, but possible. I believe that getting the opportunity to be part of research (outside of classes) helped me to believe on myself too. 

It still affects me when I see middle school friends already graduated as doctors, lawyers, etc. I start to feel like giving up, and just work instead of finishing my bachelors. However, few years ago my grandfather told me "it doesn't matter if you're the last one to finish, the important thing is to finish." I think this is where I started to have a more malleable mindset. Thus, now whenever my fixed mindset is taking over, I remember that phrase.




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