Mindset on My Mind: Chapter 7 Disco

Barb Novak contributed this post. She is reading Mindset by Carol Dweck and sharing her thinking about every chapter. Click here to read more of Barb's posts about mindset.

Click here to read Barb's notes from Chapter 7 as a PDF.

In Chapter 7, Dweck applied mindset to parents, teachers, and coaches - people who have great power to use their words and actions to develop growth mindset in children.

Basically, everything adults say in response to children carries a message. Our adult words tell young people how to understand the world around them. Our response to success, failure, and behavior can build a growth mindset or reinforce a fixed mindset.

Our adult words and actions can also tell other adults how to understand actions. I heard Joel Westheimer say, "Teacher working conditions are student learning conditions". In chapter 7, Dweck proposed that schools must be about teacher learning if they are ever to truly be about student learning.

It's not enough to develop a growth mindset in our students. We must also develop a growth mindset about ourselves and our profession.