Tag Archives: mindset

Introducing Growth Mindset and Deep Practice to Students

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I [read](https://pedagoguepadawan.net/291/summer-reading-2/) Mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck and The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle this summer. The three of us teaching Honors Physics this year agreed that we should share the concepts of mindset and deep practice with out students, emphasize them throughout the year, and measure how our students mindsets change throughout the year.

Inspired by the efforts of [John Burk](http://quantumprogress.wordpress.com/?s=mindset) and [Mylène](http://shiftingphases.com/2013/01/13/growth-mindset-resource/). I put together some materials that focus on mindset and learning attitudes. There are a coupe of surveys, some in-class activities, and some readings for homework and in-class discussion. I think focusing on these concepts can have a significant impact on our students. I also wanted to collect some data that measures the impact of [our new approach](https://pedagoguepadawan.net/286/honors-physics-changes/) to Honors Physics.

We started with John Burk’s [intelligence survey](http://quantumprogress.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/measuring-mindset-in-my-classes/) which is a short survey to be administered before discussing mindset and deep practice. We assigned this survey for homework and captured the data in Canvas.

Some results were quite promising and indicative of more of a growth mindset than I expected:

Screen Shot 2013 09 22 at 12 42 06 AM

*You can greatly change how intelligent you are.*

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*You can greatly change your ability to understand science.*

And some indicate that there is plenty of room to change attitudes about learning and physics:

Screen Shot 2013 09 22 at 12 41 57 AM

*How well you can memorize mostly determines how well you can do in science.*

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*Watching an instructor do examples is the best way to learn new material.*

After students completed the intelligence survey, we introduced the concepts of growth vs. fixed mindset and performed activities from *The Talent Code* to demonstrate deep practice and chunking. At home they watched Angela Duckworth’s [TED talk on grit](http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit.html). Here are the slides:

Download (PDF, 2.08MB)

We then assigned [*The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids*](http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/) a New York Magazine article for reading at home. We also distributed copies of [Diana Hestwood’s slides](https://sites.google.com/site/dianahestwood/) about how the brain learns.

The next day in class, we had a great discussion about this article and the slides. Several students really identified with the boy Thomas in the New York Magazine article.

The final piece as to administer the [Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS)](http://www.colorado.edu/sei/class/) which was developed by the PER group at Colorado Boulder. We wanted to administer this at the start of the year to capture student expectations and then again at the end of the year to capture how student attitudes have changed. Administering this survey was a bit tricky since these students don’t have a previous experience with a physics class. So, we encouraged them to complete the survey based on their expectations.

To achieve our goal of having a significant impact on our students, these activities must only be the beginning. We will have to make a concerted effort to reinforce growth mindsets explicitly throughout the year and implicitly with a culture in which a growth mindset can flourish. While I fear that the traditional school environment fosters a fixed mindset, I hope that at least our classroom (especially with standards-based grading) can provide a refuge for the growth mindset.

Honors Physics Changes

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Several factors combined into a perfect storm that set the stage to make major changes to our Honors Physics course. One, last year was rough and several aspects of class were disappointing. I’m not going to dwell on those here. Two, we have an extra section of Honors Physics this upcoming year and another physics teacher will join my colleague and I in teaching Honors Physics. She is a really good influence on us! Three, we want to pilot the AP Physics 1 course to prepare for the first official year of AP Physics 1/2 in 2014-2015 and prime a pipeline of students ready for AP Physics 2. As a result, we are changing almost every aspect of this course.

First is the curriculum. We are aligning our curriculum to that of AP Physics 1. This changes the emphasis from content to understanding and skills. As a result, we will finally be able to implement [Modeling Instruction](http://modelinginstruction.org/) in Honors Physics! The shift to Modeling Instruction, which we have been using in General Physics for a few years, will have a tremendous impact on these students. We are also taking some of the most successful aspects of my AP Physics B course and incorporating them into Honors Physics. We will have formative quizzes for each unit and we will have peer instruction to focus on conceptual understanding.

This change in curriculum and pedagogy required us to redefine all of our units and materials. All new standards, in-class packets, quizzes, lab activities, lab practicums, and exams. Fortunately, we didn’t have to create too many materials from scratch. We started with Kelly O’Shea’s [Honors Physics Standards](http://kellyoshea.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/honors-physics-2012-objectives/). We used worksheets from the Modeling Workshop along with portions of Kelly’s packets. We used peer instruction questions I compiled for AP Physics B. We combined quiz and exam questions from a variety of sources. We kept our favorite labs and found or created new ones.

We are also trying to incorporate and emphasize certain themes throughout the course. One is growth mindset. Reading Dr. Carol Dweck’s book [Mindset](http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-The-New-Psychology-Success/dp/0345472322/) and Daniel Coyle’s [The Talent Code](http://www.amazon.com/The-Talent-Code-Greatness-Grown/dp/055380684X/) this summer, helped me to find the commonality of behaviors and attitudes that some physics students, especially honors physics students, have that make them really struggle in the course. I prepared a mini-lesson (upcoming post) to introduce the concepts of fixed vs. growth mindset and deep practice. Another area of focus will be measurement uncertainty in labs. While we have a good set of [measurement uncertainty activities](https://pedagoguepadawan.net/198/updated-measurement-uncertainty-activities/), we don’t sufficiently reinforce these concepts throughout the year. At the most recent QuarkNet Workshop at Fermilab, we heard and discussed how critical it was for students to understand and appreciate the concept of measurement uncertainty.

A good sign that we are on the right track for this revamped Honors Physics course is that I’m excited and looking forward to this class this year. Without these changes, I don’t think I would be saying that….