The Stanford Challenge

In this video, a psychology teacher at Stanford is interviewed about the study she did on something called the growth mindset. The growth midset is something that is used as a tool to help students learn better by teaching them to think of themsleves as being able to continue to learn things their whole life and that they will gain intellingence gradually as they learn more everyday. The other mindset of students that is mentioned is one where students think that just doing one thing can allow them to appear smart, such as studying for a test by cramming, memorization, and then forgetting everything immediately after. A study was done for 8 weeks where she took half a class and taught them study skills, but with the growth mindset, and then the other half teaching just the study skills. The results included grades raised by the growth midset students and of course a bad report for the other group lacking the mindset. The video proved that seeing the big picture and knowing that you will gain intelligence at a pace throughout your whole life gives you some confidence to learn with an incentive to keep getting better and that all of your education is getting you somewhere.
The teachers at Stanford could guess which students were taught with the mindset by their attitudes and academic performance. The psychologist, Carol Dweck, also informs us that even after we begin to age our brain is still growing and we need to use it constantly, not just when we have a test. She tells us that it is necessary in the job world after school to improve and be promoted in businesses from thinking this way. She says that if these students want to excel in their career they will need to keep this mindset even when they get out of college.
It is important as teachers for us to instill this idea for all of our students whether they choose to use it or not. The point is... teachers can always choose to teach this way in hopes that our students will choose to go about learning and working with this mindset. Our future is in their hands so our teaching this way may help them rise to success in their jobs for the rest of their lives. This concept helps students and teachers take the purpose for their education seriously.