Introduction
Unsurprisingly, I started my inquiry by reading Carol Dweck’s latest edition of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2016), which helped to clarify many of the misunderstandings I had had as a first-year teacher on what teaching growth mindset actually looks like in practice and about growth mindsets themselves.
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For instance, one of the biggest misunderstandings I had was on praising effort. Previously, I only thought to praise students when they showed a lot of effort on an assignment, regardless of whether or not the assignment itself was a success or failure. Growth mindset goes beyond putting in effort, because effort alone will not always yield positive results. It is about the process of putting in the effort, being willing to learn from the inevitable setbacks, and asking for help when necessary. If our students only get praised on their effort, there is no appreciation for the process they are in, for the skills they are gaining that can be applied across any discipline.
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Furthermore, “We should never be content with effort that is not yielding further benefits. We need to figure out why that effort is not effective and guide kids toward other strategies and resources that can help them resume learning” (Dweck, 2016, p. 216). We should praise the process “but tie to the outcome… [They] need to understand that engaging in that process helped them learn” (Dweck, 2016, p. 216).
After two years of teaching regular level Spanish II students, whose grade levels ranged from freshmen to juniors, I noticed that many of them had fixed mindsets when it came to learning Spanish. Many students stated matter-of-factly that they were “just not good at Spanish.” Often, it led to students comparing how “bad” they were and building a sense of camaraderie around a previous, shared negative experience they were bringing into my class.
I worked tirelessly last year to work with students individually, offer retakes, and talk candidly about the effects of growth mindset on my own language learning experience. However, even if at the end of the year students felt overall more comfortable and more confident in their Spanish language abilities, I knew much more work needed to be done in order to actively combat the damaging effects of a fixed mindset. This is where my inquiry began. How can I improve growth mindset in my Spanish II students?
Realizing the importance of a right amount of effort and the importance of not praising effort for effort’s sake, I began to focus on self-regulated learning and the ways in which it has been proven to produce effective learners across disciplines. Evidently, beyond caring for my students’ performance in my class, I wanted them to leave my classroom with skills they can apply anywhere for their future success. I wanted them not only to persist on their oral quizzes in my class, but to persist in front of the many challenges they will face in their other courses, in college, in their careers, and in any other domain.
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Having students take more control over how they learn and how they react to feedback and challenging activities or assessments, seemed ultimately a great route to take as an educator. My goal was not only to help them improve their growth mindset but also to develop a better sense of their self-efficacy: their internal belief and confidence in what they are capable of doing. As my literature review will show, when students are engaging in the self-regulated learning cyclical process of goal-setting, self-monitoring, and self-evaluation, they will become more invested as learners and hence more motivated to succeed no matter the task. This was the motivation for my inquiry:
What happens when I teach self-regulatinG learning skills to my Spanish II students?
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How can I help them improve their growtH mindset?
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How can I help them develop more self-efficacy?