Wrapping Things Up

Hi, everyone!

First, I want to give my advisors, Wendy Barnard, Megan O'Donnell, and Ms. Holtzman a huge thank you for giving me this amazing opportunity to research something I'm passionate about. Also, I would like to thank everyone who read and commented on my blog. I loved answering your questions!

At the moment everything is finished and ready to go on Saturday, I can't wait to present and hear everyone else's presentations. I really want to see what everyone has been up too!

Here's a link to my finished Powerpoint and research paper if you're curious.

Research Paper

Presentation

Once again, thank you to everyone that read and commented. I can't wait to share my research with you!

What's your Mindset?

Hi everyone, as the project comes to a close I thought it would be nice to try something fun! But first a little bit of backstory, when Carol Dweck and her colleagues went into classrooms to see the effect of mindset on grades they had every student take a survey to see if they either had a fixed or growth mindset.

They published their short 16 question survey online, you can find it here: https://mindsetonline.com/testyourmindset/step1.php

I encourage you to find out whether you have a fixed or growth mindset and share the results below. Usually, in a pool of people, about 40% of them have a fixed mindset, 40% have a growth mindset, and 20% have a mixture of both.

But what can you do if you find out that you have a fixed mindset, it's actually pretty easy to change. One of the ways is to notice when you start saying things like, "I can't do it," when you hear yourself say this, stop, and add the word yet to the end of that sentence. This simple word has massive implications. By saying 'yet' you're telling yourself that you can't do it right now, but you'll be able to do it eventually by putting enough effort in.

Another common way is to track your own progress. This lets you see how much you've improved over the course of any time period and can really help as a visual aid if you're not feeling motivated. For example, if you play the violin and are trying to improve, record a session on your phone weekly and listen to them so you know what parts you need to work on. Or if you're struggling in math graph your test scores on a line graph so you can see your improvement.

However, this is not a cure-all for laziness. In order to see the results, you'll have to put the work in and seek out help if you need it!

The Purpose of a Lit Review

They can be extensive and meticulous but are an essential part of any research project. Anyone who is writing research paper knows how much of a pain writing a literature review can be.

Now you may be wondering why anyone would put themselves through such a painful and grueling process. Do all researchers hate themselves? No...well most of them at least! Literature reviews do much more than just summarize and familiarize the reader with the topic. They give the researcher an opportunity to establish credibility and identify weak sources and areas for future research.

However, there is one major difference between a report and literature review. A literature review creates a foundation for the research project but creating a link between the question and evidence, whereas a report solely focuses on delivering information.

For example, in my project, my question was how is grit related to academic achievement and how can we change the way we teach to foster grit in the classroom. Then in my literature review, I used sources to show the relationship between grit and academic achievement, moved on to show how we are able to teach it in schools.

Hopefully, this was informative and maybe you learned something new!

Moving on to the Last Few Drafts of my Research Paper

At this point I have completed the literature review of my paper, I'll talk about the importance and purpose of these in my next blog post. The next round of editing will focus on the methodology, results, and recommendations section, these sections are much shorter and will be easier to edit. Other than that, there isn't much else to report, everything is coming together as I finish up my presentation!

An Interesting Demographic at Fountain Hills Middle School

Yesterday, I went down to Fountain Hills Middle School to interview some more teachers. I went to this school mainly to get a perspective on a classroom in a higher income area. What I found out helped me solidify my hypothesis on a couple questions.

I had no idea how close Fort McDowell was to Fountain Hills Middle School and this creates some interesting and pressing questions and concerns for classrooms. One of the teachers I interviewed said that native children were very quiet and reluctant to participate in class, this is a big problem for classrooms that focus mostly on discussion.

One teacher mentioned that they are seeing an interesting reaction to poverty in the area. For example, four times a year native families get Windfall checks to help them through poverty. Teachers know when families get these checks because students will often not show up to school and come back talking about all the trips and new things they got.

A Day at Palomino Primary

Last week I had the opportunity to shadow Ms. Garcia's classroom at Palomino Primary. She is a 1st grade teacher at a very low income school. In my life, I've never been to a Title 1 school and I never imagined how terrible the conditions were.

Don't get me wrong, the school itself was nice and well managed. But as I drove in I noticed tons of students without any supplies, not even a pencil. How can we expect kids to be motivated and succeed in school if they don't even have the supplies or support at home to do so? These are questions that need to be answered and fixed immediately.

When I got there I didn't expect much, but I was pleasantly surprised! The kids were and excited about school and learning. After a short breakfast in the classroom, kids came up to me and asked if I could quiz them on their vocabulary. All of these 1st graders were really motivated and wanted to succeed.

Palomino Primary used some of their own interesting strategies to promote growth mindset and grit. They use specific math programs that focus on process over outcome, there are signs in the classrooms that say everyone grows, and their are even huge displays on walls showing everyone's progress over the course of the year. This school is making small steps in the right direction to set their students up for success in the face of incredible adversity.

Here's an example of a display in a 2nd grade classroom at Palomino Primary showing how students have improved their reading skills over the course of a year. Also, you have to keep in mind most of these students are hispanic and speak little to no english a home.  

I think these lower income schools provide a unique perspective on my demographics question. When I go to middle or higher income schools, the most common response is that the teacher doesn't pay attention to these differences between cultures or genders in the classroom. While teachers in lower income areas agree that different people have different priorities about school.

This leads me to suspect that it is less of demographics issue and more of a socioeconomic one. One of the teachers I interviewed said, "In this lower income area, for most families, the priority isn't school, it's to survive."

What the Interviews tell us about Grit and Growth Mindset in Schools

From the interviews, I can start to conclude that teachers need to be made aware of these concepts and the ways to teach them.

Some of the teachers that I interviewed were actually already implementing strategies but were not aware that were doing so. By making teachers aware of these strategies they can recognize what they are already doing and what they need to be doing.

Additionally, it would be beneficial to find time outside of class or integrate a few lessons about goal setting into the curriculum. This would tricky in higher grades, especially in AP classes, because of time restrictions. One of the teachers I interviewed suggested having short five to ten-minute meetings during lunch for one on one goal setting.

However, I don't want to make any wild claims yet because I have only interviewed BASIS high school teachers. Tomorrow I am going to Palomino Primary to interview some elementary teachers to get their opinions on these strategies, this will also give me a new angle on my research because Palomino is in a low-income area. It will be interesting to see if the SES effects classroom culture or student motivation.

Walking Through Questions

Hi, everyone! This week I want to walk through questions I asked teachers, why I chose them, and what they revealed about different teaching styles.

The first question was a general open-ended one, it was, "What do you know about grit and growth mindset?"

Most of the teachers I have interviewed so far have not known what growth mindset is but have a general idea of grit. The most common response was something along the lines of perseverance and determination, which is fairly close to the actual definition.

The second question was, "What classroom strategies are you aware of the foster grit and growth mindset?"

This question was aimed at finding out what strategies teachers were conscious of in the classroom. I got a wide array of strategies, from making sure that students know that there are multiple ways to get the same answer to giving hints to students. Interestingly, teachers were not aware that how they praise students affect they way they learn.

The third question is, "Have you implemented some strategies like the one in the previous question or have you created your own. If you have can you please explain it in detail and have you seen a positive impact on students since you began using this strategy?"

This question's purpose was similar to the last, it was aimed at finding out how aware teachers were of strategies that foster grit. Unfortunately, since this concept was new to most teachers they weren't aware of many strategies. A solution to this would be to educate teachers on strategies to teach growth mindset and grit. Perhaps they will become aware of strategies they are already using.

The next question was "Do you think sitting down with your students at the beginning of the year and have them set long-term goals for that class and then meeting with them every so often throughout the year to keep track of their progress is possible in the classroom or devoting somedays to teaching grit? What about in an AP setting?"

This was aimed at determining if teachers felt that they would actually have time to address this in their classrooms. Based off of my research, it should be possible for teachers to teach this concept through their teaching style alone. However, teachers felt like they would not have the time to meet one on one with about 20 kids per class, especially in an AP class where time is crucial.

The final question was a demographics question, "Do you see that different types of students (girls, boys, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, etc.) learn about grit differently? Have to had to make any adjustments to your teaching style to accommodate for them?"

Most teachers see a difference between how boys and girls learn, not as much across cultures and ethnicities. The general consensus was that boys are more hands on, loud, and tend to answer questions more while girls tend to be quieter and focus on their individual work.

Second Draft of Research Paper Done

Hi everyone,

So far, I have completed the second draft of my research paper! The main focus of this draft was to cut things that were not central and focused on my project. As I move into the third draft, I am going to be focusing on all things relating to grammar and syntax. It's going to be a heavy English week!

Teacher Questions Completed and Emails Sent

Hi everyone,

As of this week, I have completed the questions I am going to be using to interview teachers. Although I would like to discuss the questions I chose and why I chose them, I can't just yet in case some of the teachers I've emailed are reading my blog.

The main focus of these questions is to find out what teachers already know and don't know about grit and growth mindset. This is what would be known as an exploratory study. The reason I am taking this approach instead of going into schools and working with students is because I would not be able to present accurate results because of time restrictions.

If you recall from a few blog posts ago, I talked about the profound effect teachers have on the non-cognitive aspects of learning. For example, if a teacher is absent often, students are more likely to be absent. This also applies to grit and growth mindset, by interviewing teachers I hope to educate them on this topic and hopefully, they will implement these strategies in their classrooms.

1st Draft of Research Paper Done!

This is a big point in my project, I am officially done with the first draft of my research paper, the next steps in my project would be developing questionnaires and surveys to ask teachers and students for data all the while revising my paper.

I never realized that writing a scientific research paper would be so demanding!

Sorry for the short blog post this week, not much to update on.

Minor Setbacks and Changes

Originally, for the actual research and data collection part of my project, I planned to use the Brainology program to teach growth mindsets and grit to students. However, when I went onto their website I found that to get the program it costs 20 dollars per student and $6,000 per school. Now, I don't expect ASU or any school to match these prices because they are simply too high.

I recently read a paper on the impact teachers have on factors such as grit and growth mindset, so my new plan is to interview teachers to find out what their mindset is and what they already know about this style of teaching. Then I will go into classrooms and find out what students know about this concept and see if their mindsets are similar to their teachers. I will also poll other factors such as classroom engagement and student enjoyment of the class. Then I will work on creating my own lesson plans and curriculum to teach this mindset.

This will allow me to see how much of an impact a teacher's mindset has on the students, and if my assumptions are correct, it will allow me to create a top-down approach that will be more streamlined and effective.

The Profound Effect Teachers have on Growth Mindsets

If I am going to create a classroom culture where grit and growth mindsets are fostered, I will have to take into account the profound effect teachers have on developing these traits.

Harvard researchers, David Blazar and Matthew Kraft argue that teachers are in a unique position to help students develop non-cognitive traits. In fact, in an experiment done by Jennings and DiPrete, they found that 1st grade teachers actually have a bigger impact on student's social and behavioral outcomes than their academic ones. Other studies have actually found links between teacher and student behaviors such as absences, suspensions, and graduation.

Dr. Dweck even argues that teachers can make small changes to the way they teach which can lead to massive impacts later on. If there is a student struggling in a music class, instead of a teacher saying, "That's OK, maybe music just isn't your strong point," she encourages teachers to say, "If you find yourself saying 'I'm just not a music person' try adding the word yet to the end of that sentence."

This simple strategy is very effective because it changes the way students view themselves and their learning process. If faced with difficulty later on in life, the first student is more likely to give up and the second student is more likely to persevere in the face of failure.

But, if it is this simple, why are these strategies not widely implemented in public schools? It may stem from the fact that large education agencies hand out bonuses to teachers and schools for high test scores. These corporations are measuring teacher and school effectiveness based on test scores, which simply isn't a good evaluation method. In fact, a team of researchers found that teacher effectiveness (according to standardized test scores) were almost completely unrelated with other important factors such as grade progression, graduation, suspensions, and absences. This style of teaching leads many educators to "teach to the test" while failing to teach their students these non-cognitive aspects. Teacher effectiveness shouldn't be measured on a standardized test because it is unfair to both the students and educators. Instead we should base teacher effectiveness off of how students are developing in the classroom and their effectiveness in developing a mindset in students.

The Relationship between a Fixed Mindset and Stereotyping

So far this week I've completed three areas of my literature review, as I write them I've started to notice what parts need to be bolstered with additional research. One of those is the section I have on how grit and growth mindsets can reduce the stereotyping threat. This is when a person from a specific group feels pressured consciously or subconsciously to conform to certain norms that may not be beneficial to them.

For example, there is a stereotype that women are worse at math than men. If a girl hears this and accepts this she may attribute her low math grade to something genetic, something that no matter how hard she tries she won't be able to change or improve it. If you remember from a couple blog posts ago, this is what is known as fixed mindset. However, with a growth mindset this effect can be mitigated.

Statistically, most minorities tend to under perform on standardized tests. Researchers suspect that one of the reasons is due to the stereotype threat. This study was done with black students, they found that by working with them they could reduce this effect and raise their test scores.

Now, you may be wondering where there needs to be additional research. This is simply because out of all the articles I have looked at, there has not been one that uses the words grit and growth or fixed mindset. This is important to note because it means that I will be looking for similarities in behavior and not definitions. I'm not entirely sure if this would be considered acceptable in the scientific realm unless I could back it up with my own research.

Night of the Open Door

Hi guys, a little bit of a different blog post today.

Last night I volunteered at the Night of the Open Door at ASU, which is this massive community outreach event. Think of it like a temporary science center across the entire ASU campus. I was helping outside of Goldwater Center for Science and Engineering. The main focus of this building is environmental science. More specifically, grad students are trying to find ways to integrate engineering with natural environments.

One of their current research projects is trying to find ways to prevent liquefaction on beaches. In lay mans terms this just means keeping houses from sinking during an earthquake. Normally, before we build on the sand we drop massive weights on the beach to compact the sand together. Unfortunately, we can't do this where there are already buildings.

So what ASU students are trying to do is find ways to make the sand under already existing houses sturdier. They did this by using already existing enzymes and microorganisms that are in the sand to create sandstone.

Normally, for this process to occur naturally, it will take hundreds of thousands of years, but with the enzymes, it will only take 1 - 2 days and by only using the microorganisms it will take 7 - 21 days.

Students haven't been able to test this under actual buildings yet because the costs are simply too high, but they are working on ways to optimize it so that they can treat massive areas for a low price!

Writing Begins

As week three comes to a close, I've started to write my research paper. I'm anticipating that this will take me up to four weeks to complete. So far I've written my section on the definitions I use in my paper and the socioeconomic affects of a growth mindset and grit in minority and poorer populations.

The next big section that I will be focusing on is the curriculum, in this section I plan to talk about the gender differences with grit and growth mindsets, creating a classroom culture, lesson plans, and how we should change the way we praise our students.

Sorry for the short blog post this week, I don't want to give too much away!

A Crucial Balance: Performance and Learning

Before I start this blog post, I want to give a few definitions of terms that I will be using throughout.

1.  Performance goals - This means that when a child is completing a task, they are solely concerned about looking smart to others.

2. Learning goals - When a child is completing a task, they are concerned with mastering the material.

3. Helpless response - This is when a child encounters failure they believe that the situation is out of their control and nothing can be done.

4. Mastery-Oriented Mindset - This is similar to a learning goal, the child, instead of focusing on performance, the child is focusing on learning and mastering the material.

In one of Dweck's experiments, she wanted to compare performance goals to learning goals. In the study, she randomly assigned students either a learning goal or a performance goal. She told the children in the performance goal group that they would be evaluated on their performance on the task. The children in the learning goal group were told that this exercise would allow them to learn some valuable things. For both groups, the problems were exactly the same, however, the results were radically different.

As the problems got difficult, children in the performance goal group began to show a helpless response. However, in the learning goal group, when faced with difficulty, instead of giving up these students stayed positive and focused on the task.

This simple experiment shows the power of goals in a classroom. If we focus on learning, students are more likely to stay positive in the face of failure. However, if we focus on performance, students will become more frustrated if they encounter difficulty.

Unfortunately, these two goals are often in conflict with each other. In the classroom, there needs to be some sort of evaluation method. Students have to be held accountable for their education through tests and quizzes. The question them becomes how can we find a balance between these two goals?

It turns out that we can still have performance goals in the classroom if we encourage a mastery-oriented mindset. In an experiment done on junior high students, Dweck and her colleagues gave students booklets that taught them how to solve new kinds of problems. On the back of each booklet, there was a short test to determine mastery of the material, a performance goal.

In the beginning of the study, they assessed which students had learning and performance goals. I'm guessing you already know the results. They found that students who had learning goals scored significantly higher on the test, showed about 50% more work than the students who had performance goals, and, according to their work, students with learning goals applied more of what they learned from the packet directly to the problems.

These concepts hopefully will allow me to work around the biggest problem in my research, time restrictions. By finding ways to create an environment where these responses are encouraged, we can help students become gritty and persevere in the face of failure.

A Potential Working Model for the Development of Grit and Growth Mindsets in Classrooms

As week two comes to a close I've gathered up most of the sources I'm going to use for my project, there are a lot of them!

One of the most interesting sources I've come across is a Brainology course created by Carol Dweck. In the article, she asks the question if certain mindsets can be taught to kids. They did this by creating a "growth mindset workshop." In the course, the students completed six computer modules, learned how they could apply these ideas to their school work, and learned about how the brain is similar to a muscle, something that can be improved through hard work.

Here is a link to one of the articles that Dweck had the children read in her course:  You Can Grow Your Intelligence New Research Shows the Brain Can Be Developed Like a Muscle

By the end of the study,  Dweck and her colleagues noticed that the math grades of the children who took the Brainology course had steadily improved. They compared this to their control group, who had taken eight courses in study skills and saw little to no improvement in their grades. This indicates that they lacked the motivation or mindset to put these skills into practice.

Unfortunately, nothing is perfect. There is conflicting research about whether or not this leads to short term or long term growth. Without follow-ups, the Brainology program made little to no positive effect. However, with follow-ups, this program proved to be an incredibly powerful tool.

This would be one of the main problems I would have to work around in my project. Seeing as it is a short-term research project I will not be able to conduct these follow-up studies months to years later. In order to counteract this, something would have to be done about the classroom environment, that is for the next blog post though!

The Importance and Application of Grit in Today's Education System

Hi, my name is Nicolas Gordon and I am a high schooler at BASIS Phoenix.

As a senior, I have the opportunity to do a Senior Project during my third trimester of my senior year. This blog will be me relaying my research and experiences during my project, "The Importance and Application of Grit in Today's Education System."

In my project I want to answer, why are some students not motivated to do well in school even if they are gifted. I have some hunches, at the moment I'm trying to find a link between academic achievement and grit, the research is promising. Additionally, I want to determine how teachers can teach this idea to their students in the classroom.

I'm going to be doing this by using the concept of grit. Angela Duckworth, one of the leading researchers on grit defines it as, "perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his or her advantage is stamina."

There are going to parts of my internship, the first part will be me writing a research paper on the concepts I discussed. Then, I will be going into classrooms to actually test my theories. 

For my internship, I will be working at Payne Hall, within the teachers college at ASU with Wendy Barnard and Megan O'Donnel. 

Thank you for reading and check back every week for more exciting discoveries!

Research, Research, and More Research (Feb. 5th - Feb. 10th)

This first week is dedicated to gathering sources and deepening my knowledge of Grit.

So far, I've come across of interesting studies. For example, I recently found a whole plethora or articles and periodicals about how socioeconomic status affects grit and what can be done to combat this.

Apparently, since children in poorer communities are more likely to be prone to increased stress and traumatic experiences, this often decreases their grit. However, in a study, researchers found that using a specific teaching style, known as growth mindset could mitigate this. This idea of teaching with a growth mindset is very interesting and I'm hanging on to it for future research.

The theory argues that there are two different types of mindsets we should be concerned with, static and growth. A static mindset is when someone views that their intelligence is fixed and is reinforced by statements like "You're smart" or "You're dumb." However, a growth mindset focuses on the idea that intelligence is not fixed and can be increased through hard work and trial and error.

This has obvious implications in the classroom. The next question I want to find the answer to is if this mindset is taught early in school (middle school) do kids retain this and does it follow them throughout their lives.

Anyways, I've got a lot more research to sift through to find what I'm looking for, but everything I have so far looks promising.