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!
Its really fascinating to see that motivation can really improve someones grades rather than just learning how to study properly. This Brainology program seems interesting, but you can't keep teaching kids forever about this "growth mindset". How long do you think it would take for the "growth mindset" to be ingrained into these kids so that they don't have to keep following up on this program to keep their motivation intact? I would assume that if they kept following up with the kids then eventually the "growth mindset" would be instilled in them forever in which they don't have to keep doing this Brainology program for them to see success any more.
ReplyDeleteYa, the end goal is to teach these kids this type of mindset so that they carry it throughout their lives. The way I see it, children shouldn't have to take this course indefinitely, but these concepts need to be reinforced in the classroom. My theory right now is that if we have a classroom environment that reinforces these concepts then follow ups and taking this Brainology course more than once won't be needed. I'm not sure how long it would take to help kids understand and embrace a growth mindset since every child is different.
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