Growth Mindset

It's been almost 6 months since I've written.  And in those 6 months, University has continued to be my main focus in life.  I'm officially in the Education Program this semester and it's been awesome.  I'm taking Educational Psychology, Secondary Curriculum Instruction and Assessment (CIA, tee-hee), American Foundations of Education, Exceptional Students, and Methods II in teaching English.  Yep, it's a heavy workload but it's been manageable.  I've been creating curriculum right and left ll semester and have been analyzing my lesson plans to learn how they've been encouraging cognitive development for the age groups they've been created for.  I've been learning some really amazing things in my Educational Psychology class and some of that stuff I'm going to share on this blog because they are too good not to share.

Carol Dweck is a Psychologist who devised a theory about fixed vs. growth intelligence mindsets.  She wrote a book about it called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.  This entire theory is based on the concept that many students have that intelligence is something you are born with and therefore a person's intelligence is limited.  So, if a student with this mindset struggles with math then they feel defeated because intelligence to them is a biological thing, therefore they will never understand math so why put in any effort?  Carol Dweck says, however, that intelligence is not fixed (biological), but rather it is something that needs to be exercised and strengthened and able to grow.  She did a study with students where she divided them into 2 groups.  Group A was put through an intensive 8 week intervention program to boost their math scores that focused solely on teaching them study skills to help them find success in their math grades.  And along with teaching Group A the study skills, she also taught them that intelligence can be expanded and that it is not fixed (biological).  Group B had the same 8 week intervention program focusing on study skills, but were not taught fixed vs. growth intelligence theory.  At the end of a couple of months, students from Group A (compared against students from Group B) showed improvement in their math grades.  The only difference for these groups was the change in motivation that students experience in Group A because they were taught that their brain had the ability to grow in intelligence.  It's quite fascinating.  You can read more about this study by reading this article: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2007/pr-dweck-020707.html

Why am I excited about this?  Because this doesn't just apply to the adolescent mind.  I probably didn't mention that the study Carol Dweck performed was on Jr. High students.  How many times have you been faced with an experience you don't believe you can get through?  I know I've faced so many of those moments that I can't count them.  I want to say that I don't think that Carol Dweck's theory only applies to cognitive intelligence but also emotional intelligence.  You always hear that saying, "God doesn't give you more than you can handle," but what if He does?  I read another blog a while back and I can't for the life of me remember the name of the blog, so just realize that this idea is not original to me.  This woman, in her blog, challenged the notion that we aren't given more in this life than we can handle.  But it wasn't defeatist.  She ended her blog by saying, essentially, that God does give us more than we can handle, but He does so that we will learn to turn to Him and let Him carry the part that we can't.  That's pretty cool.  I want to add to this that I think He does give us more than we can handle, because maybe that's the point of this existence; for us to learn the valuable life lessons that we would otherwise not learn unless faced with despair, trial, hopelessness, loss, anger, and etc.  That sounds depressing and I don't mean for it to.  All I am saying is that just like growth intelligence mindset (cognitively speaking), I also believe that we have a growth emotional-intelligence mindset.

Those of us in the Adoption community have faced hardship, and we continue to face hardships.  You know what I'm talking about.  As birth-mothers and birth-fathers (they matter too), and birth-families (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.), we experience a great loss in the placement of our beloved child to another family; a family that will have complete legal authority for the child.  As parents who are looking to adopt for reasons related to fertility, they've endured loss over and over again in their attempts to grow their family.  I can't speak for adoptive children, because I'm not one, but I can only imagine some of the emotions they would face at different times in their lives, especially people who were placed for adoption during time-periods where adoption was closed and considered taboo.  That kind of loss (for all of us) is deep and difficult to navigate, but we are navigating it and that is powerful.  Don't limit yourself in the amazing things that you can accomplish, but most importantly don't doubt yourself in the emotional depth that you can achieve when you face something that feels too big.  You can get through it.  We all can.