Fixed mindset people avoid situations where they have to perform
Reduces opportunities for practice and feedback (essential for learning)
Exercise: Does mindset matter?
Think: What kind of mindset do you have about different areas? Is there anything you believe you are “not naturally talented” at? Mindset often varies in different areas – someone might have a fixed mindset with respect to artistic ability, but a growth mindset with respect to computing skill. Then, think about your learners. How might a learner’s mindset about computational skill influence their learning in a workshop setting?
Pair: Discuss your thoughts about the influence of mindset in a workshop. Try to come up with a few different ways or situations in which mindset might be relevant.
Share: A few thoughts in the shared document
This exercise should take about 5 minutes.
Praise influences mindset
Performance based: “Great job”
Often combined with language which supports fixed mindset
“You must be very smart”
Effort based: “You must have worked very hard”
Helps transition to growth mindset
Improvement based: “You’re doing so much better than last time”
Reinforces growth mindset
Ability to improve with effort
Exercise: Choosing our praises
Since we’re so used to being praised for our performance, it can be challenging to change the way we praise our learners.
Which of these are examples of performance-based, effort-based, or improvement-based praise?
I like the way you tried a couple of different strategies to solve that problem.
You’re getting really good at that. Keep up the hard work!
You’re really good at that.
That was a hard problem. You didn’t get the right answer, but look at how much you learned trying to solve it!
Errors are essential to learning
Avoidance of making errors is a barrier to learning
Positive error framing presents errors as integral part of learning
Use them as teaching opportunities (live coding - how to debug)
Errors provide learning opportunities, not negative consequences
Exercise: Helping learners learn from mistakes
A learner at your workshop asks for your help with an exercise and shows you their attempt at solving it.
You see they’ve made an error that shows they misunderstand something fundamental about the lesson (for example, in the shell lesson, they forgot to put a space between ls and the name of the directory they are looking at).
What would you say to the learner?
Perseverance predicts success
Grit is an essential trait in learning
Willing to fail if it gets them closer to goal
Learners with grit are more successful in life
Grit can be learned. Help learners obtain grit by
sharing your experiences of struggle
promoting perseverance (praise improvement)
sharing passion
emphasise long-term goals
Exercise: How Are You Gritty?
Think of a time when learning something was difficult for you, or you made a mistake that seemed silly or embarrassing.
How did you motivate yourself to continue learning?
How did it feel to persist in the face of challenge?
How do you feel now about your capabilities in this area?
In the shared document, describe how you could use this story to illustrate the importance of grit for your learners.
Habits of lifelong learners
Being a lifelong learner is good for your job propects
non-routine problem solving
able to focus on cognitively demanding tasks
Lifelong learning results from growth mindset
Emphasise help-seeking behaviour as positive
Show that we as instructors
are life-long learners
don’t know everything!
Key points
Growth mindset and grit promote learning by making effort a positive thing
Presenting errors as essential to learning helps learners to learn from their mistakes
Lifelong learners aren’t embarrassed to ask for help