Growth Mindset - Faculty Focus | University of North Texas

Best Practices: What growth mindset strategies lead to a sense of belonging and self-efficacy for students?

Professional Development: What UNT professional development opportunities support growth mindset, retention, and student wellbeing?

Syllabus Development: How can the syllabus be used as a tool for creating a sense of belonging for students?

Mindset Assessments: How can beliefs about the malleability of intelligence, status of learning, and attitude about struggle and failure be measured?

Research: What studies provide a measurable effect of mindset on student success?

Best Practices

A Growth Mindset Approach to Establishing Expectations: Ensure your messaging conveys a consistent growth mindset throughout the term.
Growing the Growth Mindset: Best Practices for College Instructors: Learn Stanford University's tips and takeaways for mindset pedagogy.
Meaning Makers: Cultivating Growth Mindset Environments: Uncover successful strategies for implicit and explicit mindset communications from three separate controlled studies.
Mindset Kit: Select online lessons and practices for fostering adaptive beliefs about learning.
MIT Teaching + Learning Lab: Growth Mindset: Model growth mindset in the classroom by employing practices recommended by MIT's Teaching + Learning Lab.

Professional Development

Cultivating a Growth Mindset: Learn how a culture of growth mindset within organizations is the foundation for resilience and persistence from UNT System's Organizational Development and Engagement.
Fostering a Growth Mindset in Higher Education: Develop an understanding of mindset and the impact it can have on students and faculty.
Growth Mindset: Sample ideas for encouraging student success through activities that encourage a growth mindset.

Syllabus Development

The UNT Syllabus: Access UNT Course Syllabi Requirements Policy and the DSI CLEAR Syllabus Template. The syllabus template is a development tool that provides a model for presenting with standards and procedures with growth mindset language.
First Day Toolkit: Utilize the Student Experience Project's First Day Toolkit to revise syllabi and other communications students receive to create support systems that foster a positive student experience. Apply practical tips for developing syllabi by completing the Student Experience Project's online module.

Mindset Assessments

Measure mindset beliefs by accessing:
Mindset Assessment from MindsetWorks
The Mindset Survey from Positive Psychology Practitioner's Toolkit

Research

Learning Environments Research Brief: Read “Leveraging Mindset Science to Design Educational Environments that Nurture People's Natural Drive to Learn.”
Growth Mindset in the Classroom: Read "Towards Fostering Growth Mindset Classrooms: Identifying Teaching Behaviors That Signal Instructors' Fixed and Growth Mindsets Beliefs to Students"
Growth Mindset Post COVID-19 Pandemic: Read "Rethinking the Multidimensionality of Growth Mindset Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review and Framework Proposal"
Motivation & Engagement: Read "Teachers With a Growth Mindset Are Motivated and Engaged: The Relationships Among Mindsets, Motivation, and Engagement in Teaching"

Literature, Podcasts, and Videos

Read Mindset: The New Psychology of Success to weed out false growth mindset messaging and apply growth mindset to the culture within classrooms and groups within an organization.

Listen to The Psychology Podcast: The Latest Science of Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck to discover the effect of teacher mindset on mindset effectiveness.

Watch Carol Dweck's TED Talk and/or Talks at Google: The Growth Mindset to learn the positive and negative consequences of both mindsets.

Read Challenging Mindset: Why a Growth Mindset Makes a Difference in Learning and What to Do When It Doesn't to examine how mindset theory works and explore the relationship between mindset and grades.