Advantages And Disadvantages Of Fixed Mindset

Have you ever struggled in school because you didn’t understand the material that the teachers were presenting? Students in the United States have been raised on the idea of having a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset is when students believe that their abilities cannot be developed, they are just stuck where they are at intellectually and can never advance. However, a growth mindset allows the students to believe that their ability to learn and grow can be developed through hard work. Students need a growth mindset to create equality in classes, to succeed, and to become smarter students.

Currently, in the United States teachers with fixed mindsets have created inequality in classes. In “Brainology” Carol Dweck says, “Much of the harm that stereotypes do comes from the fixed-mindset message they send”. For example, Ripley talks about a teacher in Washington D.C. that stressed about the background and

disadvantages that her students have which made her feel sorry for them.

Her students had performed farther below grade level that year. In “The Smartest Kids In The World” Ripley says, “They’d performed worse than other low-income kids who’d started the year at the same level in the very same city”(Ripley 165). This shows that her fixed mind set prevented her ability to see past their disadvantages outside of the class. With her only seeing the student’s disadvantages she felt like the students were a lost cause and that there was nothing she could do to help them improve their education. When a teacher goes into class with a fixed mindset then her students are the ones that pay the ultimate price because they are unable to be as proficient as the other students who have a teacher with a growth mindset. On the contrary, for students to have a growth mindset teachers need to create equality in classes. For instance, a teacher by the name of Vuorinen didn’t like the idea of labeling his

students, because he didn’t want to feel sorry for them and it would also get in the way of his teaching. He explains that if he were to think about his students that way he would give them better scores on their work. In “The Smartest Kids In The World” Ripley says, “Empathy for kids’ home lives could strip the rigor from his classroom. I want to think about them as all the same” (Ripley 162). In this case the teacher is creating equality in his class by seeing past the student’s background which allows students to equally surpass their ability to learn with the support of their teachers.
A fixed mindset doesn’t allow students to embrace failure in order for them to succeed. In “Brainology” Carol Dweck says, “But those with fixed mindsets were more likely to say that they would feel dumb, study less the next time, and seriously consider cheating.” In this case students that have a fixed mindset give up once they fail a test; because they believe that there is no way that they can learn from their mistakes so they take the easy way out. This mindset sets students up for failure in the long run whether it’s for college or even work related because they don’t want to accept the fact that they need to study more than others. As a result a student cannot allow themselves to succeed with a fixed mindset if they are not willing to except that failure plays a big role in it. However, a growth mindset is different in the way that it allows students to succeed by embracing failure. In the article “Brainology” Carol Dweck says “Those with growth mindsets reported that, after a setback in school, they would simply study more or study differently the next time”.