What is Your Mindset?

What is YOUR Mindset?

I was attending yet another meeting last week when my ears beheld an interesting concept regarding assessment. I thought about it, and decided there was some merit to the comments I had directed toward my person. I decided to delve a bit deeper on the topic, which has led to this wretchedly beautiful column in this month’s Connections Newsletter. What was this concept, you ask? Well, it involves the term mindset.

The term “mindset” can and has been defined in a variety of ways, including… The Oxford American Dictionary defines mindset as “an established set of attitudes held by someone.” Another definition from dictionary.com is “A fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person's responses to and interpretations of situations.”

Another way to look at this is “a set of assumptions, methods or notations held by one or more people or groups of people which is so established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people or groups to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviors, choices, or tools.” We’ve now entered the realm of cognitive biases!

Given my background and training as a Psychologist, I naturally did some research on the topic, discovering a plethora of research on mindset, including developmental research and research on terrorism among others. I’ll focus on Dr. Carol Dweck’s book Mindset. She proposes, based upon decades of research, that we all have either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.

A fixed mindset means simply that one is of the belief that we have a talent for something or we do not. We can either do something or we cannot; there is no real middle ground. Why put forth effort and energy on a topic when I ultimately will not be able to master it? A growth mindset, on the other hand, posits that anything and everything is possible. If you have an interest in something or have to learn something for work, you can and will do it. A fixed mindset will lead one to believe, “My intelligence is my intelligence and I cannot change it” while a growth mindset will lead one to believe “I can always significantly change how intelligent I am.”

So, I ask again… WHAT IS YOUR MINDSET?

When the talk turns to assessment, which are you? Are you fixed and rigid, unwilling to even try to learn and/or demonstrate assessment know-how? Are you fixed and rigid, doing assessment plans only because you have to? Are you fixed and rigid, refusing to even think of incorporating new and improved techniques? Are you fixed and rigid, refusing to even hear what others have to say about assessment because you’ve been doing it for 5, 10, or even 20 years and there is nothing YOU can tell me I don’t already know. If so, you have a fixed mindset!

Conversely, are you one of those who is open to learning and incorporating new ideas and techniques? Are you one of those who recognize that things change and you may need to change with them? Are you one of those who may freely admit that, intelligent though I am, I do not know everything about everything and am willing to listen and learn from others? If so, you have a growth mindset!

Your mindset can have a dramatic impact upon your performance. Back in the day when I worked formally and informally as a tutor and mentor to other college students, one of the lessons I tried to impart was the impact that mindset could have on your successfully completing a course. For example, a student may come to you and say, “I am terrible at math and I’ll never be able to learn it.” True or not, this statement indicates that the student has essentially given up before ever stepping in the classroom. Their performance will suffer accordingly. The same can be said of assessment. Those who do assessment “only because I have to” will likely not do a very good job of assessment.

Experience has shown me that many people have a fixed mindset regarding assessment. Your response to that last statement, by the way, was denial! J What we need to do is integrate assessment into our everyday daily activities. What? We already do that? Okay then, so why do we have the fixed mindset?

We need to not only do assessment, but to clearly document what and how we do it. At the abovementioned meeting, I heard another faculty member say, “Oh, we do this, this, and this, but we just don’t include it in our assessment plan.” The golden rule, as many of you know, states that, “If it is not written down, it does not exist and never happened.” Accrediting bodies, such as the HLC, want documentation- literally 10 years worth- to support what is written in the report we’ll be sending them soon. What of your program’s accrediting body?

We need to change our mindsets regarding assessment. Yes, assessment is “required” of us. However, the ultimate goal and purpose of assessment is to improve our student’s access to necessary materials and improve their ability to learn what they need to know in order to be successful in their varied endeavors. We should not be “going through the motions” because we have to; rather, we should all be concerned about our students and whether or not they are learning what they need to know- those three to five things we absolutely want to ensure they know when they walk out the door and down the aisle at graduation.

I end this article with the same question you were confronted with at the beginning, “WHAT IS YOUR MINDSET?” and the point that, “YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR MINDSET!”