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Student-Centered Learning is a pedagogical approach that puts the needs, interests, and goals of students at the center, allowing these aspects to drive instruction. It is organized around four principles: Flexible Structures, Assessment for Learning, Authentic Experiences, and Student Agency.

The Innovation in Practice Toolkit focuses on the core principles of Student-Centered Learning (SCL). Each core principle section contains:

a definition of the principle;

key considerations for educators to support their growth in that area;

an exploration of each of the practices that embody that principle;

innovative teacher-developed tools (lessons, activities, units, and more) that exemplify each practice.

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Student-Centered Learning is a pedagogical approach that puts the needs, interests, and goals of students at the center, allowing these aspects to drive instruction. It is organized around four principles: Flexible Structures, Assessment for Learning, Authentic Experiences, and Student Agency. The Innovation in Practice Toolkit focuses on the core principles of Student-Centered Learning (SCL).

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When students are given space to tinker, overcome challenges, and explore independently and joyfully, opportunities to build up resilience and perseverance abound.

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Cultivating Growth Mindsets in Classroom Makerspaces

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How can I help my students have a growth mindset?

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How to encourage a growth mindset in the classroom

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How to encourage a growth mindset in the classroom

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Implications for your classroom and Tips

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Our mind can go two ways. Either it thinks it can do better, or it thinks you are doomed. That's the biggest difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.

In this post, I'll explain both concepts and give you some tips on how to encourage a growth mindset in your classroom.

Fixed mindset versus growth mindset

Mindset

A mindset is an attitude, a disposition, a mood, an intention. It's the way you think about something and the way you want to achieve something. Your mindset is the reason for failure. Your mindset is the reason for success. Your mindset holds your way of thinking and your opinions.

One person can have different mindsets. But when it comes to success, you can distinguish two important mindsets. One of them pushes you into the mud, the other gets you out and going again. The differences between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset can be compared with nature and nurture.

The fixed mindset

A fixed mindset binds you by your personality. People with a fixed mindset believe that nature decided that you are good at something or you are not. That's it. They believe you can't change the way you are, what you can do or can't do. It's fixed. It's just the way they are. A fixed mindset is the most common and the most harmful.

So, what's so bad about a fixed mindset? The fixed mindset believes trouble is devastating. If you aren't that good at something, any setback or troubles will get you to quit.

The growth mindset

Dream, belief and love. Basically the bests words to summarize a growth mindset. Dream big, belief in it and achieve what you love, while loving what you do. A growth mindset is a positive thing. It has no strings, no holdbacks, no limits.

People with a growth mindset believe anyone can be good at anything, because your abilities are entirely due to your own actions. Skills come from practice.

Implications for in the classroom

It's important that you encourage your students to accept challenges, to go further and further, to exceed themselves. That's not possible if your students are stuck in a fixed mindset. Those students will fall behind quicker than others.

Knowing how to distinguish a fixed mindset from a growth mindset is therefore very important. Take a look at these examples. You might recognize them in your students.

Recognizing a fixed mindset

Here are a few characteristics of someone with a fixed mindset and someone with a growth mindset:

In a fixed Mindset

In a growth mindset

you want to hide your flaws so you're not judged or labeled a failure.

your flaws are on your TO DO list of things to improve.

your true passion is a hidden inherent thing.

you try mastering valuable skills regardless of mood, knowing passion and purpose come from doing great work, which comes from expertise and experience.

failures define you.

failures are temporary setbacks.

you stick to what you know to keep up your confidence.

you keep up your confidence by always pushing into the unfamiliar, to make sure you're always learning.

you believe if you're in love with someone, you should share all of each other's views, and everything should just come naturally.

you believe a lasting relationship comes from effort and working through inevitable differences.

it's all about the outcome. If you fail, you think all effort was wasted.

it's all about the process, so the outcome hardly matters.

7 tips for developing a growth mindset in your classroom

1. It takes success to create a growth mindset

Students with a fixed mindset and bad grades don't get up easily. They will start to neglect their courses with a bad grade, because it's just not there. They don't have it in them. That's where it's very important to keep motivating your students.

Once they've achieved a success story, they'll crave for more. Success feeds people. Their fixed mindset will see that their efforts do help. They'll start to see that their efforts can make them grow. At that point, they'll start to think differently and develop a growth mindset.

2. Setting micro-goals

In order to achieve success, it can help to set micro-goals to encourage a student's consistent progress. Like I said, several small "wins" or success stories can lead to a growth mindset.

Setting micro-goals toward the big goal is very important to keep students motivated during their way up.

3. Praise efforts, not intelligence

Motivate student by encouraging them. Praise their efforts and the strategies they used to solve a problem. Praise their perseverance and their hard work.

Here's something you shouldn't do: praise their intelligence. Why? Praise for intelligence can undermine motivation and performance. Children praised for intelligence view intelligence as a fixed trait. They see themselves as smart people, in every way. When they face a failure, they will show less task persistence, less task enjoyment and an overall worse performance.

4. Empower students to ask questions

Eventually, students will all reach a point where they can't figure out a solution. This is a good time for them to ask for help. If they dare. It's important to encourage your students to ask questions.

People with a growth mindset are more concerned about growing knowledge and skills than keeping up appearance trying to look smart but not asking any questions.

Students who are interacting with you and ask you questions are more eager to learn and grow.

5. Forget about grades

The intention of a growth mindset is to care about the process, not the outcome. Grades focus too much on the outcome. In a fixed mindset students will forget about their effort, once they see a bad grade. They will believe that their effort is wasted because they got a setback. It's hard to pull students away from grades, because they study for those grades. Or did you think they learn for fun?

That's where the growth mindset refers to. Learning to get better. Learning because it's challenges them intrinsically. With proper feedback and formative assessment instead of summative assessment, a growth mindset can be achieved. The value of learning should be prioritized.

6. The word "Yet".

A mindset can be changed by just one short, but important word: "yet". In a fixed mindset, your students will probably complain about an exercise. "It's too difficult, I can't complete this, I can't remember this". Now add "yet". "I can't complete this, YET. I can't remember this, YET"

This isn't just your task. Parents have to start motivating their children from when they are still young. Children replicate their parents' behavior, so they have to be a decent role model.

This occurred to me when a friend told me about one of her toddlers in school. Toddlers would complain that they couldn't go to the toilet by themselves, or bind their shoelaces. And we see that as absolutely normal. Until she came across that one toddler that corrected her. The toddler asked her if he could get crafty. She told the toddler that he couldn't do that. "No", said the toddler. "We can't do this YET". Turns out his parents always told him to keep trying to get better at something.

As it is bad enough that she got corrected by a 5 year old, she realized that everyone of her toddlers, including herself, had a fixed mindset.

7. Cooperative classroom activities

Assign classroom activities that involve cooperative work, rather than competitive or individualistic work. Students tend to be more motivated and successful when working in groups. Students feel responsible for the group and obliged to try their best. That way they will experience the positive feedback loop of effort and success and therefore develop a growth mindset.

So, that's it for this post. I hope you've learned more about the fixed and growth mindset and what to do to encourage a growth mindset in your classroom to achieve student success. Spread the word by sharing this post. Thanks!

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How to encourage a growth mindset in the classroom

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Our mind can go two ways. Either it thinks it can do better, or it thinks you are doomed. That's the biggest difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. In this post, I'll explain both concepts and give you some tips on how to encourage a growth mindset in your classroom.

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Guiding Students to Develop a Flexible Mindset 2022

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ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF A FLEXIBLE MINDSET- tools to develop flexible mindsets.

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The flexible mindset framework emphasizes metacognition and can help students understand the process of learning.

Robert Neubecker / The iSpot

You're already familiar with growth mindsets and the importance of belief systems that reframe notions of intelligence and our responses to failures. But you may have struggled with how to convince your students that they are smart while encouraging them to persist in the face of setbacks. Mindsets are more than a poster on the wall. We can't simply tell our students to "get grit."

Flexible mindsets go beyond growth mindsets by leveraging both the self-awareness and strategies needed to actualize a growth mindset. A flexible mindset is the interaction between self-awareness, adaptive strategy use, and perseverance that empowers learners to evolve and become self-directed.

Essential Elements of a Flexible Mindset

There are three key components to the flexible mindsets approach that feed each other and propel students along the path of directing their own learning journey.

Metacognition: At the core of all deeper learning is our awareness of and ability to reflect upon our own thinking and learning, or metacognition. Self-directed learners are driven by metacognitive insights, those "uh-oh" moments when we notice that what we're doing isn't working and engage in deep self-reflection about our own learning.

Positive thinking: Upon this foundation we can build I can mindset messages that tell us we can always learn and get smarter and there is value in mistakes and not knowing. The flexible mindsets framework differs from growth mindsets by being explicit about fusing our encouragement to keep trying with direct instruction and feedback about adaptive strategy use.

Executive function strategies: In our model, executive function (EF) is a set of interrelated processes such as planning, working memory, self-monitoring, and thinking flexibly. We need EF processes to understand what we need to do, figure out how to get there, and make it happen. Simply put, it's how we get stuff done.

This flexible mindset framework provides strategies you can use to give your students the tools they need to learn how to learn. Metacognitive insights and executive function strategies are the perfect partners to propel your students beyond growth mindsets.

5 Key Tools to Develop Flexible Mindsets

1. Build trusting relationships. We can begin by examining our own cultural attitudes, values, fears, and beliefs about children; how these affect our actions; and how our previous life experiences can influence current behaviors. Trust follows with the intentional use of language that tells students we are authentic, receptive, solution oriented, reliable, and committed to their needs. This lays the groundwork for co-learning and other key drivers of flexible mindsets.

2. Ground our learning in metacognition. This focuses attention on self-awareness, the perspectives of others, and what works when. Flexible mindsets extend beyond traditional measures of metacognition by building self-awareness around capacities such as curiosity, adaptability, critical thinking, complex problem-solving, and creativity.

3. Teach about the brain and mistakes. Children as young as 4 can begin to explore the brain and how we learn. Students at all levels can be taught to describe simple functions of the brain and identify their personal learning-related strengths and areas for improvement. Educators can be equipped with the science of learning: how stress can hijack the prefrontal cortex and what happens in the brain when we make mistakes.

This paves the way for us to normalize mistakes, teach students the value of not knowing, and model how to grapple with material to make it their own.

4. Provide direct instruction in learning strategies. Flexible mindsets require students to use effective strategies that are based on current evidence about how the brain learns. These strategies need to be taught purposefully, directly, and frequently for students to experience the benefits of studying smarter and appreciate the value of focusing not only on the content of what they are learning but also on how they are learning. This helps students buy into the effort required to learn and apply new strategies.

Most students have never been taught how they learn, and the strategies they come up with on their own are often ineffective. The most straightforward way to teach students about strategies is by modeling, labeling, and sharing a variety of actual strategies being used in the classroom.

5. Give feedback based on strategy use. As opposed to effort only, strategy-based feedback is specific enough that it can be measured, worked on, and used to track progress. We define flexible mindset feedback as responses that are solution-oriented, empathetic, and targeted at specific strategies. This feedback encourages us to try a different approach to a problem. Feedback is powerful when learners reflect on questions such as What strategies did I try? What am I doing that is working and not working? How many attempts did I make?

Ultimately, if we believe in equity, solutions can be found in equipping all learners with the tools they need to respond resiliently and adaptively to uncertainty and adversity. It's time to be intentional in preparing students to be curious, make mistakes, and take risks for learning.

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Guiding Students to Develop a Flexible Mindset

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The flexible mindset framework emphasizes metacognition and can help students understand the process of learning. Robert Neubecker / The iSpot You're already familiar with growth mindsets and the importance of belief systems that reframe notions of intelligence and our responses to failures.

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Use these to reflect individually in a place that is visual to everyone. / Para usar de forma individual, en un lugar que es visible para todos.

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Reflection is a vital part of student learning. If students don't reflect, they can't learn and grow. As with anything in life, if we don't know what we are doing wrong or why we are doing it wrong, there's no way to get better at it. Learning at school is no different. Here are some strategies to try with your students to help develop the skill of self-reflection.

Self-reflection can be a great tool for students to build confidence and improve in a variety of areas, but they need your guidance.
What should students be reflecting on?

Students need to learn to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. Not just academic strengths and weaknesses but also personality and character traits. Students should be encouraged to reflect on their effort and their motivation.

A great curriculum to help students develop grit is Making The Effort™ - a proven effective program that teaches students the value of effort in attaining success in work, school, and social settings.

Teach the Language of Self-Reflection
Empower students to self-reflect by teaching them vocabulary that lends itself to that reflection. Practice role-playing, and explicitly teach words that students don't know that help students express their thoughts. Give students sentence starters to talk or write about, such as "I wonder....," or "When ____ happened I felt ____ and I did ____."

Activities to Stimulate Reflection

Here are ideas to help students remember what they did and evaluate their outcomes.

Sketch or Draw
Have students draw what they've learned or how they feel. Having a piece of art they can view is an excellent way to reflect on in the future. For example, if a child is very frustrated with a new concept, they could draw a picture of how they feel at that time. Over time as the concept becomes easier, they could draw another illustration of how they feel after making progress. They'll see how far they have come and recognize how their hard work and effort paid off.

Make it Fun
Make reflection a game. Just like with any other skill, self-reflection takes a lot of practice, and kids are usually not very interested in rote memorization or repetitive drills, so make it fun! For example, you could put reflection questions on a dice, use apps, or play games to help students practice answering reflection questions after ordering or even before a lesson.

Portfolio
Portfolios lend themselves to student reflection. They have the added benefit of being available for parents to reflect on their kids' work and to help their children reflect on their work. Things to include in a portfolio include student work samples or graphs that show anything from student behavior to growth in academic areas. When children look at their portfolio and see the growth they have made, it reinforces the value of self-reflection.

Journaling
Journals have many of the same benefits portfolios except that they get into the heart of what a student is honestly thinking. When children journal, they can share their thoughts and feelings at the moment and then look back at them later. Even younger children or those who are unable to write independently can draw pictures, or they can have someone dictate for them.

Add Active and Collaborative Reflection Approaches

Students shouldn't be restricted to only working alone for self-reflection, as peers can help. As can examples from leaders like their teachers.

Reflection buddy
Assign students a reflection buddy in the classroom. This is a student who they can talk with about their work or the progress in class. It could be a student in the class or a cross-age tutor. When grouping children in this way, be mindful of personalities and group children together in a way that they can build trust with one another. Also, give them a structure for answering reflection questions.

Model for students
Teachers self-reflect regularly. Good teachers know that their growth and improvement is never done. See our last article with strategies for personal reflection to improve your teaching.

Think out loud for students so they can hear your process. Say things such as: "That's not my best work, I could do better," or "I worked hard on that. I'm proud of my efforts." This helps show students that you're using failures to growing and learning.

Come Back to Previous Learning
Don't underestimate the value of spiral learning. Don't just teach a concept one time and never talk about it again. Instead, review old ideas time and again. See something in the news or online you'd think would be relevant to an old topic? Try these strategies to use pop culture in the classroom to boost your students' engagement. Doing this not only increases retention but also helps them to self-reflect and see their growth.

Growth mindset
Foster a growth mindset in your students. What is a growth mindset? It's the idea that we are always growing and changing and improving. It's opposite; a fixed mindset states that people are inherently smart or dumb. When your students develop a growth mindset, they can improve and increase their learning no matter where they start.

Give It Time

Be patient with your students. Self-reflection is a skill that even many adults have not mastered. It will take a lot of time, a lot of modeling, a lot of different activities, and a lot of practice. Some students will get it faster than others, and that's OK. It's a skill that takes time to develop, but well worth it!
By: Amy Curletto Amy has been teaching for 12 years in grades K-2. She has a bachelor's degree in Early Childhood and Elementary Education and also has endorsements in reading and ESL. Besides education, her other passion is writing and she has always dreamed of being a writer. She lives in Utah with her husband, her 3 daughters, and her miniature schnauzer. She enjoys reading, knitting, and camping.

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Strategies & Activities To Teach Students How To Use Self-Reflection

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Self-reflection can help students build confidence as it helps them see their growth and milestones reached. Additionally, it can open up opportunities for more growth develop grit as students learn to recognize areas that they can work on. Here are tips and activities to help spur self-reflection in your students.

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One of my favorite reflection lessons is the Reflect 'n' Sketch activity. When I began teaching, I only saw my students as readers and writers. I could see their struggles and successes within my subject alone. Then, after teaching tone and mood to a group of eighth graders, I asked students to draw a picture of the mood of a poem. Through this activity, I saw my struggling readers excel with beautiful artwork. I realized that my subject, English, is not the only skill to be had. Many of my students excelled in other areas, especially those who struggled in my class. This experience inspired my Reflect 'n' Sketch activity. This gives students the option to draw their reflections on a project or activity. Guiding questions guide their artwork, and students can still deliver deep reflections with a medium that inspires them.

5. Reflection Vlog

I tried this for the first time this past fall, and my students absolutely rave about the Reflection Vlog. I gave students the guiding questions found within the Reflect 'n' Sketch activity, and asked them to create a personal Vlog. After each major project or assessment, I asked students to add to their Vlog. Some students chose to upload their videos to YouTube, and others preferred the privacy of simply creating an iMovie or Windows Moviemaker video. With this medium of reflection, students were free to speak about their work, display their work, or add videos and pictures of the process of creating their work. Not only did students find this engaging, but they found that they were able speak freely about their learning. They have commented that they did not feel bound by words, grammar, structure, and organization within the reflection, so they felt that they were better able to express their truest feelings. I can attest to this as I watched their Vlog videos. They opened up more through this 'on camera' experience, than in any other reflection technique!

6. Analyze your work from the teacher's perspective.

When introducing a writing assignment, I would often provide exemplars, or mentor texts, and ask students to assess these using the rubric that would assess their own work. Not only did students better understand the rubric, they better understood the expectations for the writing. This inspired me to have students assess their own work in a similar manner. I ask students to assess their own work from my perspective. This can be via rubric or by simply providing feedback that they believe I would give. Once students get to know me, this feedback can be eerily correct! This helps students to see their work from a new perspective, and often will encourage students to make revisions before they submit their final work!

7. Scrapbook

I have asked my students to create a scrapbook reflection on larger projects; this is especially effective for group work. Students take pictures of the process of their work, students working in their group roles, and of their final project. Each group member can showcase their own pictures or drawings of the groups work. Then students can reflect on their roles within the group, the process of collaboration, their impact on the groups success/failures, and on the learning that was derived from the project's completion. Some students get very creative with this process, and truly enjoy this as much (or more) than the project itself!

8. The Cube of Reflection

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10 Unique and Creative Reflection Techniques & Lessons for the Secondary Student - TeachWriting.org

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As educators, we know how critical reflection is to the learning process. Getting students to reflect- deeply and meaningfully- is often one of the most challenging lessons we teach. I have found that both my middle school and high school students will often scoff at these reflection activities, pro

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Stimulate your students with these 10+ creative self assessment ideas

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As a teacher, you have to give constructive feedback all the time. And if you’re really giving so much meaningful feedback, then, that’s terrific! But not all teachers have the time to give students feedback all the time. It’s nice to know that giving feedback and grading your students is not the on…