Why Mindset Matters: My Experience with Fixed and Growth Mindsets in Education

In her article "Caution: Praise Can Be Dangerous," Carol Dweck talks about how our beliefs about our abilities can either help us or hold us back. If we have a fixed mindset, we believe that our intelligence and talents are set in stone and we can't change them. But if we have a growth mindset, we believe that we can develop our abilities with practice and hard work.

For me personally, I've noticed that I have a fixed mindset when it comes to math. I often tell myself that I'm just not naturally good at it and I'll never be able to understand it. But when it comes to learning new languages, I have a growth mindset. I believe that I can improve my language skills with practice and effort.

I think my fixed mindset about math was probably formed from my early experiences and negative messages I received. Back when I was in high school, math was always a struggle for me, and I got bad grades on my assignments a lot of the time. It made me feel like I just wasn't cut out for math and that some people are just naturally good at it. To make matters worse, I feel like our culture often puts too much emphasis on innate talent rather than the hard work and effort that goes into learning a skill, which only reinforced my fixed mindset about math.

On the other hand, I think my growth mindset about learning new languages comes from having had a lot of positive experiences and supportive messaging. I've always been really interested in learning new languages, and I've had the chance to travel to different countries and immerse myself in different cultures. Being in those situations, I've seen firsthand how practicing a language can really improve your skills, and that progress can be made with effort and persistence. What's really helped is getting positive feedback and encouragement from others when I've made progress in a new language, which has only reinforced my growth mindset when it comes to language learning.