Welcome everyone, 

Thank you watching our video about our Growth Mindset faculty intervention!  Through this video we hope to share some of the critical work from the Florida-Caribbean Louis Stokes Regional Center of Excellence. The FL-C LSRCE leverages the strengths of Santa Fe College  (a community college) and the University of the Virgin Islands (a HBCU) to approach the unique needs of the students served and the faculty that teach. The Center has been developing, implementing, and evaluating customized Growth Mindset interventions for students and faculty at 6 partner institutions. With the onset of COVID-19, we transitioned our training to virtual and challenged our faculty to model growth mindset strategies and become a Growth Mindset Ambassador to their campuses. Focus group data from this amazing experience is being analyzed now to understand the impact and gains for faculty members.

We would love some feedback on the following:

1) The current Growth Mindset interventions have primarily focused on k-12 students. What are your thoughts on its transferability to higher education students and faculty?

2) Do you think a focus on HBCU and community college STEM faculty helps address issues in the STEM pipeline and URM inclusion? How and why do you think these institutions are important access points?

3) What suggestions would you give for sustaining faculty support and training in Growth Mindset beyond the grant?

Thanks again, and enjoy the showcase!

This is terrific! (Carol Dweck was my PhD advisor, and I also do research on students' mindsets.) There are really exciting recent studies coming out that show the benefits of faculty growth mindsets for students of color (Canning et al., 2019; Muenks et al., 2020), so promoting growth mindsets for faculty is so important. What are your next steps for this research after the focus group data?

In too much of STEM education students believe they  either know the answer of they don't or they are good at the subject or they are not.  They do not have a sense that they can learn.  As I understand it, a growth mind set is to make students realize that they can learn  and become better at the topic at hand.  I think that design as practiced in technology and engineering is a good way to instill growth mind set.  One can start with a mediocre design of a product to do a task.  The students can redesign the product to do the task better or even to have the product become more versatile.  Since there is no one correct answer,  students are measured on their ability to improve the product.  Using the technological design as a starting point, I think that there is evidence that students gain confidence in their ability to figure things out in other disciplines.   Do you have metrics both for teachers and for students for judging the success of your efforts?  What would you lie to see teachers do in classrooms?  What would you expect students  to be able to do?    This is a project worth pursuing. 

Such important work! Great job!

This is excellent!  Do you envision the Growth Mindset ambassadors being used as regional ambassadors, so that they could train other faculty from nearby institutions, not just their own institutions? 

Dr. Cummings & Team,

Thank you all for sharing this work through the STEM for all Showcase! Our AGEP Alliance work includes in our model an intervention for current and future faculty on how to incorporate growth mindset perspectives into their mentoring at the doctoral level. We are also taking the k-12 work on growth mindset and applying the knowledge and skills in a post-post-secondary space, but doing so outside of the classroom and into research spaces at a Research Intensive Institution and two Primarily Undergraduate institutions in collaboration with a Federally Funded Research and Development Center.

It is exciting to see a team working on the application of growth mindset strategies in the classroom as well. I look forward to learning more about the resources developed by the group, the findings that come out of this work. 

Thank you for sharing this important work Dr. Cummings. The relationships among capacity to struggle forward to gain mastery in STEM, sense of belonging in STEM and identity beliefs about oneself as a STEM scholar are complex. I look forward to reading your results.

Exciting to hear about the incorporation of growth mindset in fostering curiosity among students. It looks like our projects are thinking about similar issues related to building confidence and persistence of students in STEM fields. My team and I are identifying alternative conceptions students have in environmental programs as a way to integrate new knowledge, boost confidence and motivation, and increase the likelihood that students will complete their degree programs. Unfortunately we don't have any community colleges or HBCUs but hope to integrate such institutions into future projects!

Thank you Dr. Cummings and team for introducing such an engaging topic through your research video. I believe that community colleges in particular have a unique advantage in addressing access issues in the STEM pipeline. In my initial research of access and equity in Computer Science (CS) education, I have found that many states do not require CS coursework for their K-12 schools (Ryoo et al., 2013; Lambert, 2018; Lambert, 2019). School districts with greater resources have more leverage to offer such coursework compared to their counterparts with fewer resources. This presents a dilemma for students who may have an interest in CS-related careers but lack foundational knowledge in CS coursework as a result of not having access to the subject prior to college.

The community college could serve as a bridge to connect students to course options that may have been lacking in their secondary school curriculum. Such provides an opportunity for students to gain foundational knowledge in preparation for STEM-related majors like computer science. It is also worth noting that some high school students begin pursuing college credits through concurrent enrollment at a community college. Perhaps this provides an opportunity to increase the pipeline by developing a growth mindset in secondary learners prior to matriculating into the tertiary education level.

I believe in the growth mindset. I have found most students benefit from having  a professor who understands the role of self confidence in achieving academic progress. In my opinion, older students and those with PTSD achieve more when there is positive reinforcement and direct connection with the instructor..

Why does no one invoke music lessons or athletics as examples of a growth mind set?  In both you practice to increase your skills and abilities.  

Lawanda, like the focus on students and faculty. Sometimes, as faculty, we need reminders for our own growth and development and the way we interact with students from various backgrounds. 

Thank you for sharing this important work- thinking about growth mindsets and how this could be reinforced in the context of HBCU and community college classrooms. One thing that I am finding in the K-12 setting is that specific teaching practices and aspects of classroom instruction seem to support students' participation, access, and identity development (all of which are often the result of having developed a growth mindset). For example, what we on our project call "promoting a nurturing classroom environment" involves things like the teacher being perceived as approachable and developing norms that support productive mindsets. Also what we are calling "positioning students as competent" involves things like affirming that students are capable and focusing on the productive processes rather than getting the correct answer. Are you finding similar practices and strategies in the college and university settings (I think often, as educators, we forget that students need some of the same supports beyond the 12th grade)? If so, how do you support instructors in enacting and developing these practices and strategies?  

Oh wow, sounds like an amazing experience for faculty! Thank you again...and let's be in touch (I think there is interesting overlap between our work :)