How can student mentors and coaches foster a growth mindset in higher education?

Open ended question examples: Who is with us? What are your contributions? Where are your strengths? What will you bring to the table? When will you commit to be here? What will you seek to change! What do you ask in return?

With self-awareness, there is the experience of refining our harmonizing with our inner voices and multiple talents. Listening to our inner voice and being aware of our numerous hidden talents. Serendipity is much more than luck. Chris Barnard would have remained a rural general practice physician in South Africa were it not for his growth mindset combined with well-crafted serendipity and creative thinking. The United States Central Intelligence Agency would have had a different core structure and function were it not for the factors of call, meaning, and job crafting empowering a journalist and Sandhurst drop out morphing himself into a formidable spy for British Naval Intelligence during WW II, Sir Ian Fleming.

Another effective way to encourage and practice self-awareness is by reflecting on academic experiences (assignments, tests, projects) through non-graded journaling. Journaling encourages students to express negative feelings while identifying growth opportunities. Journaling is helpful for students who struggle with verbal communication, organizing thoughts, or managing time. Reflecting on journal entries can be a starting point for students to connect with mentors and coaches. For the coach/mentor, self-reflection activities may be embedded in assignments. Activities that require students to self-grade and explain their mistakes are time-consuming, but these activities encourage metacognitive analysis (critical thinking).

A growth mindset is not often something students already have, especially when their prior experiences have involved studying supplied material followed by getting a high score on the test. This leads to being easily frustrated by mistakes and the development of a defeatist attitude towards anything where study is not immediately reinforced with success. As a mentor or coach, establish from the very beginning and continually reinforce the concept that we learn the most when we are challenged. Just like how you won't master a game by only beating players with less skill than you, you won't master a subject by only answering unchallenging questions. We learn the most when we fail.

Professional development opportunities can be found anywhere on campus; however, they may be framed as a checkbox activity or some menial task. I recommend that you review these activities or programs to include verbiage promoting any participant as an opportunity to grow. Example: If you have a teaching assistant, instead of framing that their expected duty is to grade - invite them to be collaborative partners in the assessment development. Set the expectation that you want them to learn about different assessment methods, seek out on-campus resources, review your LMS grading features, etc., then develop and grade. Now we reframed the expectation as a discovery practice that is essential for a growth mindset.

Look for ways to showcase your own learning orientation: go out of your way to identify something that you're still working on, and how you are working on it. The goal here is to lessen the stigma often associated with a work-in-progress skill. It helps lead by example.

Try to keep this present, rather than past. I actually never cared for it when someone launched into a "I struggled too" story, and then walks me through how they got past the struggle. Those stories have their place, but they are often overly relied upon. It is 10x more effective to highlight something you're struggling with right now.

In addition to sharing our experiences and demonstrating how to set goals and celebrate achievements, it is equally important to model to our students/mentees that our identities are multidimensional--we are not solely defined by our achievements or challenges--and we need to model to them that this is both normal and okay. The more we can showcase this, the more our students/mentees will feel empowered to be self aware and embody a growth mindset.

I lean on the Army’s Leadership REQUIREMENTS Model as a framework for continuously challenging myself to Be.Know.Do. The model illuminates the characteristics and attributes of leadership from character to presence (Be); intellect (Know); and leads, develops, achieves (Do). The 2019 update added empathy and humility to the model. I think grace goes there too. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute!

I love the idea of book circles that offer multiple tracks (hyflex with synchronous zoom and face to face, as well as asynchronous online options) to review topics relating to a skill …books, podcasts, articles, and activities to ponder. Including a social component, like optimal coffee meetings, and being sure that you offer information on holistic support at your institution for both academic and non instructional services.

Make sure you're purposeful about this, because you don't want to start reinforcing a fixed mindset again. Rewards can backfire, if they are too outcome-centered. Instead, spend a lot of time rewarding inputs. Try to identify when someone is putting in the work, being creative, etc. That should help nudge them along, while also keeping focus on a growth mindset.

Creating an institution-wide culture of growth mindset is hands-down, the most sustainable way to build high-performing student outcomes.