WHY DO WE NEED SCHOOLS TO MOVE TO GROWTH MINDSET?

For several decades now, the school systems seem to be working with a survival mindset. They seem to long for a ‘comfort zone’?focusing development of ‘financial’ infrastructures that would facilitate them to expand in a linear and horizontal manner to recycle their investments and to build on more. The mythical expressions on quality growth center around pre-defined models which play with numbers rather than intrinsic quality. This is further fueled by competitive engagements to deliver results for future gateways and in the process the real ‘growth’ is either sacrificed or marginalized. “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop” said Confucius.

The scenario is changing. With the inundation of information flow and the fast changing skills, competencies and interpretation of the masteries, the schools are under compulsion to prepare their learners for a future that is absolutely challenging, demanding, creative and growth oriented. “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking,” said Voltaire. The mindset required to deal with the futuristic demands for a world that is engaging is entirely different. The current system of letting the brains live with established patterns of learning may not help the learners to stay relevant along with their counterparts. Life and living must stay focused with a growth mindset if one has to remain empowered.

The growth mindset comes with a few basic nutrients for growth.

!. It starts with a belief that every individual is intelligent and has within the self, multiple potentials for growth. Therefore, the inputs of learning in the system have to understand, appreciate and facilitate these multiple potentials. This calls for providing wide, limitless, non-traditional and informal ?opportunities for learning and a conducive atmosphere for learnability. Indeed this would demolish the authoritarian approach of the classrooms and hence the need for better ‘designed’ learning opportunities which are authentic, learning friendly and non-aggressive.

2. The growth mindset in an organizational set up should help acquisition of mastery. It is important to realize that achievement of mastery takes several years of efforts and oftentimes calls for self-driven efforts on the part of the learner. “The problem human beings face is not that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed" Said Michelangelo. The schools would therefore acknowledge the urge on the part of the learner to acquire mastery sooner than later; thus provide non-threatening opportunities for continuous efforts without pre-defined judgments. The efforts should acknowledge the difficulties in the pathways of learning inclusive of the failures and impediments in learning opportunities. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” says Viktor E. Frankl. The schools should help the learners to identify those spaces and choose their response to growth.” At best, schools can be the nurseries for mastery acquisition. In ensuring such a design they would have contributed more than what they are currently delivering.

3. Converting failures as stepping stones to success is an essential feature of the growth mindset. Failure ?should neither threaten the learner nor suppress his desire to growth. The learning opportunities in school systems should thus focus on re-engineering learning and recycling the lost experiences to newer vistas of learning opportunities. The end-all approach to learning contents with the terminal examinations should replace the continuous learning model. In fact, both diverse approaches to learning contents with multi-layer and multi-polar interventions to learning could facilitate a re-entry into the learning gateways in an intermittent manner.

4.Growth mindsets facilitate embracing and adapting to challenges. "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself” said George Bernard Shaw. The challenges help and train the mind in facing risks, seeking adventures, remaining enterprising and discovering new knowledge portals. This is, indeed, a threat to the linear and conventional model of knowledge transmission in classical classrooms. This warrants establishing a learning culture in the school in which both the learner and the teacher are not only participative but on a journey together. Enabling a researching mind from the early years to seek the unfathomed oceans of knowledge rather than consume knowledge should be the focus of schools with a growth mindset.

5. Growth is always empowered by the feedback from the system. It helps not only to position the current growth profile, but helps to take an objective and unbiased view of the current dynamics to take remedial steps and interventions wherever and whenever necessary. Growth is often inclusive and is acknowledged by the community in which the systems exist. Hence, the acknowledgement of the growth mindset of the school and its future growth will have to be in synergy with the thought dynamics of its stakeholders.

6. Growth mindset can be nurtured only in an atmosphere of freedom and passion. The school profile should therefore give the teachers freedom for action within the canvas of their operating platform. Trust, support, fearlessness, discussions and mentoring are a part of the growth dynamics of any institutional organics. The corporate view of managing the school may not always be the right way though it does offer a number of takeaways for effective organization, processing and productivity. It is time that schools liberate the learners from the clutches of conditioned learning and pre-ordained information to a researching mind and construction of new knowledge as envisaged in the National Policy of Education.

The productivity and the profile of a school with a growth mindset cannot be measured on a prescribed timetable in each calendar. It does call for long term patience to put the narratives. The results of the school captured in the numbers of the score card of ?out-going students are no more indices for measurement of a growing and performing school. ?

Isn’t it time to move on??