Setting the Expectation for a Growth Mindset in KINETIC3’s Excellence in Teaching Track

From the 3/5/2021 newsletter 

Perspective/Opinion 

Setting the Expectation for a Growth Mindset in KINETIC3’s Excellence in Teaching Track

Alexandra Harrington, MD

Dr. Harrington shares that character development in adults seems dependent on having a growth mindset, a frame of mind adopted by the Kern Institute's KINETIC3 Teaching Academy...

As I reviewed the results of my Values in Action (VIA) character strengths survey, I noted the ‘top 5’ of honesty, judgement, love, perseverance and fairness, but was naturally drawn to those strengths ranked at the bottom, self-regulation, social intelligence, and spirituality. For those unfamiliar with this survey, it is a free survey (available at https://www.viacharacter.org/)- that all KINETIC3 learners take prior to our first course- that ranks your character strengths based on your answers to a series of questions. Can I better control my emotions and reactivity? How do I improve my interpersonal relationships? These questions and other related ones had me reflecting on my mindset. With a growth mindset, I certainly could practice better self-control, but not with a non-acknowledging, resistant fixed mindset. Character development in adults seems dependent on having this growth mindset.

 A growth mindset is defined by Dr. Carol Dweck as the belief that talents and skills can be developed in oneself and/or others. We have adopted this frame of mind in the KINETIC3 program and have set the expectation for having a growth mindset with respect to teaching in the Excellence in Teaching Track. Our learners are asked early in the program to reflect on previous teaching evaluations. We ask learners to share their positive evaluations and reflect on growth opportunities. Then, we ask learners to share any negative feedback on their teaching and again reflect on growth opportunities. We try to explore those opportunities, even if the negativity of the evaluation seems like Jimmy Kimmel’s mean tweets! KINETIC3 learners are given time to reflect substantively on their teaching and character strengths and opportunities for improvement and commit to working on those growth fronts during their coached teaching observations.

“We’re all a mixture . . . it’s true that you can have a fixed mindset in one area and a growth mindset in another and that it’s a spectrum, not a dichotomy,” Dr. Dweck tells us in a videoed interview that we watch in KINETIC3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-71zdXCMU6A&feature=youtu.be). 

Learners are asked to reflect and share stories wherein they had a fixed mindset and then situations in which they have had growth mindsets. And as Dr. Dweck advises, we ask learners to reflect on the triggers of the fixed mindset. What puts you in the fixed mindset in that moment? The goal in this exercise is to identify the trigger in hopes of avoiding the rigidity in the future. We stretch our learners to mentor themselves hypothetically then towards a growth-minded belief if they encounter similar scenarios in the future. Lastly, we share examples of fixed and growth mindsets related to our previous educational experiences, such as disregarding student evaluative feedback (fixed) and trying a new active learning exercise (growth). It is imperative we recognize that in the teacher-student relationship, our mindset may influence our learners’ mindsets (and vice versa!).

Alexandra Harrington, MD, MT (ASCP), is a Professor of Pathology and Director of Hematopathology in the MCW Department of Pathology. She serves as Director of the Faculty Pillar and the KINETIC3 Teaching Academy within the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education.