Growth Mindset Extra Credit

How To Spark Curiosity in Children Through Embracing Uncertainty by Linda Flanagan

Source: Mind Shift

The thing this article really hit on I have always dealt with is uncertainty of the unknown. This really plays on my mind when I am up for a checkride in the flight department. This is due to the uncertainty of the multitude of questions that the examiner can ask you during the oral exam. There is always that gut wrenching feeling before the oral exam because you never know if you are prepared enough or know enough to get through the exam. 

Addressing and enforcing the feelings of uncertainty and discomfort that it brings. This is a good idea to let the students know that its okay to not be perfect on every subject. However, if this done at an early age in my opinion it needs to be followed by some sort of task to help fill that void of uncertainty. Like the author says give the students some sort of project where they are tasked to find mistakes within something. However, this would have to be something outside of the students general class material (like English when finding grammar errors). I think the idea presented about giving a student an assignment that gives them the chance to fail is a good idea, but the assignment shouldn't hold any weight on the students grade in the class.  For instance, I could see in some classes where the student is given an assignment to do ahead of the course material being taught. This would give the student an opportunity to branch out and find the unknown when they can't figure out the homework assignment. However, the assignment like previously states should only be for completion and not graded for correctness. As I feel if it were a weighted grade then the student would lose interest and the whole idea of enforcing uncertainty would be lost. 

The last thing that is talked about in the article is how Cueva-Dabkoski has changed her mind-set since being in college. I thought it was interesting on how she set a goal for herself in trying to do personal research she wanted and do so in a certain time frame. This would be interesting for college's to integrate this into the freshman orientation classes they take in their first year. This would give a new student a learning objective to find research about new things they are interested about. This may even give the student ideas towards paths they want to pursue as a career or could help enforce the student in the degree choice they want to declare. 

Curious Cat from Laura Gibbs Blog
Source: Growth Mindset Blog