Group #: 4

Assigned Section/Theme of Eric Jensen Reading: Hope and Growth Mindset

APA Citations of Outside Academic Articles (e.g., academic journal article, Education Week
article; Edutopia article; etc.)

Adams, K. (2019). Developing Growth Mindset in the Ensemble Rehearsal. Music

Educators Journal, 105(4), 21–27. Retrieved from
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1219278&site=eho
st-live - Jake E.

Blad, E. (2016). Mindset May Influence Poor Students’ Academics. (Cover story). Education
Week, 35(37), 1–10. Retrieved from
http://search.ebscohost.com.wsuproxy.mnpals.net/login.aspx?direct=true&db=keh&AN=
117368746&site=ehost-live - Courtney

Burnette, J. L., Russell, M. V., Hoyt, C. L., Orvidas, K., & Widman, L. (2018). An Online
Growth Mindset Intervention in a Sample of Rural Adolescent Girls. British Journal of
Educational Psychology, 88, 428-445. Doi: 10.1111/bjep.12192 -Jordan

Cammarota, J. (2011). From Hopelessness to Hope. Urban Education, 46(4), 828–844.

Doi: 10.1177/0042085911399931 - Amanda

Flannery, M. E. (2016, October 13). Impact of Poverty on Student Achievement: All in the
Mind? Retrieved October 17, 2019, from
http://neatoday.org/2016/09/29/growth-mindset-in-students/. -Danielle

Section One: Provide a paragraph summary of the assigned section of the Eric Jensen
reading:

Jensen’s main argument for this section is that hope is a very powerful motivator in the

realm of education. Hope is something that can power us through the toughest of times and help

us land triumphant on the other side of whatever it is we may be doing at the, even if that is not

related to education and that hope in combination with a growth mind-set can separate excellent
students from mediocre students. However, the mind-set a student puts on can either help them

as much as previously described, but also hinder them. If a student gets in the mindset that they

will not be able to achieve anything and that their value in school is based only on their natural

talent or natural intelligence. A student with a poor mind-set believes they are not capable of

achieving what they want which results in them losing interest, motivation, and could cause them

to give up on trying all together.

Some examples Jensen gives us as teachers is changing the ways we encourage students

like explaining to them that the human brain is very complex and continually morphs and adapts

to the information it is given. This explanation can encourage this student to keep trying because

science backs up the fact that they can always continue to learn and improve their intelligence.

Another example he gives is avoiding language that enables their lack of focus and instead

continually motivating to keep working a little bit longer and that they are capable of keeping

their focus up just a bit longer. The last example Jensen gives is to avoid using phrases that

justify one skill being poor because they have other skills that are strong in its place. Phrases

such as those can teach the student it is ok to be bad at that skill which will likely lead them to

not working on improving it. One powerful quote from Jensen’s section on hope and growth

mind-set is “Taken together; hope, or lack of hope; mind-set, whether you believe that you are

simply born smart or that you can grow in intelligence along the way, can be either significant

assets or serious liabilities.” - Jake E

Section Two: Provide your respective author’s arguments concerning the assigned theme in

the Jensen reading:

 This author believes that social and physical environments have a big impact on a

student’s feeling of hope. This can come from neighborhoods as well as just in-home

environments. Poverty may limit a student’s experiences and therefore may make them feel like

they’re unable to achieve as much. “Once a young person realizes his or her efficacy and ability

to transform his or her own and others’ experiences for the better, he or she grows intellectually

and acquires the confidence to handle a variety of challenges, including higher education,

community activism, and organizational leadership.” Cammarota’s main belief is that students

trapped in this cycle of hopelessness will be trapped until they understand why they’ve been

trapped. -Amanda

Boaler’s arguments are similar to Jensen’s. Boaler also agrees that mindset in the

classroom is a huge contributor to student achievement. A fixed mindset refers to the mindset

that your intelligence, traits, and abilities are fixed traits. This means, if a student has a fixed

mindset, they do not believe they have room to grow in these areas. A student with a fixed

mindset will believe he or she has a fixed level of each category and can only reach that level.

Boaler believes many students have a fixed mindset, and those who do struggle in the classroom

when they experience failure. They also can experience more stress than students with a growth

mindset. Although this is common in many students, Boaler states a few different ways we can

allow students who have a fixed mindset to develop a growth mindset and allow them to truly

flourish in the classroom.

 On the first page of Jo Boaler’s article, “Ability and Mathematics: The Mindset

Revolution that is Reshaping Education”, Boaler states “When students undertake an

intervention to move them from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, they immediately start

performing at higher levels in school.” (Boaler, pg. 1)

Much like Jensen, Boaler explains a few different studies she was part of. In all of the

studies conducted, “the growth mindset intervention led to a clear gain in achievement”. (Boaler,

pg. 2) She describes one particular situation in which the achievement gap between White and

African American students became little to none. She further describes the experience by stating

that students even began to show more enjoyment in their courses when their mindset had been

changed from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. - Courtney

If students who are in low income families think that they can develop skills to do better

in school. To do this the students need know that if they practice and work hard they are able to

succeed and do well in school. Student who live in low-income families test scores were lower

they high income families. If a low-income student who has a good mindset, they are able to do

as well as high income students.

Flannery says that “The problem, some advocates say, is not that the more than half of all

American children who live in poverty have the wrong mindset. The problem is that more than

half of all American children live in poverty.” The fact that over half of the children in America

are living in poverty is showing that there are a lot of children who have a low mindset. If

children could forget about their home life when they are walking into school, low mindset

would not be a problem. In reality this is not possible, so we need to find a better way to help get

the level of mindset up for children to succeed.

 As teachers we need to have high mindset, so we are able to help our students get their

mindset level up. If teachers could get professional development in this area that would help

teachers be able to help students better. Another way to do this is instead of telling students that

they did well but getting them to go deeper and ask questions to get them thinking more about

what is being taught. This will help them dig deeper and try harder.-Danielle

Students who come from higher income families tend to overperform students from low

income backgrounds. The ultimate goal is to be able to reduce the educational gap between

students from different economic backgrounds. To do this people must understand where this

difference in educational performance comes from. Environmental factors, the expectations from

parents, and influences from the student’s culture all can contribute to the educational

achievement gap by causing a lack of motivation towards education. In an attempt to find a way

to close this gap a study was done upon girls from low income families in order to see if

introducing a new mindset could make changes. These changes were theorized to include an

impact on their overall mindset, increased motivation, promoting self-efficacy, and increased

sense of belonging at school.

Making these changes can provide a buffer for the effects of poverty upon educational

development for students. The goal of the study was to introduce the growth mindset to show

students that educational ability is a skill that is learned not something people are born with and

see how that affected the education factors that were being looked at. In order to prove that the

growth mindset can make changes that are positive in relation to school life the study had several

topics including mindsets, learning motivation, learning efficacy, school belonging, and grades.
This was examined by placing students in two groups, the intervention (growth) group and the

control group. They then inspected that data by taking immediate post-test and 4-month follow

up scores and comparing them to the pre-test they took as well as the scores of the other people

who participated in the study.

The authors research shows that the growth mindset does in fact lead to increased

educational success. The first example of this is during the immediate post-test where students

who received the intervention had a 12.02% increase in mindset, compared to the control groups

2.53% increase. This is a significant difference in mindset increase, meaning that the intervention

directly caused students to have a higher mindset. Another example is that the during the

post-test students had no increase in their motivation, efficacy, or belonging as a direct response

to the intervention. However, the researchers were able to show that the growth mindset was able

to predict their motivation and efficacy. This means that motivation and efficacy are correlated to

growth mindset, so increasing their growth mindset leads to an unknown educational factor

changing which results in higher motivation and efficacy. The third example supporting the

growth mindset is during the 4-month follow up the intervention group still had higher mindsets,

and their motivation, efficacy, and grades were all correlated to their growth mindset. This shows

that introducing the growth mindset causes many changes in the student’s life. As stated in the

article “growth mindset interventions offer a promising approach, combined with other effective

techniques, to counteracting the disadvantages faced by students living in high-poverty, rural

areas, helping students achieve their academic potential.” -Jordan

 In her article “Developing Growth Mindset in the Ensemble Rehearsal” Kari Adams, a

doctoral candidate at the University of North Texas, she describes how a growth mind-set has a

large value in all of education but especially a music ensemble setting. She argues that there are

many benefits to implementing a growth mindset into the minds of students participating in a

music ensemble and that an improved mindset can help with the student’s own self-image, their

actual skill level as an individual performer, and can improve the sound of the entire ensemble.

Adam’s arguments are all backed up with research done in education psychology and general

music.

One of Adam’s main arguments is the belief that a growth mindset is a mental framework

that sees traits such as talent, intelligence, etc. As malleable traits that can be improved and

refined rather than remain at a static level that is set at birth and cannot waver. Students with a

growth mindset does not give up when a challenge is presented to them and is open to criticism

in order to improve their craft. The opposite mindset, fixed mindset, is a mental framework that

is accompanied with a belief that one’s talent and intelligence cannot be changed no matter how

much work is put into their field. Students with a fixed mindset often gives up upon any hurdle

thrown at them and take criticism personally and respond to it very harshly. She talks about how

with this mindset, in addition to a good work ethic, one can improve their skill level in any field

and rise above anyone that is set with their talent level. Another argument Adam’s has is that

growth mindset is of vital importance in music specifically as many people believe musical talent

is completely natural and has nothing to do with how hard one works. She talks about how many

of her students give up in her ensemble when they are faced with a challenging piece of music or

any other musical hole they may find themselves in.

 One specific example Adam’s used is one of her students in her 5th grade choir classroom

who was unable to match pitches with any of the people around her, yet she seemed overjoyed to

be singing with all her friends. After identifying who the student was, Adam’s began to meet

with her after class to figure out what was hindering the student from singing correct pitches in

choir. After a few minutes of listening to her individually, Adam’s figured out that the student

was not aware that she was not singing the same pitches as she was hearing and after several

more individual meetings Adam’s was able to improve her listening and singing skills through

the use of actively teaching the student with a growth mindset. Because the student enjoyed

singing so much and held a positive attitude though everything, she was willing to work extra

hard and to accept the criticism from her teacher in order to succeed in choir. Another example

used by Adam’s is how many of her students in the choirs she has taught have dropped out

simply because they believed they were “tone-deaf” or “unmusical”. These terms belong to a

very fixed mindset and it is to no surprise these students did not find success in a musical

ensemble. They were too busy making excuses blaming extraneous forces as the reason for not

being able to improve their skills as a musician while the students with a growth mindset made

no excuses, worked hard, and found success in the improvements they made, not their skill level

as compared to their classmates. A very powerful quote from this article is “It’s not always the

people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.” - Jake E

Section Three: Each member of the group provides a discussion of the educational

strategies or interventions offered by her or his outside author to address the theme of the
assigned section of the Jensen reading. Each member of the group discusses how these

strategies or interventions compare or contrast with those offered by Jensen in the assigned

Cammarota puts emphasis on not looking to “reform” the bad behaviors and try to turn them into

“normal middle class” people, as we don’t want to look to have them separate from their culture as a way

to break the cycle. We want them to be proud of their culture and use that as motivation to break the

cycle. His main suggestion to solve the problem is to develop an enlightened social-justice-aware group

of students trying to make a positive change. Showing these students why they’re destined to fail and

using that as motivation to change the system.

Jensen suggests making sure students know that their brains can grow, that they don’t have a

fixed amount of smarts. Looking at this from Cammarota’s view this seems to be ignoring the true

problem. It may help with in-school behavior, but no child’s growing brain can prosper in an environment

that is hindering them. Jensen also suggests not furthering the idea that one person only has so much

focusing power. Instead of saying “it’s getting late, my brain conks out about now, too,” Jensen suggests

that you encourage the student to push through. I agree with this to a certain extent, however I do believe

that if a child is truly feeling hopeless, no amount of staring at the paper will help. Using positivity to

make the child know that their efforts were appreciated and still avoiding the idea of the “specific amount

of focus” can be beneficial too. Jensen’s final suggestion is to avoid comforting the student by saying that

even though they may not be good at this one thing, they have “all these other strengths”. This implies

that you don’t believe they can progress in this area. Cammarota would believe that this also may

influence the child to believe they can’t succeed in that area because of who they are or where they came

from. -Amanda
 Boaler suggests the school itself and teachers in the classroom send messages to students about

their abilities constantly. It is shown in the assignments and activities given, the expectations set for

students, and the way students are placed in their classes. Ability grouping is a common way students are

grouped in schools, especially as they get older. Ability grouping can be defined as grouping students

based on their abilities in the classroom. Students are smart. Regardless of age, a student is aware when

they are placed in a lower-level group or a higher-level group. Boaler suggests abandoning these practices

is the best way to allow students to have a growth mindset rather than a fixed one. She believes having a

mixed group of students allows for higher student achievement in all areas.

Boaler also suggests the mindset of the teacher in the mathematics classroom needs to change.

Mistakes in the mathematics classroom are not hard to come by. It is easy to view these mistakes as a

negative component to learning. In almost every student’s mind, a mistake refers to something that is

wrong. While this is technically true in most cases, this mistake can still be viewed as a positive thing.

Rather than marking questions wrong on homework assignments because of one mistake, Boaler suggests

encouraging the student is the way to go. Boaler insists it is important to show students that their mistakes

are allowing them more opportunities to learn. Rather than focusing on the negative aspect of the mistake,

students should be encouraged that they did a great job trying, and there is room for improvement which

only means there is more room to grow and learn. Situations such as these are where it is important to

have a growth mindset in the classroom. - Courtney

Flannery talks about making the student complete work until the end and not letting them

give up. If you see that the student is struggling stop the student and have them work through

what has been already done. Then you have them go on. As you are doing this you want to use

encouraging words to keep the child motivated. You talk the child through what they are doing

by asking questions to get them further thinking. This is will in turn help their mindset become

higher.
 Flannery’s article and Jensen’s article are similar in facts. They both says that when you

are teaching children you need to encourage them to keep going and to not give up. Students in

low income families need to the encouragement so that they are able to have a higher mindset.

When working with the students if you are able to relate it to yourself that works better too.

Relating it to yourself helps the child understand that it is not just them who is having the

problems, but everyone has problems they have to work through. Flannery’s article talks about

allowing teachers to have some outside training, so they have better understanding about growth

mindset. Having this outside training will help the teachers mindset become higher and will help

teach the students to have a high mindset. -Danielle

There are many education strategies that the article suggests using in regard to the

growth-mindset. The first idea is to tell the students that they have the ability to change their intelligence,

which is the main idea of the growth mindset, during a period of transition such as elementary to middle

school or middle school to high school. Another way to do this is to get as many important people as

possible telling the students these things. Get all of the teachers in the district involved in implementing

this mindset, as well as encourage their parents to reassure their children of their ability of growth.

Another idea is to encourage positive educational attitudes in the classroom. Telling students that their

intelligence is changeable will not be very helpful unless they are looking at school in a positive manner.

Getting students excited for class and telling them that intelligence is not static is the best way to get them

to perform better in class.

These ideas have some similarities and differences to the strategies that are highlighted in

Jensen’s text. The first major similarity is the idea of reminding students frequently that their brains

change and grow and that they can change their intelligence. Another major factor that was mentioned in

both articles is the idea of encouraging a positive attitude towards education. It is important to guide them
towards a positive attitude to help them have even further success in school. There are also some

differences in the ideas that are presented in each of the articles. Jensen’s article focuses on what the

teacher can do in their own classroom in order to guide the students towards a growth mindset, such as

providing quality feedback, encouraging their effort, and showing them that if they continue trying, they

can reach their goals. Burnette’s article focuses on getting as many people involved in reaffirming the

message of the growth mindset, so the students are able to really internalize the message and see that

many people in their life believe the idea. Her article is less focused on what teachers can do in their

individual classrooms but how they should band together to spread this message to the students in their

entire district. -Jordan

Adam’s article contains many examples and pieces of advice that can be applied to any

musical ensemble, but the principals can be applied to any classroom. One of these such pieces

of advice lies in the feedback given to students in response to how they perform in class. In

contrast to almost any lecture-based class, music ensemble classrooms are mostly comprised of

direct feedback in response to what the students just performed. In any history, math, English,

etc. Class, the class is usually the teaching explaining a topic for a set amount of time, asking the

students if they have any questions, and then assigning outside classwork. In any music ensemble

class, the rehearsal is usually anywhere from a few seconds to few minutes of direct performance

from the students followed by the director giving immediate feedback to the ensemble about how

they can improve what they just performed. With such an emphasis on feedback in music

ensemble classrooms, the teacher must be more careful in how this feedback is given than any

other teacher. Adam’ suggests, just like Jensen does in his article, that feedback should be

positive if it needs to be, but should never justify low skill levels or a poor work ethic. For
example, if a student is very good at reading rhythms but poor at reading notes, the feedback

should avoid phrases such as, “it’s ok your notes aren’t all good, because you’re stronger at

rhythms!” this type of language tells the student they do not need to work on improving their

note reading and instill a fixed mindset towards that area. Instead, the teacher should give

positive feedback regarding their skill in rhythms and should address that the notes were not at

the same level followed by some practical ways the student can improve their notes such as

assigning easier etudes, showing the student a computer/phone application that will identify

when a wrong note is played and alert the student when they practice, or provide additional help

after school.

The final piece of advice Adam’s gives for all teachers who want to improve their growth

mindset teaching is to practice it themselves. A teacher can only teach what they know

themselves so changing their own mindset to a growth mindset in not only their educational field

but in everything they do will in turn be reflected in their students without the teacher directly

stating or teaching a growth mindset. - Jake