NSF Awards: 1826532
The Florida-Caribbean Louis Stokes Regional Center of Excellence is an NSF-funded project that aims to strengthen the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM fields by developing customized psycho-social interventions that impact students' growth mindset, sense of belonging, and academic success. The center also provides growth-mindset training for STEM faculty. In this video, we share faculty and student perspectives on growth mindset and how the center helps students to continue in the STEM field of their choice.
NSF Awards: 1826532
The Florida-Caribbean Louis Stokes Regional Center of Excellence is an NSF-funded project that aims to strengthen the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM fields by developing customized psycho-social interventions that impact students' growth mindset, sense of belonging, and academic success. The center also provides growth-mindset training for STEM faculty. In this video, we share faculty and student perspectives on growth mindset and how the center helps students to continue in the STEM field of their choice.
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Scott Horrell
Thank you all for your video. I am interested in learning more about the training provided to the faculty. Is it aimed at helping them alter their curriculum to promote the development of growth mindset?
Remy Dou
Ann Podleski
Asha Brunings
Director of the FL-C LSRCE
Hi Scott,
Thank you so much for your interest. Our faculty training focuses on two aspects: facilitating their own growth mindset and interventions they can use in the classroom to instill a growth mindset in their students. Kindly consider registering for our virtual conference to be held July 13-15 where we will focus on disseminating these skills. Our call for proposals is now out. I can update you once our registration link is active.
Remy Dou
Scott Horrell
Ann Podleski
I am interested in finding out more about the interventions that faculty are using. I like the practical idea of requiring the student come for help before allowing a retest. I do an optional cumulative final that can serve as a "retest" but I noticed that students still missed the same types of questions that they had missed in previous tests, even though solutions were posted and there are opportunities to ask questions and visiting office hours is always encouraged. I can see how offering an opportunity to retry something, but only if they come for help could result in students realizing that they can learn this. I am interested in finding out more about the virtual conference. Will the registration be at that same link?
Remy Dou
Asha Brunings
Director of the FL-C LSRCE
Thank you so much for your interest. We will post a link to the registration for the conference on the same page.
One thing that I've recently had success with is changing my "office hours" to "help sessions." This past semester I had students visiting me in every one of my Zoom help sessions. They were just office hours. All I did was change the name. Go figure.
Remy Dou
Mariam Manuel
This is very interesting. One aspect we are exploring is what professional development can look like for faculty researchers on topics such as culturally responsive mentoring and potentially growth mindset. Looking forward to learning from your program!
Remy Dou
Asha Brunings
Director of the FL-C LSRCE
Thank you so much Mariam. We hope you can participate in our July conference where we will highlight all of that.
Remy Dou
Cassy Pressimone Beckowski
Thank you for your video! I agree that it is critically important to help faculty develop growth mindsets, particularly as we work to advance equitable outcomes across STEM disciplines. In this project/through the center, are there ways in which faculty and students can collaborate to cultivate shared understanding/design approaches to foster mutually beneficial growth mindsets? Also, are you assessing shifts toward a growth mindset in faculty and/or students? I'd be interested in learning more about any instruments you are using.
Ann Podleski
Asha Brunings
Director of the FL-C LSRCE
Hi Cassy,
That's an excellent idea. Although our faculty training does have a number of activities and interventions we have not focused on collaboration but it is a great idea. That is a good idea for a topic during our conference. We're planning some sessions that are a bit different than your traditional 1-hour presentation. We'll have a session in which faculty, graduate students, or administrators perform a 10-15 minute demonstration of something they do to encourage growth mindset. In addition, we will have "birds-of-a-feather discussions, in which people interested in the same topic can chat and bounce ideas off of each other. This sounds like a good topic. You are welcome to propose it as a session for our conference.
We assess faculty growth mindset before and after our training activities and we assess student growth mindset at the beginning and end of each semester. Both are done mainly through surveys but this past semester we also collected dependent student data (i.e. grades). Our research consultant who developed the student-based intervention will present this at out virtual conference in July.
Remy Dou
Ann Podleski
I love Cassy's idea about students and faculty collaborating to foster mutually beneficial growth mindset. I hope this can be a session at the conference. Count me in!
Remy Dou
Asha Brunings
Director of the FL-C LSRCE
It's a deal. It sounds like a perfect birds-of-a-feather topic or demonstration session. I will add it to our schedule.
Cassy Pressimone Beckowski
I'm delighted to see this interest in faculty and student collaboration to cultivate growth mindset! I'd be happy to propose/be involved in a session - I'm taking a look at your CFP now. Thanks!
Remy Dou
Asha Brunings
Remy Dou
Assistant Professor
As a video showcase facilitator I greatly appreciate how this video (and project) centers faculty as agents in creating spaces that welcome students to (re)engage with the content by designing course structures that allow for that. This reminds me of equity-focused research that calls for a restructuring of science spaces from being accessible only to "geniuses". I'm curious to what extent the PIs have seen shifts, not only in students' perceptions of learning as a growth process but also of students' perceptions of "science" as a field where effort and continuous progress is equally if not more valued than intellect or genius. I would be interested in hearing others' opinions on this topic as well.
Remy Dou
Asha Brunings
Director of the FL-C LSRCE
Thank you for your interest, Remy. You are so right about the importance of faculty in student engagement. I teach my students that hard work always beats talent if talent doesn't work hard. As a scientist, I also know that we learn most from our failures and perseverance. Faculty should definitely share those lessons with students.
So many students think they just need to work harder and show "grit' to succeed. But that can result in "over-efforting," in which the students work very hard but inefficiently and in isolation, and get discouraged if the results are not what they had hoped. It is critical that students seek help (and that there is help available when they seek it) when they face obstacles so they persist in their fields.
I too am interested to see what others think about ideas about a growth mindset. You, as teachers we're asked to have a "teaching philosophy." Maybe we should have students write their "learning philosophy," and see how that changes over time. That self-reflection may help them put things in perspective. An other idea for our conference....
Ann Podleski
Ann Podleski
Asha - I think your phrase "over-efforting" captures it well - I too observe students working hard, but inefficiently, and in isolation (even more pronounced after so much COVID isolation). And the discouragement and feeling like a failure is real. And no matter how much I share lessons about learning most from failure (many good examples, including personal ones), I think the students don't really buy in to this or maybe are afraid to be vulnerable. I think the "learning philosophy is another great idea for a conference topic.
Remy Dou
Asha Brunings
LaShawnda Lindsay
Research Scientist
This is a very informative video and interesting project. I am curious about the outcomes associated with the growth mindset faculty training. How are the outcomes being measured? How many faculty have participated in the training? What are the outcomes for ethnic minorities students in particular?
Asha Brunings
Director of the FL-C LSRCE
I appreciate your interest LaShawnda. We measure faculty attainment of objectives through pre-and post-surveys. We measure student objectives through our research project with interventions early in the semester and at the end of the semester, we use post-surveys and dependent data collection.
We offered multiple training opportunities over the past 3 years. I will compile some numbers for you and post them.
LaShawnda Lindsay
Research Scientist
Thank you for this information. I look forward to learning more about your project.
Harrison Pinckney
Assistant Professor
The first thing to catch my attention about this project is the focused attention on community colleges. At times, our two-year institutions are overlooked as environments for positioning students, especially those from low-resourced schools, to thrive in higher education. Placing attention on training STEM faculty to facilitate a growth mindset model is another exciting component of this project. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on next steps in the study and how this approach might be able to be scaled up to serve other institutions.
Remy Dou
Asha Brunings
Director of the FL-C LSRCE
Thank you for your comment, Harrison. To provide access to higher education 2-year colleges play a critical role in funneling underrepresented minorities through the higher education pipeline.
We are currently in our final year of funding for this project but are exploring follow-up study opportunities specifically geared toward improving interventions and scaling up.
Sharon Cameron
Great work! I like the idea of test retakes after meeting with the professor.
Asha Brunings
Director of the FL-C LSRCE
Thank you, Sharon. Our research showed that help-seeking behavior is critical and that students with a growth mindset are more likely to seek help. This is why we must improve the growth mindset of faculty and students.
Molly Phillips
I think you are hitting on something super critical and important! Thank you so much for this work!!
Asha Brunings
Director of the FL-C LSRCE
Thank you for the support, Molly!