Dweck! I haven't read the book but I'm familiar with Dweck's work and with growth/fixed mindset. And actually her school is very familiar with it too (one of the reasons we chose it for her).
I agree that in general the approach her teacher (who is actually not at her school -- does enrichment/math competition) takes is a good one! It's just that I have never before met a kid who likes math competitions but doesn't like to find out what her score was, and her teacher was surprised by that too, as she generally doesn't have trouble (with those kids) with "okay, here's the answer to #1."
Hmm -- I am thinking now that there is a sort of implied "I'm telling you the answer so you can figure out how to do it for next time" that most (math competition) kids get but that E doesn't unless it's explicitly stated. Because for basically all the serious math competition kids I know, if they got a problem wrong on a competition and then they go over it afterwards, they have the growth mindset to figure out that they should pay attention so they can figure out how to do the problem (which the teacher does always go over, no matter how the answer is presented) and be able to do it better next time. Kids who don't go into math competitions with that mindset don't usually last very long. (E both does very well and finds doing math problems relaxing, which compensates.)
...hmm, this may go some way to explaining why there are a lot more boys in math-competition world than girls. Present company excepted as always, and of course I'm making generalizations that don't apply to everyone, etc., my perception is that girls tend to have a lot more trouble with identifying getting stuff wrong as a problem with them ("I'm not good at math!" -- classic fixed mindset) rather than as "eh, I know I'm awesome and this just means I just need to work on it more," which boys will tend to do.
Though... I'm now going to contradict what I said before, but in E's case, she actually doesn't seem to either think she's not good at math or think she just needs to work on it more when she gets something wrong, she just gets super stressed, so she's a weird special case. Relatedly, she almost always won't even guess, even though she knows perfectly well that for tests that don't have guessing penalties this is a smart strategy. I think just the concept of "wrong answer" is stressful for her, even if intellectually it's clear that it's because she guessed and got it wrong.)
One of my former grad school colleagues, who taught Latin in high school for many years, published a paper recently talking about how he applied the growth mindset in the Latin classroom as best he could, given that the entire school system is structured around a fixed mindset and he had to meet state requirements. I can send you that if you're interested.
Re: Another book rec
I agree that in general the approach her teacher (who is actually not at her school -- does enrichment/math competition) takes is a good one! It's just that I have never before met a kid who likes math competitions but doesn't like to find out what her score was, and her teacher was surprised by that too, as she generally doesn't have trouble (with those kids) with "okay, here's the answer to #1."
Hmm -- I am thinking now that there is a sort of implied "I'm telling you the answer so you can figure out how to do it for next time" that most (math competition) kids get but that E doesn't unless it's explicitly stated. Because for basically all the serious math competition kids I know, if they got a problem wrong on a competition and then they go over it afterwards, they have the growth mindset to figure out that they should pay attention so they can figure out how to do the problem (which the teacher does always go over, no matter how the answer is presented) and be able to do it better next time. Kids who don't go into math competitions with that mindset don't usually last very long. (E both does very well and finds doing math problems relaxing, which compensates.)
...hmm, this may go some way to explaining why there are a lot more boys in math-competition world than girls. Present company excepted as always, and of course I'm making generalizations that don't apply to everyone, etc., my perception is that girls tend to have a lot more trouble with identifying getting stuff wrong as a problem with them ("I'm not good at math!" -- classic fixed mindset) rather than as "eh, I know I'm awesome and this just means I just need to work on it more," which boys will tend to do.
Though... I'm now going to contradict what I said before, but in E's case, she actually doesn't seem to either think she's not good at math or think she just needs to work on it more when she gets something wrong, she just gets super stressed, so she's a weird special case. Relatedly, she almost always won't even guess, even though she knows perfectly well that for tests that don't have guessing penalties this is a smart strategy. I think just the concept of "wrong answer" is stressful for her, even if intellectually it's clear that it's because she guessed and got it wrong.)
One of my former grad school colleagues, who taught Latin in high school for many years, published a paper recently talking about how he applied the growth mindset in the Latin classroom as best he could, given that the entire school system is structured around a fixed mindset and he had to meet state requirements. I can send you that if you're interested.
Yes! I'd be very interested in this!