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0:03
- Good evening. My name is Nonie Lesaux, Academic Dean and the Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society here at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Welcome to tonight's Askwith Forum. We're simply delighted to have the inaugural 2017 Yidan Prize Winners here with us this evening, the laureates, Carol Dweck and Vicky Colbert.
0:30
Before I tell you about the Yidan Prize and our laureates, I'd like to say a few words about the Askwith Forums in general, for those of you who have not been able to join us previously. The Askwith Forums are free public forums that bring leaders in the field to campus to share knowledge and engage with the community. They help strengthen the intellectual life of our school through conversation, debate, and the exchange of ideas. They are also a way to open our doors
1:01
to welcome members of the greater Harvard Community and the general public.
1:07
We hope that you will this week join us for what we're calling, for other forums, during a week that we're calling Super Askwith Week. (audience laughs) Tomorrow, although perhaps not the best joke after last evening. Tomorrow night, Tuesday, February 6th at 5:30, our forum is called Immigration, Activism, and DACA featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas interviewed by MSNBC Joy Reid.
1:41
And our own Professor Roberto Gonzales will be involved. Thursday, February 8th at 4:30 we have a film screening entitled, Teach Us All, followed by panel conversations with members of the Little Rock Nine who desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas 60 years ago.
2:04
So back to our program for this evening. The Yidan Prize was founded in 2016 by Dr. Charles Chen Yidan with the goal of creating a better world through education. I invite you first to watch this brief video describing the prize.
2:27
(bright music) - [Narrator] Many of us believe that we can change our destiny through education. But does the promise of education ever come true? The Yidan Prize is looking for an answer. To date, 58 million primary-school-age children are still not in school. This means that around 10% of the world's children do not receive primary education. Even if one is lucky enough to get in school, education does not guarantee you a job. 26% of young people worldwide are unemployed
2:59
and currently 300 million job seeker rates are further increasing with a rate of 45 million per year. What will the future be like? The unemployment rate may increase even further. Research shows that automations will threaten 47% of jobs in the United States, 69% of the jobs in India, and 77% of the jobs in China. In 20 years about 35% of current jobs in the UK are at high risk of being replaced by robots. Even though the supply is to the developed countries,
3:33
this may cause the current education gap to increase even further. This is only the tip of the iceberg. There are many other pressing issues in education that the world will be facing in the 21st century. The world needs a big idea, but what the world needs more is a bright mind that creates many big ideas. We have one big idea. The Yidan Prize. Every year, the Yidan Prize recognizes and supports leading change makers from research and development for the most forward-looking innovations
4:05
that can create profound impacts on the education system for a better future. The Yidan Prize aims to bring together the worlds brightest minds for a new, constructive, and inclusive dialogue on solutions. Over the next 50 years, 100 laureates will leverage their big ideas for the continuous support from the Yidan Prize. These big ideas, together with the prize, aspire to make the world a better place for many years to come. The Yidan Prize, creating a better world through education.
4:42
- We are honored to have Dr. Chen with us in the audience. Please join me in thanking and congratulating him for his imagination and generosity in establishing a prize to shine a spotlight on high-impact education work and research. (all applause)
5:10
We certainly need big ideas to confront the challenges facing our systems and for that reason, I'm delighted to welcome tonight the inaugural change makers recognized by this prize.
5:24
The plan for this evening is that we will hear from each laureate. Following that we will have a conversation about their work and plans, and we will open it up to lots of time for audience questions. For those of you who are on social media, the hashtag is this: #YidanPrize. (audience laughs) So without further ado, I'm gonna start by introducing Dr. Carol Dweck who, in fact, is one of our very own, having joined the faculty here in 1981 through 1984.
6:00
Carol Dweck is one of the world's leading researchers in the field of motivation. She is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford. She is, She is, excuse me, the inaugural recipient of the Yidan Prize for Education Research. Her research looks at how peoples' self-conceptions influence their behavior, why people succeed, and how to foster success. Specifically, her research has identified different mindsets that students can hold about their talents and abilities.
6:37
A fixed mindset is one in which talents and abilities are viewed as unalterable. A growth mindset, on the other hand, is one in which talents and abilities are seen as qualities that can be developed. The research then demonstrates the importance of these mindsets for students' motivation, their resilience and achievement, and shows, in fact, that these mindsets can be changed. She has conducted research on the relationship between a growth mindset and the effects of poverty,
7:09
conducted interventions in this area, and investigated mindset and self-regulation and grades. Dr. Dweck has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences in the US and has won 10 lifetime achievement awards for her research. In addition to her scientific writing, she has written widely for educators and for the public. Her book, Mindset, published by Random House has been translated into over 25 languages.
7:45
Welcome back to Carol and congratulations. (audience applause)
7:59
- It's such a pleasure to be here with you this evening.
8:04
One question has motivated my work from the beginning.
8:11
Why do some people fulfill their potential while others don't? I got a hint of the answer in my very early research when I watched children grapple with problems that were too hard for them.
8:30
Some of them became despondent, discouraged, started denigrating their abilities, but others showed remarkable, not just resilience, but relish of those problems. I'll never forget the one little boy who when the failures problem started, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and said, "I love a challenge." Or another one who looked up at us and said, "You know, I was hoping this would be informative." (audience laughs) I thought, well, you cope with challenge or you don't.
9:10
You cope with failure or you don't but who loves it? It was a real eyeopener to see that some kids felt thrilled by the opportunity to learn something new. But I had a hint of the answer even earlier in my life.
9:31
My sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Wilson, seated us around the room in IQ order. (audience gasps) It was already the highest IQ class in the grade,
9:46
but not only did she seat us around the room in IQ order, you couldn't carry the flag in the assembly unless you had the highest IQ. You couldn't even wash the blackboards, because your character was suspect if you didn't have the highest IQ.
10:06
All the desire to learn went out the window. All we wanted to do was perform, get her approval, and not get a worse seat as the result of failing.
10:23
I'm very grateful to Mrs. Wilson because I believe she helped shape my career. I believe she helped show me the important, the detrimental effects of believing intelligence is fixed, even when you think you're a beneficiary of that system.
10:46
I worked on this question for many years, and while at Harvard, the mindsets crystallized. The idea of a growth and a fixed mindset crystallized. All the past work came together to say all along we've been studying two very different conceptions of ability. One where abilities are fixed and one where abilities can be developed through effort, but not just effort, through trying new strategies and lots of input and instruction from others.
11:30
So first we asked, what do these mindsets do? And as Nonie suggested, we found that they promoted challenge seeking. If you think your intelligence is fixed, you wanna play it safe. You don't want to take that challenge that might reveal your deficiencies.
11:53
But if you think it can be developed, why waste your time doing something you're already good at? Stretch to learn something new. We found that the two mindsets gave different meanings to failure. In one case, failure meant you had low ability. In another case it's a natural part of the learning process. And finally, we found that the two mindsets affected persistence differently.
12:24
If your ability has been discredited, why continue on that task and continue to discredit your abilities? But if it's part of the learning process, then keep on working, try new strategies, get help, stay in the game.
12:45
The dean said today at lunch that he used this thinking
12:51
to keep on surfing when he thought he was no good at it. (audience laughs) The second question, where do these mindsets come from? And we've studied this in a couple of ways, finding that one important factor is how adults, parents praise children. Do they praise children for the process they engage in or do they praise their intelligence? Praising the process: the effort, strategy, persistence,
13:27
yields more of a growth mindset. But we also have found the way parents handle children's failures affects the mindset the child develops. Do they treat failure as something negative that could undermine the child's motivation? Do they themselves get anxious?
13:49
Or do they treat it as something welcome and beneficial, that's part of the learning process? These reactions from parents and teachers foster different mindsets.
14:04
Can we change these mindsets? Yes. And in early studies we had multi-session programs, one on one, but they were quite expensive. They worked quite well, but they were quite expensive, so more recently we asked, could we distill them down to computer-based programs that could be disseminated more widely? Year before last, well, four years ago we started developing such a programing and year before last it was administered to a nationally-representative sample
14:46
of over 12,000 students around the country.
14:51
We now have the preliminary results. As you would imagine, a one hour session, or two half-hour sessions in the computer room isn't gonna work miracles. The effects were modest, but we found a measurable increase in challenge seeking
15:13
across all achievement levels. They now were choosing to do harder math problems and take harder math courses.
15:28
And also, we have seen an increase in grades for students who took the Growth Mindset Program compared to the controlled program for the lower achieving kids. So over the rest of that year they were earning fewer really low grades and raising their grade-point average. We have a long way to go. This is in its infancy, but we're excited that we could do anything online for that short period of time.
16:07
The important question is can we change cultures? Can we change school cultures? Can we change organizational cultures? And the answer is it's really hard. (audience laughs) As you know.
16:24
But I'm excited to say that we're using a portion of the Yidan Prize money to address this question directly. We have been finding that, although some people, some educators implemented growth mindset in the most spectacular way, and created these unbelievable cultures, many teachers were misunderstanding what a growth mindset was and implementing it in ways that were not at all helpful. For example, telling kids who weren't making progress, praising them for their effort.
17:09
Well, what is that telling the child? Well, you're never gonna get this but you should be proud of your effort. That's not a growth growth mindset, in fact, that creates a fixed mindset. Or telling kids to try hard or you can do anything without showing them the pathways, the strategies that they'll need, the resources they'll need to pursue those goals. That's not a growth mindset, just announcing
17:40
you can do anything.
17:43
Other educators were putting a chart in front of the room or giving a lesson on growth mindset, but then went back to business as usual, embodying all kinds of fixed mind practices in their classroom. So, we're very excited to be launching this project in conjunction with educators in the Seattle School System
18:12
to create a curriculum that's successful in creating growth mindset cultures and that will also teach teachers, in that context, about diversity, how to value it, and how to make children from all backgrounds feel they belong. So, these things together,
18:37
we hope will have an exciting impact on students' comfort in the classroom, motivation in the classroom, and educational outcomes.
18:54
When I started my research it was about fulfilling potential and it still is about that, but today it takes on an even greater urgency. Will people have the mindsets and the skills to find meaningful work, to create for themselves meaningful lives? Will the children in our schools today learn to welcome and thrive on the many challenges they will inevitably face, especially as all kinds of work become obsolete and new kinds of work emerge? As you know, more than ever our society depends on that.
19:47
Thank you. (audience applause)
19:57
- Thank you. Next, I'm pleased to introduce Vicky Colbert, the Founder and Director of Fundación Escuela Nueva and the inaugural recipient of the Yidan Prize for Educational Development. She is a sociologist from Javeriana University in Columbia and pursued her graduate studies in the Sociology of Education and Comparative Education at Stanford University. In 2015 the American University of Nigeria distinguished her with an Honoris Causa Doctorate in Philosophy.
20:32
Vicky Colbert is the co-author of the worldwide, renowned Escuela Nueva Model, and was its first national coordinator. Escuela Nueva seeks to transform the conventional school and way of learning by shifting the educational paradigm from one centered on the teacher to one centered and focused on the child. And by using the classroom as the instrument of change, Colbert has demonstrated in many ways that through personalized learning, a higher quality and more meaningful education
21:09
is possible for all students. Vicky Colbert has pioneered, expanded, and sustained this kind of educational innovation for many organizational spheres. As Vice Minister of the Education of Colombia, UNICEF's Education Advisor for Latin America, and now from Fundación Escuela Nueva, which is the NGO she has founded to ensure quality, sustainability, and implementation. As part of this work, the model has been adapted to urban settings and also for migrant displaced populations
21:48
in emergency situations.
21:51
Vicky Colbert has been recognized with several awards and distinctions in the fields of leadership and social entrepreneurship such as the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, 2013 Wise Prize for Education Laureate, and the Clinton Global Citizenship Award, as well as the Kravis Prize. She has also been recognized as Outstanding Social Entrepreneur by the Schwab Foundation, Ashoka, and the World Technology Network. Please join me in welcoming and congratulating Vicky Colbert.
22:25
(audience applause)
22:34
- It's a pleasure to be with all of you here. I arrived from Colombia yesterday.
22:41
In a way this prize, this recognition, I've been holding to this baby from all of my professional spheres (laughs) for so many years.
22:53
I'm not ashamed to say almost 40 years. (laughs) From different professional spheres.
23:00
I was asked by
23:03
Dean Ryan at lunch what started me with this?
23:10
I actually had like three dimensions that have maintained my energy for so many years moving forward. One was I had a wonderful mother. She was a great teacher in Colombia. She organized teachers' colleges, so I had her role model, which was extraordinary. I was very lucky.
23:30
Second, I had the opportunity to have good schooling, so my memories of my schools are always happy ones. I always remember that we laughed a lot, we enjoyed it, and I think that impresses me because, especially when you work in poor, deprived areas, you don't see the same smiles I used to see in my schools.
23:55
That contrast was evident for me. And the third, I did have a background in sociology, so as sociologists, we always want to reduce inequality and drive change, and convince that without quality basic education nothing can be achieved in the world, nor economic development, political, social, peace, democracy, nothing can be achieved, so I decided this was going to be my life project. It has been a life project of over 40 years. When we started designing, validating, applying it,
24:30
sustaining it, because sustaining innovation is tough. Innovations are very vulnerable to political and administrative changes, so hanging onto this is difficult.
24:42
When I started visiting the rural schools in Colombia, as in the rest of Latin America, the problems were enormous. No results, dropouts, repetition rates, no link between what the child learns and the parents, and the family and the community. Rigid systems that expel children and they had to repeat and repeat and repeat grades and dropouts. So, I mean, everything was forced as a failed business. Nothing worked. Teacher training was so academic. But in a way these problems were so good,
25:15
because we were forced to think systemically if we wanted to make changes with a new type of citizen for the future, a new child, we also had to change the way of working with the teachers, of working with the parents, of working with the administrators. So it forced us into things systemically and I always say we were privileged. Having so many necessities and problems, that is an opportunity. So necessity is the mother of innovation. When nothing works you're forced to think out of the box,
25:49
and sort of rethink everything. So what started as a constraint became an opportunity for innovating. We started with those invisible schools that most educational systems have, especially in the developing world, those rural, isolated multi-grade schools, in the case of Colombia, because of the geography. They're invisible schools.
26:12
For me, my objective, my life project was to make them visible to everybody.
26:18
And precisely because they were invisible and nothing worked.
26:23
In these rural, multi-grade school you have children of different ages, which is an opportunity. So seeing these different levels and different learning rhythms in the classroom forced us to start talking about personalized education 40 years ago. We had to adapt to the rhythm of learning of the child. But that was not enough, we wanted to also build knowledge together, cooperative learning. We wanted to, the children learn through dialogue and interaction, looking into their eyes,
26:51
not looking at their necks, so we wanted to foster this type of dialogue and interaction. And in Latin America we say to improve the quality of education we have to go from the transmission of knowledge to social construction of knowledge. That's the way we say it in a more complicated way, but it was basically just shift the learning paradigm. Nothing new in the philosophy of education. We've known this for ages, these educational pillars. It's just that in Latin America
27:17
they come to the elite schools, not to the poorest of the poor. So this is what is different. Innovations are in the elite schools, but not in the majority.
27:27
I compare also when you start facing all these problems with the health sector and I like to quote, say this story because I think it says a lot about education systems. If you bring a doctor from 100 years ago into a hospital today, that doctor is lost. Everything has changed except the way of learning. If you bring a teach from 100 years ago into a classroom today, that teacher is not so lost, because everything has changed except the way of learning. So, I think this inspired us.
28:01
This is not new in the philosophy of education, but we were forced to really shift this learning paradigm, to say what Montessori said so many years ago, whatever John Dewey said 100s of years ago, but not even in our elite schools they are applied.
28:18
We had to start thinking of how can we make this paradigm shift from teacher-centered education into really child centered, nothing new in philosophy. But we had to make things simple. When you work with teachers that barely can survive.
28:34
They work in such difficult areas where they have to walk for so many hours. When they have children that have to walk two or three hours to go to school and back and forth afterwards and undernourished children. I mean, we had to think of how can we transform this complexity into simple manageable action, so that any teacher could do it? I can not ask for having a PhD in the middle of a jungle of Colombia. So you have to work with who's there and with what you have.
29:02
You cannot have special resources. You cannot have, you really have to work with what you have, and I think this was the most important part, because I started working with wonderful Colombian teachers, rural teachers, and we started as a local innovation, because we wanted to impact national policy. We wanted to reach the 34,000 rural schools, but to do this we had to think of three things in mind that we considered when we started working. First, we needed to have visual images.
29:33
Teachers, if they see schools the way we want them to be they can say, "We can do it." You need to show images to the teachers, so that they could go and say, "I can do it." I think this was the first thing we needed. The second dimension that we had to have was empirical evidence. I think that's the only thing (mumbles) have studied sociology, but we needed to have empirical evidence, and I think this was crucial for us because it's the way we've sustained the innovation
30:03
with so many changes of governments. So you always have results, some type of results. But the third one was feasibility. We needed technical feasibility that anything we designed for our intervention could be technically done by any teacher, as I said, without having a PhD. Second, technical feasibility, political feasibility. We work with unions. We have very strong unions in Latin America. You have to work with the teachers. They are the agents of change. You have to empower them
30:34
and that they see the innovation as something positive, because if they think it's too much work they won't do it. You do it in two schools, but not in 34,000 schools. So we needed political feasibility, technical feasibility, and financial feasibility. We had to think of how can we do with $10 per year per child. (laughs) Okay. Things like this are the challenges one faces in our governments.
30:57
It gradually started as a local innovation, became a national policy, we reached 20,000 schools. When this was well done then Colombia was, according to UNESCO, it was the only country with Cuba where rural schools outperformed urban school, and this was very important. But then the country became decentralized and everything started falling down. I'm not saying against decentralization, but it was just in the moment we were expanding that the whole country, the whole structure
31:25
became decentralized. So it was more difficult for us, because now we had to convince a thousand local mayors. In the meanwhile, the World Bank had selected Escuela Nueva as one of the three innovations that had successfully impacted national policies. So we started gotta lot of countries coming into Colombia and I started taking Colombian teachers abroad. I've sent Colombian teachers to Vietnam. I've sent Colombian teachers to Brazil. We had 10,000 schools in Brazil.
31:51
The only problem that I have not learned totally is I mainly have worked with governments, and to work with governments you have to, because that's the responsibility, but innovations are very vulnerable to political and administrative changes. So once I left the Ministry as Vice Minister and we had had impact 20,000 schools and the best results, I said, oh, this is going to fall down, and it started falling down. So I had to leave the field and create an NGO,
32:19
(laughs) to hold the baby from all the professional spheres, just to not let it fade away, but always having some type of empirical evidence. We adapted it to urban areas (speaks Spanish).
32:31
We adapted it for displaced children in Colombia, and when these displaced children that come from our conflict were beyond the national mean, this was really outstanding for us. We say, we can do it. We can do it and we can prove it. I think the most important part is that now we're starting to work in secondary education and, as I said, it's nothing new in the philosophy of education, but we have to demonstrate that we have evidence and that there are results.
32:56
And I think the most important evidence we've had, not only in academic achievement, but in peaceful behavior of children, and this coming out of Columbia at this moment is so important.
33:09
And I also learned you have to publish first outside, so that they can believe you in Colombia. (all laugh) So I also learned then we published this at the University of London. I mean, these are things one has to learn to survive when you have to work in the developing world. What is interesting about this is like the story of Cinderella.
33:30
We started with the poorest of the poor schools, but now it's an example of what a modern class should be in the future, a new role of the teacher, not everybody doing the same thing at the same time, some are working individually, others in pair. They're learning through dialogue among themselves, constructing and building knowledge together. Formative evaluation is within the whole process. The new role of the teacher as a facilitator and guide and somebody that has more time
33:55
to know how their children learn and give them more love and support when they need it, to support the mindset. So I guess this is like a little story of Cinderella, of so many many years. I think our takeaways after so many years is, yes, we can improve the quality of education in developing countries, but more of the same is not enough. We need a paradigm shift, a new role of the teacher. We have to go beyond academics. We have to demonstrate that there are results
34:24
in the social, emotional aspect. I think these are the lessons learned, and I think an important one that I've learned after so many years, you have to work with governments, because that's their responsibility,
34:38
but not only leave the innovation in the hands of governments. You need public-private partnerships. The case of the coffee growers in Colombia was extremely important. They came to help out and it was very crucial. And, of course, the role of civil society, and many of you probably don't remember the World Conference of Education Jomtien in Thailand so many many years ago. One of the conclusions was education is so important you cannot leave it only in the hands of governments.
35:06
It's a responsibility of all society. So I just wanted to share this
35:10
and right now I just received a wonderful information that the work we did in Vietnam, there's a recent impact evaluation of the World Bank and the results are wonderful with the Colombian model. Thank you so much. (audience applause)
35:28
- [Woman] Head right up to the stage.
35:42
- Wonderful, thank you both. I thought that, maybe, we could start this next phase of the evening by having a conversation. In many ways both of you have shed light on the psychological side of learning: the students, the educators, the context. And, in effect, you're striving for behavior change and a different attitude and mindset towards learning by all involved.
36:17
So there's lots of room for a conversation about scaling and taking what you learn and imagining the challenges and the opportunities for getting to scale, for scaling with integrity. And I wonder, from two very different viewpoints, but each with lots of relevant challenge and opportunity, if you might talk about scaling and how you think about it.
36:47
- I can start because I've suffered all the way. (Vicky laughs) There was a moment that I had to look a little bit more into bibliography that would give me and idea of how to scale up, and I found this very interesting piece of work from David Korten of how to scale up in the social sciences.
37:08
And I sort of wrote an article afterwards showing that that's the way we did. It's a Stanford publication on Effective Schools in Developing Countries. It's very old. But it was first you have to learn to be effective. You have to show that there's a fit between your intervention, what you're doing, and the beneficiaries, that they like it. And this is the first thing we did, you know, that the children liked it, that the teachers liked it,
37:33
that everybody liked it and they can say, "We can do it." Because if they don't like it and if there's not a fitting of these, they see there's difficulties, it's not gonna be easy. So the first thing was you have to learn to be effective, and there's where you need the money at the beginning. There's where you need funds for trying out, for changing things, the trial and error, and seeing that there's a fit between the model and the teachers, that they liked it. It's getting your pilot started.
38:02
But that first stage is a little more expensive, because you need to have materials in place, you have to train the teachers, you have to have the baseline data, you've got to have everything designed at the beginning, so I was learning to be effective. Then when you already have the teachers trained and you have the materials to get the things started, then you learn to be efficient. Because then is when you start talking,
38:29
you want to impact national policy. That is when you start talking to the Inter-American Bank and to the World Bank and to the UNESCO people. And they start asking you what is the cost per year per child and you don't have the slightest idea. (laughs) So you've gotta have these things ready. So it's learning to be efficient and then you're ready to scale up, okay. You have to have things on the ground already, and also pursuing attitudinal change in teachers, that they lead the movement,
39:01
because, otherwise, it's gonna be strangled top-down by a decree. With the first strike you destroy the whole program with the teachers in Latin America, so you have to play both: bottom-up and top-down. So the two things help.
39:16
- And just a quick followup on that. When you were piloting and evaluating in the early stage, did you have certain, sort of, key ingredients that you were focused on? Often with these comprehensive models, there's this question about, in terms of scaling, is it portable beyond those adults with those particular mindsets, et cetera? How did you think about the key ingredients piece? - Well, the first thing was we need to have results in academic achievement. Everybody looks into that.
39:48
That's the first thing they do even if they don't like it, but the first thing is how did they do in language and math? So the children with Escuela Nueva did better. And not only did they better, but it compensated for their socio-economic level. When you compare children of rural isolate schools with urban children, they're already way beyond the urban children. So we did those comparisons and we had evidence.
40:11
The first thing was trying to demonstrate that we did have results in academic achievement, but something else that we measured was attitude of teachers. If the teachers were not happy with this it was not going to be a national policy at all. But I think the most important thing and it was self-esteem.
40:31
These children of deprived neighborhoods and rural isolated schools. I guess I hadn't read much about Carol's work but, in a way,
40:43
it was like common sense and saying if we strengthen their self-esteem, these children that come from such terrible and weak backgrounds and with their family problems and conflicts and things. So just the fact that they can say, "we can learn and we're doing good," I mean, this really helped a lot.
41:02
- Thank you. - So we had several goals in scaling up. One was to see could we do it with a short online program.
41:17
Another goal, maybe I'm getting to three goals. Another goal was would it be effective in other settings, and we, or other cultures, and there's a World Bank study done in Peru showing those same materials. Sixty did in raising achievement when administered on a large scale. Another study in Norway that was also quite successful. But we set ourselves another goal. The question here was where doesn't it work?
41:53
And so we really oversampled in that large nationally representative sample. We really oversampled schools' populations where we thought it might not work and then we want to know why. One place it didn't work was, of course, places where learning was not taking place. Doesn't help you to have a growth mindset and love learning if it's not available in the setting. But another was where peers were not exhibiting or placing value on challenge seeking, on learning. It's very hard to get someone
42:37
to go against their peer group.
42:40
We want to learn from this to understand how in the future we can work with schools to create climate
42:52
in which a growth mindset can take hold and help students flourish. We also now want to create a program for teachers that's scalable. I talked about that before. It's in the earlier stages, but scaling is a primary goal of that research.
43:15
- So, you're in some sites where there's not enough learning to even intervene on mindset. In other words, there needs to be enough of a cognitive press on students to even then implement this kind of, this kind of approach. - Yes, so in this research we found that those kids went through the program. They learned a growth mindset. They understood how to apply it, but then they went back to their classrooms and there wasn't anything much to apply it to. - [Nonie] To operate on. - Yeah.
43:52
- [Nonie] That makes sense. - I wanted to tap on something you mentioned, because I think something we did without knowing very much is that we supported the self-paced learning, so we modularized the curriculum, which is like a new generation of textbooks, because we modularized it so some can go faster, others can go slower, but they all win, you know. It's not that feeling of, I failed. So they're always moving forward and I think that's important, especially for deprived children.
44:23
- And that's why we want to work together. - Yeah. (all laugh)
44:29
- Vicky, did you want to say anything about when it doesn't work or what can when-- - Yes, it's terrible when you give the whole innovation to the government. (audience laughs) - [Nonie] This is live streamed, so. (all laugh) - Oh, I forgot. - Yeah, they kill your baby in a way. But it was tough because it was in the process of scaling up. Here we had wonderful results in certain regions and then people get motivated, we want it. Then you handed it over and then, you know, taking care of it,
45:06
good implementation is tough, especially when you make it public. So when your innovation becomes public it's good and bad, but then you have levels, high levels of implementation, middle levels of implementation, and some schools that should not be called Escuela Nueva. So I mean it's tough to see this and the permanent transfer of teachers, the more remote you are in rural isolated areas the more teachers want to be transferred to be closer to the urban areas.
45:35
So it's a flow of teachers you're always training. So at this moment with the Inter-American Bank we're gonna start working with the teachers colleges. If we don't work with the teachers colleges where most of these teachers are coming from, it's very difficult to maintain this permanent dynamics. And of a small NGO trying to compensate for where the government should be doing, so it's not easy.
45:59
- I just want to say one more thing.
46:02
Schools that use our program can get, you know, again, modest but nice results, but,
46:12
many educators think, growth mindset, it's like a magic bullet. You just tell the kids about it and wonderful things will happen. Again, it seems too easy, but it isn't easy. It's gotta be done very very carefully. - And how do you both think about the hours outside of schooling and the context outside of the formal learning environment? Does that come into your work in any way and how you think about your own intervention? - Totally. When you look at the time, effective time,
46:46
on learning in Latin America in deprived rural areas, Fernando can correct me, it's like two hours or three hours of effective learning.
46:56
It means many things play outside the effective learning, so you just have to make sure, at least this is what we have tried, that they gain leadership skills, students, that they link more with their family, that they become leaders of community projects, where they feel that they belong to a community. Yeah, trying to compensate for other problems.
47:24
- In our case, many of my students have gone on to create growth mindset programs that address aggression stress depression. These are programs that teach kids
47:42
you're not a fixed kind of person.
47:45
You're capable of growth and change over time. And, again, this is spelled out in great detail online, in these online programs.
47:57
And one example, this program decreased, or prevented the increase in depression that you often see the first year of high school.
48:12
There are assumptions kids make: I'm a fixed kinda person, I'll never change, I'll always be bullied, that we want to address to decrease the stress, depression, and the kind of aggression that comes out of this.
48:32
- I wonder if we might just spend a couple of minutes before we turn it over to the audience, talking a little about training and graduate training. In many ways, we have a research-based practitioner model. We have research going into practice. We think a lot about the links and the loops between training and research and science, and what are your thoughts about graduate training and how we might tighten the links, if at all?
49:04
- I can't say much about the US experience, because I don't know it very well. We, in our case, we had to compensate for what faculties of education were not doing, because we're still very theoretical in Latin America, as I give the example, you know, we give conferences in participatory learning. Things like this. The first thing we had to do is sort of change that and make it very (speaks in Spanish) experiential, that teachers be trained with the same methodology
49:34
they were going to be using with their students, because otherwise we were not doing much. The second element we took into consideration is that we don't leave the teachers alone, that they have the opportunity to come among themselves and share what they're learning.
49:53
This, we did it by necessity, because they wanted to share what they were doing, the change to accompany themselves. But then the supervisors visit was much more expensive than the whole workshop, so we had to get the teachers together by themselves and they would come together on a Sunday or a Saturday and share what they were doing, without technology at that moment. So just coming together and now we see that it's an important part of professional collaboration.
50:24
It was really, in a way, all the things we did we did by necessity, common sense. We didn't know much about the results and the evidence at that time.
50:35
- So where are you at with the training? - At this moment we want to start getting more into the teachers colleges. This is something new, but not the faculties of education. Teachers colleges are where the rural teachers come out of, so we want to be closer to where they are.
50:51
- Skip over the faculty - Yes. (all laugh) - It's a live stream. - I know. (all continue to laugh) - Graduate training in psychology has traditionally had nothing to do with the real world or any of the problems in the real world. (audience laughs) And it wasn't just ignored, it was actively discouraged, that your research had to be pure science. I never accepted that and at Stanford we've really pioneered, my colleagues and I, have really pioneered
51:39
a graduate training program that values basic research. You don't just go do an intervention.
51:49
You lay the groundwork or you take theory that's been well developed and tested, but then you ask what social problems link up to this,
52:03
and then you rigorously test whether your small-scale intervention helps kids and doesn't harm anyone and then you look to scale up. So we have a graduate training program that gives students all these skills, but also gives them values. We're here to make the world a better place not just to publish things and get famous.
52:36
- Do you think, Carol, in that work,
52:39
do you think you'll end up with sort of differentiated approach based on that early basic research to inform the interventions that you end up with these different types based on that really nice-- - Types of. - Of approaches, to get to the mindset? Which is to say you describe this nice relationship, which is not often the case, between conducting the careful, developmental, basic research and moving intervention, and presumably back and forth. - Yes, back and forth.
53:12
The ideal for us are highly trained researchers
53:19
who also understand the real-world problem, the implementation process, also maybe fitting your intervention to different contexts.
53:34
A real concern is that people will think intervention's easy, let's go do this, let's go do that. And so, in our writings we're really careful to warn, you know kind of don't try this at home, (all laugh) but rather you need the training, you need the theory, you need the early experiments, you need the small-scale interventions. It's a process.
54:01
- And in so doing, it may not be a certain,
54:09
your students and scholars to come, come to find out it may fail simply on the basis of conditions and implementation and not on the basis of the program or the approach. - Yes, yes.
54:22
- That's, perhaps, not attended to enough in education and/or psychology.
54:29
I should tell you that my doctoral thesis was in epidemiological study through the schools in Vancouver, British Columbia. I submitted my first draft in the department and I had a long piece about the benefits of this study having been done in schools with all of the schools in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the committee said, "Can you take that school stuff out?" (all laugh) "And we'll just take a look at the cognitive finding?" Okay, all right, we can do that, we can leave the school stuff
54:58
for the last paragraph of the journal article and move to the school stuff later.
55:06
I think I'll just ask you one more thing before we open it up, because I'm certain there are lots of folks who would really like to ask a question.
55:15
What would you say to the next generation of scholar practitioners in terms of priorities, opportunities? What would you say to them based on your experience?
55:32
(all laugh) This reflective moment. - Yeah, I would say it's hard. It's a life's work. I think Vicky and I both feel, we're just getting started, we're just hitting our stride. So, yeah, it's a lifetime commitment to do this kind of work.
55:58
- And listen to the children you work for and with the teachers you work for. You have to listen to them because they know the problems they have, the problems they face. So I guess for me it was extremely enriching to get out and work with the rural teachers. They taught me. - Yes, I agree with that completely. For our programs, we worked with hundreds and thousands of students before we finalized the computerized intervention.
56:34
We quoted them in the program. We asked what was boring, what was unconvincing, what sounded like grownups trying to be cool? (all laugh)
56:49
And now in the classroom culture work it's all with teachers. - Right. Wonderful. Well, I think we can open up to folks who have questions for Carol Dweck and Vicky Colbert.
57:08
There are mics in either aisle, in both aisles, and folks are welcome to come forward with their questions.
57:23
- Hi, can you hear me? Okay, I guess I'll inaugurate the questions. So, I'm Othmane Benkirane. I'm a student at MIT and my research is on understanding and measuring the development of the will and capability to innovate in people with a specific focus in university students. Which, by the way, if you have any literature recommendations, I'd most definitely take them. (all laugh) It's a pretty big (mumbles). I read your book on mindsets way before that was my interest,
57:54
and it really resonated with me. I'm from Morocco and social determinism there is strong, so that's the point of my question.
58:06
When you're confronted in a culture, in a whole nation where because I was born in a certain social-economic class in a certain place then my whole life will look exactly like this. And when there is no real social evaluation of knowledge,
58:23
how do you start envisioning a place where knowledge is valued and where people really search to reinvent themselves everyday?
58:33
Thank you.
58:37
(Vicky laughs)
58:42
- In our situations, since I have worked mainly with low-income children, just to see how they bloom and they can keep on going studying, and to see how they have reached levels of education that they would not have had if their self-esteem was not strengthened, and if they didn't have a nice learning environment, even if it's low-income schools, I mean, that is so significant. You see them blooming as leaders afterwards, so, I guess it's not determined. Your education does help you,
59:19
to empower you. - We did a study of all the tenth-graders in the country of Chile, over 160 thousand students,
59:30
across all socio-economic levels, and across all of those levels we found that the students who endorse more of a growth mindset were outperforming those who endorse more of a fixed mindset.
59:47
We found, sadly, that the growth mindset was less prevalent among the poorer children, but when they did have a growth mindset, they were performing at a higher level. It helped them disproportionately. So we started thinking, now we're not saying poverty doesn't matter just give everyone a growth mindset, no way. But we just astute start think that
1:00:17
one of the pathways through which poverty may effect achievement is making these more beneficial mindsets available,
1:00:29
maybe less available to think I can develop myself, I can develop my abilities, and over time become this or that. So I don't know if it answers your question but
1:00:46
it can be that these mindsets are part of what could,
1:00:52
over time, done sensitively,
1:00:56
begin to empower kids to have different visions of their futures.
1:01:04
- [Othmane] Thank you.
1:01:12
- Hello, thank you for being here. My name is Mala. I'm from the Kennedy School.
1:01:20
Something that I've been fascinated with,
1:01:25
In India
1:01:28
the Global Gender Gap Report, the most recent one, it shows that women are highly educated and qualified. However, when it comes to economic participation there's a cliff-drop effect. And I've really been thinking about, if you can mobilize or activate these women, I mean, the many reasons why they don't participate, but a plan taking this concept of growth mindset and sort of activating and mobilizing them,
1:02:01
and basically see how they can impact the world around them,
1:02:07
can this growth mindset be applied to adults and to activate and mobilize them in ways that would make a difference in the society? Because right now they're not participating.
1:02:21
- So, yes, a growth mindset can be applied to adults, but I don't know in your case whether it's that the women simply don't have a growth mindset or society limits what they will allow women to do. Is the society placing the limit on the women? In that case,
1:02:49
societal change and reeducation may be more important than telling women to step up and do it.
1:03:03
Several of my student of Indian descent and I did some studies showing that in Indian culture, more than American culture, there was a belief that every baby is born with the capacity to become a highly intelligent adult.
1:03:25
So there's widespread belief in peoples' potential to become extremely competent.
1:03:36
What the societal forces are that are keeping people back is another question and I'm interested in what your perspective on that might be. - I wanted to just compliment, let's say, in Latin America we have a macho culture is strong. But introducing these very simple interventions like having school government with committees and where so many little girls are elected presidents of their classroom and their school, and boys see it as normal.
1:04:13
I mean, just that shift is already a cultural change that is important and so just giving them instruments of participation and of having symmetrical relationships in the classroom, that changes the power structure.
1:04:28
- [Mala] Thank you. - You're welcome to respond. - Yes, if you have a sense of ...
1:04:36
- I absolutely agree that there are societal pressures, but there are cases that I know of where women have, just because they have this
1:04:50
inherent belief that they can do anything, so they sort of come across, overcome those pressures, and I just wonder, and these are highly capable women, but they're not participating because of these, whatever pressures they may have, and I just wonder if there's a way, if there's an intervention, or you know, there's something that can be designed that can sort of mobilize them. - I think there could be a variety.
1:05:20
A sense of purpose, the idea that you have something to contribute that only you can contribute is very motivating. It's not about me, it's about,
1:05:34
and several of my former, some of my former students are studying that as well.
1:05:42
But, again, I think a lot of it comes down to a workplace and society making women feel welcomed and valued.
1:05:54
- [Mala] Thank you.
1:05:57
- Hi, thank you for being here tonight. I am Bia from Harvard Business School and my question goes to something that
1:06:09
Vicky Colbert mentioned about the bottom-up approach.
1:06:15
Looking to the future, how do you perceive the role of governments versus private? - [Vicky] The role of government? - Government versus private organization to support your scaling, especially in countries where government, I mean, working with government can be even more difficult in Latin America or Asia, (mumbles) in Africa, right, and some countries in Africa. So do you see, perhaps, adjusting this approach or how do you perceive it? - No, I wouldn't say it's either or.
1:06:49
You have to work with all, with all members. I mean governments, that's their responsibility. Health and education, that's their role, that's their responsibility, so you have to sometimes help them do it right, do their job right. But in the case of Latin America, we have strong public-private partnerships. I always have mentioned the coffee growers. I mean, they were extremely helpful and supportive when we started, even when the government forgot about Escuela Nueva.
1:07:17
So you have the public sector, you have public-private partnerships, and the role of civil society. I mean, we really feel we're contributing and helping the government to do their job appropriately, so it's a combination of the three. Education is so important to not leave it only in the hands of the government. You have to work with the three sectors. - [Bia] Thank you.
1:07:42
- Hi, thank you all so much for being here. My name is Julia and I'm in the Teacher Education Program here at Harvard. Both of you mentioned the need to bridge research and practice, so what are some practices that teachers can do in their classroom to foster a growth mindset or create personal learning in their individual classrooms? Or are these research practices more things that are best done when they're implemented at a school level at least?
1:08:12
- There are, (clears throat) excuse me, definitely things that teachers can do. For example, they can present a new unit as something everyone can learn. They can give a pretest before kids know anything and then show how they've learned. They can keep track of student's progress over the course of the term, so when students try something new and they're confused, they feel totally lost, and you show them the progress they made. The teachers can treat mistakes as exciting opportunities.
1:08:52
We are finding that when a teacher sits down with a student and says, "Whoa, that's interesting. Show me what you're thinking. Show me what you did,"
1:09:02
that child starts developing more of a growth mindset. A mistake didn't mean I'm dumb. It's a way of helping me develop. The teachers can
1:09:16
give students credit towards their report card grades if they've improved, if they've taken on challenges, if they've helped other students learn. So all of these things, the practices embody the idea and the values, and teachers can just integrate that into the ongoing classroom. It doesn't take more time. It's not a whole new theory of learning. It's embedding it in the kinds of things you, maybe, already do. - In our case, because of the change of the role of the teacher,
1:10:02
they have more time to understand the way their children are learning, because they're not so worried about giving the content, because the content comes in the learning guides, for example. So I think it's more strengthening their role with empathy, that they feel more compassion and love toward their students. I think, just that, is the most important part.
1:10:25
- [Julia] Thank you.
1:10:28
- Hi, thank you so much for being here. My name is Lao Chung. I'm a doctorate student here at the Graduate School of Education.
1:10:36
What you said about the link between graduate study and making a difference in the world really resonated with me.
1:10:47
I think both of your words are very powerful in terms of helping students redefining who they are, and reimagining the possibilities that they could become in the world. So, I'm interested in the topic of self-reflection and self-knowledge. I think it's very important in education that students learn and know more about themselves, but I think now in education, it seems that education is heavily focused on helping the students to know more about something,
1:11:18
like a subject matter or to gain some skills. So I wonder whether you have any advice for educators and researchers like me who are very interested in fostering self-reflection in students? Thanks.
1:11:34
- Well, some of the self-reflection is kind of metacognitive skills that are taught as skills, but
1:11:43
in a fixed mindset, you don't want to reflect on your mistakes. (all laugh) Why rub your nose in a failure that means you're no good at this?
1:11:57
Bob Kegan talked about this earlier today in organizational settings where
1:12:05
you're just defensive about any kind of feedback that implies there's something wrong with you, rather than being in a more growth mindset where you want feedback. It's not always pleasant, but your goal is to become better and better at what you do, better and better as a person, so you want to reflect
1:12:35
candidly openly on what you've done, why it might not have worked, and what you could do better.
1:12:47
- We have had to incorporate a lot of self-reflection in the learning process, individually, in pairs, in groups, so it's sort of fostered in the whole intervention, so the children can reflect on their leadership styles and their friendships. And we have very simple instruments to facilitate doing this.
1:13:12
- [Lao] Thank you.
1:13:15
- Hi, thank you for being here. My name is Rachael. I'm a Masters Student in Policy here at the Graduate School of Education. My question is I believe and I think, Miss Colbert you mentioned before is where the value in self-esteem and a sense of self. And so my question is really, how do you reconcile that with a growth mindset or do they need to be reconciled at all?
1:13:36
- I think they can go hand in hand.
1:13:40
Self-esteem is a more general sense that you're an adequate and worthy person, but it also has a sense of competence in it.
1:13:54
I think the US had a very bad experiment with self-esteem
1:14:01
in the past, feeling that self-esteem, first of all they didn't build it through meaningful learning and experiences, they just told kids, you're great, you're wonderful, you're special, but it didn't go hand in hand with learning, they did that instead of teaching students effectively. They thought, okay, you teach a student to think they're great and learning will follow, so there was no thought about curriculum or mindset. But when you create this kind of caring,
1:14:41
non-judgmental, collaborative environment, the growth of self-esteem is an organic part of this. Similarly, in our research, we see that people in a growth mindset, when there's been a blow to their self-esteem, repair that self-esteem by learning. Learning what they do wrong, and that can be academic, it can be social, you're not afraid to
1:15:17
look at what you did wrong, and you feel better about yourself by repairing that, but in a fixed mindset,
1:15:27
the students repair their self-esteem by looking down on people who did worse,
1:15:33
and feeling like at least I'm not as badly off as that. So the point is that a non-judgmental environment
1:15:44
that cares about the student, supports learning, fosters the growth of understanding, fosters the view that you are a valuable person who is developing,
1:15:59
that creates learning and self-esteem.
1:16:05
- In Escuela Nueva children learn to dialogue in interaction so they're dialoguing permanently and teamwork is crucial, so I think that gives a boost to self-esteem. - Yes. - The right self-esteem. (Vicky and Carol laugh) - [Rachel] Thank you. - Hi, I'm Pedro, here from the School of Education. My question was actually very similar, but a slightly different problem. Thinking about this question of social determinism, the first question that was asked, I'm from Brazil and a lot of the children,
1:16:36
low social-economic status children, when you tell them, well, you can have a seat at the table, come join us, there's this incredible reluctance and this lack of belonging or feeling that I can never be there, I can never sit there, however nice you're trying to pose this invitation to me, so my question relates to self-esteem and how, because you mentioned Miss Colbert, at least twice, building the self-esteem of these children, so how do you do that at a curriculum level?
1:17:06
How do you instill these practices of these children who feel that when you do pose the invitation they say, "We don't belong there, and there's no way I could ever sit at a table such as that."? So, I would love to... - By the way we had 10,000 schools in Brazil several years ago (speaks foreign language).
1:17:25
It was a very interesting program.
1:17:29
As I mentioned, innovations are very vulnerable to political and administrative changes, so now with many of the teachers of Brazil that we started with, they're started to get motivated again to see we can put it back into practice. But it's just that when you have an environment in the school where teamwork is the essence and when teachers have more time to spend with their children, in knowing how their children work and learn, relations become closer and more affectionate,
1:18:00
so it's being school president, or being part of a committee of the classroom, and having leadership skills with their parents, and working with their parents, and helping them do things. You know, all these things boost,
1:18:16
Carol is the psychologist, she's the expert, but all of this an environment that facilitates affection, that facilitates growing, nurturing, - And a feeling of genuine worth. - And a feeling that they belong too, you know. So I think these are positive feelings and I think this is the first thing one has to do if you want learning to take place.
1:18:41
- A part of what Vicky is saying, or at least how I interpreted it, is that some schools respect kids, give them autonomy, positions of responsibility, the things they need for a seat at the table. They already have a seat at the table in the school, and then why wouldn't they think they can have that seat elsewhere. But so much of education is about the teacher being the authority, the student just obeying, complying, memorizing, doing the test, so if you're not from a socio-economic group
1:19:22
that has a seat at the table, the disconnect between memorizing this and getting As, and having a seat at the table is huge. So the more an educational setting can
1:19:35
recreate the world and have the child have a valued place in it, have autonomy and initiative within the setting, the more that gap will seem bridgeable.
1:19:49
- [Pedro] Thank you. - Good evening. First of all, I would like to thank organizers and our wonderful speakers for tonight's event. My name is Sabina and I'm from Azerbaijan. I'm a graduate of Indiana University School of Education. So my question is what would be the strategies for an educator towards the teachers who are resistant to changes, either because of first lack of necessary skills, second, low salary, and third, the age? A lot of teachers, for instance, in my country
1:20:28
they are beyond 50 years and older. So in my experience as a an educator, I met teachers who told me I won't be using the technology, for example, because I'm too old for this,
1:20:44
and here I got speechless, so I didn't know what to do. So what do you think? What would be the strategies to deal with these
1:20:55
kind of teachers?
1:20:58
- You have to work with the younger ones. (all laugh)
1:21:08
- [Sabina] Yeah, but the majority of teachers are old teachers in my country, so...
1:21:21
- I feel like it's harder but it's never too late and in our own work we've encountered teachers,
1:21:33
a lot of teachers who say they have a growth mindset, 'cause that's the right thing to say, but they don't. And the more they say I've always had growth mindset, I have a complete growth, I have a growth mindset everywhere, the more it means they have a fixed mindset. (audience laughs) or it may be. And so we used to kind of barrage them with all this evidence,
1:21:57
but now we've understood that everyone is a mixture. We all have both fixed and growth mindsets, even within the same skill area. So, even with respect to intelligence, there are so many triggers in our environments that can catapult us into a fixed mindset. You're confronted with something challenging that you're not good at
1:22:29
then you start thinking, maybe I don't have the ability, or you're struggling with something
1:22:37
and you're not making progress.
1:22:39
You have a very strong set back even though you put in a lot of effort, or you see someone who's a lot better than you at something you really thought you were good at. These are triggers. Everybody, or almost everybody will start thinking fixed mindset thoughts at moments like this. So we've had a lot more success with teachers now, instead of saying, well I have a growth mindset, well I have a growth mindset,
1:23:12
say, oh what are your fixed mindset triggers? I tried this with Stanford students who used to say, oh, I have a growth mindset, and they come up with all these triggers.
1:23:24
Then we teach teachers how to work with the fixed mindset parts of them, to get back on the track of growth. Once teachers start acknowledging that,
1:23:41
truly and more deeply understanding what a growth mindset is then you might begin to apply it to their learning about technology. - I've seen older teachers, wonderful, loving, caring, and I think that's the most important role,
1:24:00
and I work in schools where there's no connectivity, so the issue of technology, it can trigger change, but you need a new pedagogy before introducing technological innovations, definitely. So, I mean, I've seen wonderful older teachers really caring for their children,
1:24:18
and I think that's the most important part. - [Sabina] Thank you. - Take one final brief question. - Hi, Patty Nolan. I'm on the Cambridge School Committee here so, and I wills say we use, you've changed a lot of our educational teachers to include growth mindset and I think we'll have been there, in relation to the last question, when you never hear an elementary school teacher say, "I was never good at math," because it just teaches a fixed mindset.
1:24:44
My question is on how you take the growth mindset, and also the work that you're doing, and think about it with a standards-based schools that are just no starting to come out. The Khan Academy Lab School in Palo Alto is trying this where, I think in line with a lot of this work, we're starting to try to, perhaps, experiment, we haven't done it in our district yet, where instead of even grades, you just focus on have you achieved this standard or not.
1:25:10
Is that the natural outcome for some of your work? So that we have schools that are not graded by age, but they just move students forward, take the standards, and say, we're just gonna bring every child to meet every single standard whenever they can get there? Does that make sense as a question?
1:25:30
- Yeah. I don't know enough about standards-based education. I don't know what happens when a child doesn't reach a standard. I don't know what happens to a child who could go way beyond the standard, but thinks, hey I've met the standard, I can not work hard. - I think the idea is, at any age, you could meet the same standards. It could be 7 year-olds working next to 12 year-olds. You kind of take out the grades, but you just move forward with the idea
1:26:00
that you can truly differentiate the instruction. - So what I do resonate to is taking a focus of standardized testing,
1:26:09
which has really distorted education. And you see so many teachers just teaching to the test all year. How much fun can that be for students?
1:26:26
One graduate student in education was monitoring various teachers. One of the teachers, during the summer, created this incredible growth mindset environment for kids who were behind in school and taking these summer remedial courses. They thrived!
1:26:53
Come the school year, the same teacher said, "I can't do that during the year, because I'm accountable for high grades on the test.
1:27:06
I think if I taught in this growth mindset manner, they'd do even better on the test, but I can't take the risk. I have to teach the test." So to the extent that
1:27:21
such an approach as standard-based learning, can put the focus on learning rather than a test, then it could be promising.
1:27:35
- [Patty] Thank you. - Well, let me thank you both for joining us today, but especially for your contributions, for your inspiration, and we will certainly look forward to the project that is to come. Thank you both. (audience applause)
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