Growth mindset and design thinking in the middle school science classroom

Abstract

Individuals who possess a growth mindset believe that they can improve their abilities over time thanks to hard work, learning from mistakes, and practice. Those who are growth- minded perceive challenges and mistakes as opportunities to learn and stretch their thinking. Possession of a growth mindset is a framework that is correlated with a host of positive outcomes in both the academic and personal lives of students. One potential way to promote this growth mindset is in teaching design thinking strategies. Design thinking is a system for creative problem solving that emphasizes curiosity, learning from experience, and perseverance as the keys to developing effective solutions. The values of design thinking mirror the qualities of a growth mindset and the purpose of this paper was to investigate whether there was a connection between these two frameworks. To investigate this question, I taught a four week design thinking unit through the topic of physical oceanography. The level of growth mindset of students was assessed with a Likert style survey before and after the design thinking curriculum. Student volunteers were also interviewed after both implementations of the mindset assessment survey. A control group of eighth grade students, who covered the same physical oceanography topics but did not experience design thinking instruction, also completed the two administrations of the mindset survey. Additionally, for the experimental group, students self-reported levels of confidence with design thinking skills after completing their first design challenge. Furthermore, a Design Thinking Behaviors Rubric was used to observe students as they participated in their final design challenge. The data show that there was a positive correlation between design thinking instruction and student mindsets. The mindset score of the experimental students showed a significant, positive increase over the control group's change in mindset score between the pre- and post- treatment administrations of the survey. On the other hand, the results do not reveal any patterns about how students' initial level of growth mindset influenced their ability to display design thinking skills.