leadership week 4 & 5

Mindsets week 5

Mindsets are beliefs; how you think about yourself, your intelligence and talents, what it is you can and cannot do. Ultimately, this affects how you perceive other people and their abilities, talents and capabilities, what they are and are not capable of.

One of the flipped learning tasks before the session was to complete a quiz to explore your own mindset

Intelligence

In the session we will address the question of whether Intelligence is innate and, therefore, cannot be developed beyond what you are born with. Claxton (2008) notes that "intelligence [has] become defined as the kind of mind that responds most readily to the peculiar demands of school."

Dweck's Theory of intelligence

Dweck (2006) descried two different views of intelligence. The previous view is that there is a fixed intelligence that can be measured using an IQ Test. No matter how much you learn, or how hard you work, your intelligence stays the same. Her view of intelligence is that  the brain is malleable: it is like a muscle that can get stronger and work better as you learn and stretch yourself. Over time, you can get smarter. This leads to two contrasting views of mindset, fixed and growth:

Fixed Mindset

People with a Fixed Mindset believe that the abilities and capabilities they have are fixed traits. Their intelligence is set, they are talented at certain things and not others. They believe that it is whether or not someone is talented at something is what allows them to be successful at something or not. Intelligence is fixed and can be measured.

Growth Mindset

People with a Growth Mindset believe that their intelligence, and abilities can be developed and grow. Through hard work, dedication and time, people can learn new talents, learn new things and become more intelligent. Teaching a growth mindset encourages learning, develops relationships and self efficacy. The brain is malleable, it can grow, stretch and expand. The harder you work, the more you can learn.

Ways to Develop a Growth Mindset

By changing the language we use. The power of 'not yet' in the classroom. "I have not learnt this yet" shows a growth mindset, rather than saying "I can't do this", or "I failed" which shows a fixed mindset. Changing the way we talk in the classroom, 'What we are learning' rather than 'Here is the work to do'. What is it that we value? Do we value the end product or the learning process? (Dweck, 2006)

Myth Busting

During the class session we will be making 'myth busting' stop motion videos where we bust myths relating to human brains and growth mindset. One of those we mention in class is 'False Growth Mindset'

“It all started when my Australian colleague Susan Mackie informed me that she was seeing more and more false growth mindset. This is when educators think and do all sorts of things that they simply call growth mindset. And then I started noticing it, too.” (Dweck, 2016, January 11). 

Stop Motion Movie Making

Stop motion is an animation technique that physically manipulates an object so it appears to move on its own. An object is moved in small increments, then individually photographed, creating the illusion of movement when played. Dolls, LEGO® and clay figures (claymation) are often used since they are easy to re-position. Stop motion films can also involve humans, household appliances etc. for comedic effect.

Stop Motion Tools

You can make stop motion movies manually using generic video editing tools like VideoPad or iMovie, or use a dedicated stop motion tool such as those listed below.

Stop Motion Studio (for iOS or Android)

Dedicated stop motion app for smartphones and tablets. It includes many features such as frame-by-frame preview at different speeds, fade in/out, select, copy, paste, reverse and delete frames, green screen, themes etc.

Stop Motion Builder (iOS/Android)

This app allows users to create stop motion videos by taking pictures frame by frame with their cell phone camera and adding sound effects and music.

Pic Pac (Android)

Stop motion movie app for Android that can also do time lapse.

I Can Animate (lite) (iOS)

A simple and easy to use animation app that will capture frames using either camera on your iOS device

iMotion (iOS)

Time-lapse and stop-motion app for iOS.

Animator DV (PC)

Windows based software, frame grabber, for creating stop motion and time lapse animation.

iStopMotion (iPAD)

Frames Per Second (fps)

One of the main question you need to think about when making stop motion movie is how many frames per second (fps) you will use. The more frames per second, the smoother the action is, but the longer it will take to make the movie. Typical options are:

• 2 fps - recommended by Slowmation
• 10 or 15 fps - bouncy type of animation used on Instagram/ Facebook
• 24 fps - cinematic

Growth Mindset in Leadership

If you want to include the role of growth mindset in your leadership assignments, you might consider some of these ideas. 

Growth mindset in a leadership context comes from a belief that those we lead can be motivated to improve and grow their practices. This choice usually involves including many stakeholders in decision-making, over-communicating the vision, mission, and goals, building shared values, and providing specific, targeted, timely feedback. Dweck (2006) reports on a number of studies of CEOs that suggest that CEOs with a fixed mindest, who believe in natural talent rather than growth, are less successful over the longer term than growth mindset CEOs, even if the former can achieve short term success.

A Growth-Minded [Leadership] Choice (Diehl, 2013) might be one that:

• Validates and addresses staffs fears and barriers
• Communicates the vision explicitly
• Provides support to those who lack knowledge or skills
• Creates an opportunity to share research and information
• Allows everyone access to growth opportunities
• Shares the work load among all staff  

An Oracle blog post (Oracle, 2015) suggests that leadership is all about the willingness to grow and change and to help your people do the same. The Harvard Business Review (2014) suggests that organizations focused on employees’ capacity for growth will experience significant advantages.

References:

Research Informed Leadership week 4

Research informed leadership means being able to lead in your practice by having the knowledge and skills to use evidence and critical thinking to support innovatiosn and lead others to change.

Developing Research Informed Practice

1. Develop a personal commitment to review research to determine what is likely to works best and to determine what ‘best-practice’ models exist.
2. Encourage your peers to work with you to empower a collective of teachers who collectively participate in research and literature reviews.
3. Disseminate information and research findings with your students and your peers to raise awareness of research informed practice and decisions in your school.
4. Encourage your students to be reflective of their actions and decisions so that they learn to self critique and take greater responsibility for their learning outcomes.
5. Develop a class culture of referring to credible sources of data and let the class develop a sound understanding of how to evaluate data/content soruces.
6. Be a consumer and promoter of evidence
7. Pose questions without pre-determined answers or expectations. Identify ways to enhance a commitment to investigation.

Whakataukī

Ehara taku toa I te toa takitahi; engari he toa takitini

Success is not the work of one, but the work of many

Related Standards for the Teaching Profession

Design for learning
Select teaching approaches, resources, and learning and assessment activities based on a thorough knowledge of curriculum content, pedagogy, progressions in learning and the learners.