Zac: 0:00

Hi, I'm Zac Chase.

Stephanie: 0:02

And I'm Stephanie Melville.

Zac: 0:04

And this is Academic Distinctions.

Stephanie: 0:06

In 2006, a researcher named Carol Dweck published a book that would soon be on the shelves in e-readers of educators across the world who were dedicated to getting students to learn. The book? Mindset, The New Psychology of Success. It's got a ring to it, doesn't it?

Zac: 0:22

It does. In her book, Dweck highlighted an important idea, something the research was telling her and her colleagues could make the difference in moving learners from not learning to, well, learning.

Stephanie: 0:33

Dweck, it won't surprise you to learn, called this factor growth mindset.

Zac: 0:37

Growth mindset stands across the room and makes self-satisfied faces at its evil twin, fixed mindset.

Stephanie: 0:44

At its core, growth mindset is the belief that even if we can't do something or don't know something now, we have the capacity to do or learn that thing in the future.

Zac: 0:53

It's the difference between I can't do a somersault and I can't do a somersault yet.

Stephanie: 1:00

Not long after Dweck's work was published, it started getting misused.

Zac: 1:04

This is the way.

Stephanie: 1:05

Folks mistakenly thought all students needed was a yet at the end of their sentences to make progress in school.

Zac: 1:12

And yets are powerful things, but they aren't necessarily more powerful than showing up to school hungry or living in poverty or homelessness or having a disability in a class where you receive insufficient accommodations or you get the picture. Yets are not silver bullets, and Dweck never said they were.

Stephanie: 1:32

So in today's episode, we're taking a look at growth mindset as it stands today and trying to pull apart what we might know now almost 20 years after Dweck's book was published and how we can use that new understanding to help students learn.

Zac: 1:52

So

Stephanie: 1:59

All right, we are here today with Kathy Williams, co-founder and executive director of U-Cubed, which is Joe Bowler's research center through Stanford University, where Kathy develops content and professional development. She's an author and math ed tech advisor and generally all around great human for mathematics education. Kathy, welcome to the show. Oh,

Cathy: 2:18

thank you, Stephanie. Thanks, Zac. It's good to be here.

Zac: 2:21

Kathy. This episode, we're trying to unpack the idea around growth mindset. You have done quite a bit of work in this area. Can you give us a little bit of an overview of kind of how you came to think about growth mindset in particular and how you see it intersecting with math education?

Cathy: 2:38

I think I was messing with growth mindset before I knew it was something. Because early on, I was challenged. I was a teacher. I went through my applied math degree, and at times I felt inferior for whatever reasons. And then in my time of teaching, other teachers were faster than I was at figuring things out, and I kind of... would shrink away from that. And yet I would say, you know, try to build myself up again. And so I think I was always, and then I'd see my students that were really good mathematically, but they'd be put in the lowest classes that I did as a new teacher. So I think I was playing with these ideas of what's going on without knowing that there was this thing called mindset. So I first learned about it formally. Carol Dweck came out with the book, I believe around 2006. And then the chatter started. I was at the county office system in that time. There was a lot of chatter about it. And I started thinking about it more and started realizing these times that I really felt inferior. A wall was going up and I was blocking myself. Something was blocked inside of me.

Zac: 4:01

It's interesting you talk about Dweck's book because I think that for a lot of people, it hit them as like, oh, this is research to support this idea that I've kind of intuited as true about my students. And then I think it also helped many educators, myself included, make sure that we are looking at our students in ways that are also true. attuned to a growth mindset, right? So it not just this is true, like, even that mindset is not immutable, right? So it's not that I don't have a growth mindset. And Stephanie does have a growth mindset. It's this idea of like, Oh, as a teacher, I need to have a growth mindset. And in the right, so that there's that piece. And I, yeah, I think that when I encountered Dweck's work, first, that was, that was the same thing was just like, okay, yeah, those are words to help me understand this thing that I've kind of been playing with in my own practice as well.

Stephanie: 4:54

To name it, right?

Zac: 4:55

Yes, to name it, yeah. What are other things you see in your work connecting math education and growth mindset with some common practices that maybe are important in math education and but you could probably see like in the executive suite or kind of in an office as well. It's like, what are some ways you hope students and people in general are talking about themselves?

Cathy: 5:18

Mindset, you know, the word is out there all over the place now. You know, if you're listening to a sports broadcast, you hear mindset, you hear, you know, I'm waiting, you know, we have smart water. I'm waiting for mindset water to come up. Maybe I should just put it on my water bottle and get a sticker, mindset sticker.

Zac: 5:35

I'm sure you should get, you could get some really good Good VC money on that one too. I think you'd

Cathy: 5:39

get millions. Right. You know, I think, so the term is in our minds. We're thinking about it. But to me, it's kind of like a flow and it's an internalization. So in the office, we may not talk about mindset, but you know, somebody says, oh, well, let's try this. And it's just this It's a really great idea, but you recognize how hard it's going to be. And so you all sit down and you roll up your sleeves and everybody comes into it with an attitude of, yeah, we're going to figure this out. We're going to persevere. We're going to take this on and we're going to do what we can to move along this goal of getting there.

Stephanie: 6:20

It's a belief. How do you pull apart the difference between growth mindset and grit, for example? I guess what is growth mindset versus what isn't growth mindset?

Cathy: 6:34

You know, growth mindset, and I think about it today, you know, and it goes across all things. I can have a really good moment in growth mindset with mathematics and a really horrible one with having to write a piece of a grant, right? I'm kind of a writing phobic and, uh, I'm working on that. I'm working on my mindset for writing. So I think as we sit and we look at, at mindset, it's, it, I'm going to go back again. It's, it's that internalized feeling. It's that belief that I can. And grit is a piece where I'm a former competitive athlete, uh, Really, you know, athletics is a big passion of mine. I see it in athletics, right? In the Wimbledon final for the men, you know, we have a player that talks about, you know, kind of went into a lull and just really worked, worked, worked, worked, worked to come back to the top tier. And to me, that's grit. You just take this uber focus and you just go, right? And, um, I remember that at different times in my life, um, as an athlete and, and maybe somebody does that in mathematics. They just totally focus in this world of mathematics and they go and they work and they work and they work and they work. Mindset is to me is this belief that I could, I can do, I can do it. I can do it. If I'm going to put the time to it, I can do it. So, um, I don't see them. I see them together in the same bucket, but I see them differently.

Zac: 8:15

So you're saying what I'm hearing is mindset is the belief. And then great is kind of the perseverance and determination piece.

Cathy: 8:23

You know, it's this high level of hard work and focus of practice, practice, practice, practice. And you just get really, really obsessed. And I don't mean that in a bad way. You just get targeted at work. And yeah, And you focus to specialize in this one thing. I think mindset goes across everything, whether it be fixed or growth. And I see it kind of fluidly as a flow. There's times I can get really fixed inside of mathematics, I think. And then I, as I have had growth mindset, I pull myself out of it.

Zac: 9:03

It's interesting. Yeah. Because I remember not long after kind of Dweck released her book and it became like highly adopted and Dweck wasn't talking about grit necessarily. Right. That came from from other spaces. And so then schools very much seized on this. Right. Like we have to have a growth mindset and we have our kids need to be gritty, which just sounds horrible. If you've ever been to a beach, I don't think that's the thing you want. And then I think what was important is the conversation became more complex when folks entered in these ideas. Right. Right. And so it's not an, and so this kind of like, yeah, we want our students to be able to persevere. We want them to believe that they can do these things. And we need to do this work of dismantling, you know, systems that have inherently limited opportunities for, for folks. And it's interesting because I hear that in some of what you're saying about your experience as a math teacher, right? Is that the system slotted those students into the lowest math classes, even though those students maybe had a growth mindset or those students had the perseverance. The system said, oh, because of this whatever factor, we're going to move you here. Yeah. And so I think that for me is the most interesting complication. It's not bootstraps. Um, right. Cause we keep, we hear all that, like pull yourself up by your bootstraps, get this thing done. And there's just sometimes where it's like, yeah, but it should probably be a little bit easier. I'm thinking about curling. Have you ever watched curling?

Cathy: 10:52

Oh, I love curling. Right. So they push the

Zac: 10:54

stone and that stone has friction and it's got to keep moving. And, and what are the people ahead of the stone do like they're brushing right there. And so it's this, like the stone's got to persevere. It's got to believe it can get there. I know it's an inanimate object. Go with me on this metaphor. Um, But still, it is somebody's job to clear that path, to say, this stone's going to do the work, and we're going to work ahead of it to try to make that a little bit easier. That's how I think this lives in my brain.

Cathy: 11:21

Yeah. And I think grit's great. But when I think of grit, I think of you're just going hard on something. You are going to– master this piano thing. You are practicing, practicing, practicing. How do you be gritty about everything? Right. Exhausted, right? I think about those students that take all these different APs at once and they're trying to be masters of the content. And of course they are. They're high achieving kids. You know, they're working so hard. I think mindset is, you know, I hope they have that because, you know, that goes across everything to me.

Stephanie: 12:02

Yeah. So this leads me to a really interesting question. Can it be unintentionally weaponized or harmful, this idea of growth mindset? I mean, we've talked a little bit about how grit can be weaponized. You know, like, no, you just need to bootstrap. You need to do it yourself. Where there's a will, there's a way. And that's the end. But what about growth mindset? Does the idea of growth mindset have any kind of unintentional harm behind it if we're not careful? Yeah.

Cathy: 12:31

I think actions need to match the words. So I think using growth mindset terms and the actions don't match it, I think can really not help. I think it's better to not even give the growth mindset term then. And I see that a lot in the classroom. You know, growth mindset is hard as a teaching practice. It requires a lot of work.

Zac: 12:56

Dweck wrote about this in 2015 for Ed Week, and I thought it was really interesting. She says, It's about telling the truth about a student's current achievement and then together doing something about it, helping him or her become smarter. And then it's, I also fear that, and then this goes back to my, I think my last point, I also fear that the mindset work is sometimes used to justify why some students aren't learning. Oh, he has a fixed mindset. We use it to blame the child's environment or ability. You talk about athletes, Kathy, and I think I go back to the, I think the last Olympic summer Olympics with Simone Biles. Right. And so this, the concept, this is where I learned about the yips. I didn't know what those were. Right. And so, you know, Simone Biles was most decorated Olympian. Right. And she just said, I, I'm going to pull out of this thing. Right. And so, right. Like she recognized, she knows she's great. There is not like, like Simone Biles knows what Simone Biles can do. Right. And she realized, if I keep pushing, I won't be who I want to be. Right. I need to do this thing for me so that I can do this thing later on. And I think that... There are applications for the classroom on that one as well. I would tell my kids when they came in the class, I said, you just tell me if you're having a chunky milk day. Sorry,

Stephanie: 14:48

that's a visual.

Zac: 14:50

If you woke up, you poured your cereal, the milk was chunky, you didn't notice, you took a bite, and then everything went down. Alexander and the horrible, no good, the terrible. You raise your hand and say, this is standing in the way for me. You know that. You're like, I'm not going to be able to do math. I'm not going to be able to write. This is the thing I need. I have a psychosocial need for safety, and my cognitive load is too high.

Cathy: 15:15

It's this belief that I can learn, not that this wasn't given to me. And how many math students do we see? Stephanie, I know you've probably got a long list of things you could say about this, where all of a sudden they're crushed. They get that first failing piece and they're crushed and they're done. I can't tell you how many parents, grandparents are reaching out to me this summer. I don't know what it is. These students that have been high achieving in elementary school and all of a sudden they're crushed and they're done. And that's the fixed mindset, right? That's the, oh my gosh, it was a gift. It was given to me. And now I don't have it anymore. I reached in some of the students that, you know, we've interviewed here at Stanford. They say, well, I reached my limit. I'm done. And, you know, it's like they have this limit. And because it was a gift, it wasn't something that they earned that they worked for. And I think that is something we really need to work on. We need to educate parents, everybody about it. You know, I think about one of my, I'm a huge avid follower of lots of sports and athletics, but my favorite is the U.S. Women's National Team. recently Tobin Heath just came out, one of my absolute favorite players, uh, just this magical player on the field. And she talked about, uh, she had to retire because of, um, physical challenges and just could not compete at that high level anymore. And do you know, the body, the wear and tear on the body and, um, But what Tobin kept saying was, you know, people are saying, well, how did you do this? This magical player with skills that other players, you know, wish they had. And she talks about how every player that she played with that she saw something in them that she wanted to emulate, she would take and pick. She had this belief that I can watch this player. Oh, look at him do that. I want to do that. And Tobin would pick. figure it out and take it into their game and, and make it then theirs in there. And I, and I think about that with kids, you know, this is what we want for everyone. Okay, sure. Tobin got into a situation where all of a sudden the body says, no, you can't keep going when the mind still wants to, but Tobin's going to figure it out and do something else amazing just because she has this mindset, you know, to, to take anything on. And I wish that, our students knew that, you know, in the classroom that so many kids give up when it's hard or give up when they fail or give up when they make a mistake. Yeah. And this is where mindset growth mindset comes in. Okay. I made a mistake. Let me learn from it.

Stephanie: 18:03

I was one of those kids. I think who you're talking about, who just whatever class I was in, I got it. Like I didn't have to work to get my 4.0. Right. Right. made my mom so mad because she was not like that. She just would study all the time, would not get the grade that she wanted. And she would always tell me, why aren't you studying? Why aren't you studying? I was like, what do you want me to do? Get a higher A? It's the same on my GPA. But then when I got to college, when I went to UCSD, I didn't know how to study. And I got my very first C in in a calculus class. And I was like, Oh no, this is not ever happening to me again, again, again. And I, I figured it out. It's like this, this, this letter is not in my vocabulary, but what am I supposed to do with that? It just, it's an interesting way to think about like, how, how did that happen for me? Like for somebody who quote, didn't have to work for it. And then suddenly decided, no, no, I will work for it because that's not what I'm used to. But maybe it's because, because I heard my parents over and over again saying like, no, you, you can work for it. You should work for it. I don't know. Maybe that's what it had to.

Cathy: 19:28

Yeah. I attribute it myself to coming through athletics because in athletics, you know, you, you strike out and you just get back to the batting cage. you know, you pop up a bunt instead of putting it down, you get back in the batting cage, you go, go, go pitch, pitch, pitch. Here comes that grit, right? Just boom, boom, boom in it, in it, in it. And I think it took me later, you know, to figure it out academically.

Zac: 19:55

Well, and it's that you were using sports here and I, I have invoked Simone Biles, but I think it's also like the arts give us this, right? Like visual artists, performing artists, like they know, this piece too, right? If you are involved in something that has taught your brain the value of practice and the value of rehearsal, then you've been in an endeavor that requires growth mindset or inspires growth mindset, perhaps. And then there's that important element of, and Kathy, I'm hearing you say you kind of did this, of transfer, right? Because you know, I'm good at sports does not always equal, or I'm good at learning sports does not always equal. I am good at learning math. And I think the piece here, Stephanie, to go back to your question of kind of unintentional harm that can be done with growth mindset is that there are probably some educators who latched onto growth mindset and then use that as an excuse for uninteresting teaching.

Stephanie: 21:03

Yeah.

Zac: 21:03

Yeah. Right. Like you can have the most growth mindset, you know, mindset of the world. And if the math is boring or it is like, and I mean, I think like, I should get points every time I invoke Dewey on this podcast, right? But we're going to go back to Dewey, right? Experience and education. It is the educator's job to make the experience interesting, to lead us to the next experience. So it doesn't matter if my mindset is fixed or growth, if the experience is uninteresting. It's this combination of things.

Cathy: 21:37

In the math class, there are kids that are going to sit there and think that set of 40 questions is fun. I didn't think it was fun, but I didn't find it challenging when I was in high school, so I was okay to sit there and do it off my plate. But for some, that is just snake and spider click away. I don't want any part of this. And so where's that fun factor? That person dancing and doing those dance moves over and over again, they think it's fun. For me, batting in the batting cage was fun. So how do we we have to work hard to make our content fun or at least something that students see themselves engaging in, whether they need to know if it's relevant. Is it fun? Is it playful? That's why when I see I walk into a classroom and maybe I'm going to hear the words and I'm going to see all the mindset posters around the classroom. But to me, none of that makes a difference if the engagement with the content and the learning isn't a piece of it. And that's what we really work on at U-Cube, the low floor, high ceiling task that is playful.

Zac: 22:39

When I was an undergrad, I decided I was going to take Latin as my international language. I am not taking any Latin.

Cathy: 22:47

As we do. I

Zac: 22:49

was like, this sounds interesting. I take it Spanish, right? And related. They're related, but they're not the same. And... That was when I got my C, but I was really interested in learning the Latin, right? But the grade was actually getting in the way. And it was hard work and those tests did not go well for me. And so that was the only course I ever took pass fail because I was like, oh, I know GPA is going to matter later on, but I want to keep doing this. Like it was in It was interesting to me. And so I was like, how do I reduce the threat level here so I can just do this interesting thing? So I say to you, Solway Magister. I don't know. That's been a long time since I've had to use my Latin. But I had that growth mindset. But the system, again, was set up to be like, well, you're going to fail. You might want to not take any more Latin. Maybe go back to Spanish. And I was like, I don't want to. All right. We have talked through the ins and outs of growth mindset, some of the potential pitfalls and pratfalls. I just like alliteration. We're going to close here, Kathy. Thanks for staying with us. And think through some practitioner-based pieces. I spoke to this a little bit. And we can have a conversation about teachers and educators because this is a podcast about education. But I think what's really important is this understanding of growth mindset isn't just for students, right? You're a lifelong learner because you have that growth mindset. You're still doing the thing even though you're not getting a degree or nobody's grading you at this point. So you mentioned going into a classroom and the posters are everywhere. What does it look like in your day-to-day? Let's not even talk about your– what is a thing, a habit that you, because of this work, have developed today? That you say, this is actually where I figured out I needed to put some growth mindset into practice.

Cathy: 24:53

I think we really have to bring children in, bring people in and listen to what they see and not be correcting their language. Oh, you didn't use the right word there, interrupting them. Or, you know, just really letting people come into the conversation. I call it a math community. And everybody's ideas matter, and we're going to talk this through, and we're going to see how you see it, and you see it, and then we're going to follow through. So I'm engaging in this content in a community, or maybe I'm taking it off and I'm doing it myself, but I feel like I have agency in it. I'm not trying to do what someone else, I'm not trying to please someone else and make it their way. I'm actually engaging with it with my own thinking and my own agency. And that's the way we go about it. And then we teach along the way.

Zac: 25:42

When I was in grad school, we read a paper, Barn Raising, Collaborative Group Process in Seminars. It's by Don McCormick and Michael Kahn. And it was one that's like, it is sticky in my brain. And the idea that in conversations, very similar in what you said, Kathy, makes me think of this, that our goal is in conversation is to build something, right? It could be to build our math understanding. It could be to build this company. It could be to build this idea, this sense of self, whatever. And so the, like the barn raising approach taken from the metaphor of kind of Amish barn raising is we all show up to try to do the thing together.

Cathy: 26:21

Yeah. I want to come back to feed because I think that is a huge piece of this and it's, you know, we're molding, we're teaching young children and all of a sudden math is about speed and it's your name's on the board, your name's not on the board, you didn't get there fast enough, you made a few mistakes. We brought in the middle school kids to our summer camp. There was over 80 of them and all the researchers, and they were kids of varying achievement, right? According to their parents' perspective and their school perspective and those measures. And the kids were asked if they were a math person and every single one of them, even the high achievers said no. And they were asked, why aren't you? And they were able to name some other student and say they are because they're fast. And so this is what they've made meaning of. This is what they've internalized from these practices. And that isn't it. And I think that's what I suffered from when I was young. I was fast and then I wasn't fast. And I was... And due to, you know, my aunt was a professor of mathematics and she'd bring me puzzles. She wouldn't tell me they're mathematical, but they were slow and I had to sit and work at them. And she'd come back and visit and say, how many moves? You know, she'd ask me all these questions. And I realize, you know, all the time spent. So I had this weird thing. I had the speed in school and then I had what my aunt was kind of molding me with. And later when I was slow, I thought I wasn't good anymore. I fell into that because of the speed base. And I wasn't as accurate as I had been as a child. We hear Stanford students, you know, say that Joe teaches a class, how to learn math for students. We have a free online course on this. And then Joe teaches an undergraduate class and there's high achieving students at Stanford in mathematics and others that feel are not, they're not confident in mathematics. And they all talk about this, damaging speed message.

Stephanie: 28:24

Yeah.

Cathy: 28:24

We talked to mathematicians today. You know, I think of the many mathematicians out there that I get to interact with these amazing people, how many of them tell me that they are slow mathematical thinkers. And I think my confidence in myself has even grown the more I spend time with these people, because I realized that in the And when we construct tasks here at U-Cubed, you wouldn't believe the number of drafts and the amount of thought that just goes into one task we produce. That's why we don't produce a whole lot of tasks. But it's getting away from that and also realizing that this isn't a race. This isn't running the hundred. This isn't trying to be the fastest one out there in whatever sports have speed or whatever. This is thinking deeply. This is thinking about how it works and thinking about what does it look like and what is the language and all of these different components of it. I think that is what we need to help kids see and get away from the speed piece. Because when we say they know it, when they do a time test, do they know it? What is knowing? If they can say three times seven is 21, okay, great. But draw me a picture of it. What does three times 21 look like? What does three times seven look like? What does the three mean and what does the seven mean? And what is the language around this away from the symbolization? That's knowing it. And I think we have a lot of kids today that can do really fast work, but they don't know. They don't really know.

Stephanie: 30:08

every time I hear you need to be able to do this quickly is it's always in some form of connection to this idea of cognitive load. If you don't have to think so hard about what three times seven is, you'll be able to do this inherently more difficult, more complex mathematics easier. And I know that this is something that also, you know, goes across content areas. It's not just math, right? The easier stuff can be done faster and therefore your brain can focus more on the more complex stuff. So how do we square ourselves with that? Like this need for rote memorization of, you know, quote, basic math facts, let's say, so that a kid can more effectively do more complex work. My thing was when I was in the classroom, by the time you got to middle school, if you didn't know your multiplication tables or your basic arithmetic, use a dang calculator. Just use it. And that is a thing. But I know a lot of other teachers who are mad at me. It's like, no, I can't get my kids to do systems of equations until I'm confident that they can add, subtract, multiply, divide with fractions. And so they would spend the first six weeks of the school year doing that. It's like, Oh my God, what are we doing here? I

Cathy: 31:22

think of my son who memorizing multiplication facts was not in his world. And I was told he wouldn't.

Zac: 31:31

That's weird because I'm not your son, but it sounds like you're describing.

Cathy: 31:35

I was told like he wouldn't graduate, you know, all these things that tell you when children are challenged. It wasn't, My child is not broken. The system was broken. Say that again. Say that again. My child is not broken. It was the system that's broken. And today he is this high-flying, sought-after engineer that can solve really, really hard problems that others can't solve. And he can actually make it work and fix anything. And that's the child I knew. And yet in the school system, he can't do it fast. Oh, but he certainly knows it better. You know what? So that's when I, you know, start to say, well, this whole speed thing, having to factor 10 quadratic equations in a classroom by hand or whatever, whatever polynomial long division, I don't know, just name it. Oh, I could go on forever here. Is that really knowing? There's so much more to this. And I think, you know, as I, meet other mathematicians and I talk to them and they talk about schooling and, you know, their challenges of school and how they felt slow. Well, thank you that you're slow today because you are solving really, really hard things. So I think the speed thing maybe was more in benefit of the teacher.

Stephanie: 33:02

Brilliant. Sorry. I love that. It's like, at what point in time did we devalue thinking, carefully and methodically about stuff.

Zac: 33:11

Growth mindset, I think, is also instilling doubt in our own inabilities, right? So it's not the same as building our belief in our abilities, which I think runs the risk of that kind of self-esteem piece. But when we fail or something is difficult and we go to that place of like, I guess I'm not good at this, it is creating another voice in the But what if you could be right like that? Just that little piece of like I'm doubting my own sense of doubt.

Stephanie: 33:47

It's a really great way, I would think. I would think to combat imposter syndrome, which is something that I 100% battle with all the time. So I'm going to keep that little tidbit in mind, Zac. Thank you for that one.

Zac: 34:00

I'm not supposed to be in this room. But what if I

Stephanie: 34:03

am? But what if I am?

Zac: 34:04

Right? Doubting our own doubts. Yeah. My brain is trained against double negatives, I know. But I think that for me, that's the practice of growth mindset. I don't need you to believe that you can do it 100%. This is amazing. I just need you to chip away at that edifice of this is impossible, or I can't do this, or I'm not good at math, or I'm not good at reading, or this is stupid. It's a harder thing to say when this is stupid and then music. But what if it's not? That doesn't work the same.

Stephanie: 34:39

It doesn't. But at the same time, like that's really good for middle school students. Like this is stupid when I'm ever going to use this in life. But what if I am? What if there was the circumstance later in life where this actually did present itself as something necessary? Yeah.

Zac: 34:54

I want to bring in a last piece here that occurs to me, and that is around the, what's called the question formulation technique out of the right question Institute, which is right question.org. And it's this idea of the connection between learner curiosity and growth mindset, right? You wanted to get better at hitting because you were curious and you talked about the The soccer player whose name is escaping me right now.

Cathy: 35:24

Tobin Heath.

Zac: 35:25

Right. So Tobin's curiosity being important to her growth mindset. Right. So the idea behind the question formulation technique is you say, like, today we're going to learn about how polynomials can be. Give me a verb.

Cathy: 35:44

Used in the world can be. Yeah. Right.

Zac: 35:46

So there's our objective. Learners will understand how polynomials can be used in the world. We write that on the board. And the whole idea behind the question formulation technique, which can take five minutes, is that the students then look at that and generate as many questions as they can. It is quantity over quality based on that one sentence. And then they say, what are the most important questions of the ones we generated as a group? And then you can just teach your lesson as is. But by activating... students' curiosity and having them prioritize their curiosity, I would argue that you have initiated more of a growth mindset. I'm more likely to have a growth mindset because I have the question. I have some sort of stake, artificially generated as it may be in some instances, that that is another way. What is my question about this thing? What am I curious about?

Cathy: 36:40

I found if we show a visual image of something, and say, what do you notice? What do you wonder? And our brains, our human mind is mathematical. Everybody's is. We don't have anybody that isn't mathematical. What patterns do you see? What do you notice? Our brains seek patterns and then we seek efficiency. And we create things at U-Cube that draw the learner in. And we've had students that, a sixth grader sits there and generalizes using symbols in a quadratic formula, right? This is not the student that was sitting in honors classes that had had algebra. This is a student that didn't see themselves as a math person, but they loved visuals, and they believed in themselves as an artist. And all of a sudden, they saw art in these visual patterns, and then they wanted to generalize it, and they used their language, and then they found their language was taking them towards symbols. That's... That to me is this curiosity that draws it in. And then, then you teach what they need to know. You guide them along this pathway. It

Zac: 37:47

works.

Cathy: 37:48

It works.

Zac: 37:49

I think our content should end with curiosity. Stephanie, are you curious about anything?

Stephanie: 37:54

Yeah. Kathy, I have heard about this book that's coming out called data mines. Tell me about it.

Cathy: 38:00

You know, I'm so excited for data mines. Um, We were asked, you know, to put this together for Corwin. And so it's a Corwin book. I think it's coming out very soon. And I think, you know, today our students are surrounded by data. And they're also, you know, data is being collected on us, all of us, all of the time. And so this is just a introductory book on what are some ways we can help students develop a data mind across content areas and different teaching areas. Ideas are throughout the book and different teachers that we followed and watched them do this in their classrooms. Now, every time I get into any type of a math thing that I'm designing, I can't help but think of it through a data perspective or something that we call data moves that I might do in the classroom. Or teaching with a data flare. We talk about this throughout the book. And I think this is something that brings together all of our content areas together.

Stephanie: 39:01

Everybody's talking about database, this database, that database, the other thing. And what is it that we push our kids to do? We push them to figure out how fast the base of the ladder is falling away from the wall as the top slides down at a rate of 0.4 meters per second. Nobody cares about that. Nobody wants to solve that. I mean, I would solve

Zac: 39:22

that. If you're on that ladder, you just care that it's falling. You're

Stephanie: 39:25

right. Exactly.

Cathy: 39:27

What move am I going to make to try to have the least amount of injury?

Stephanie: 39:31

Yeah, right. Exactly. But this idea that we as grownups use data every single day to make decisions in our professional and personal aspects of life. but we don't give our students the same opportunity. So what is it that we expect them to do when they grow up, you know, or, or navigate the real world? Like a data mindset now more than ever is an essential component, I think to succeeding in the real world.

Zac: 40:04

Absolutely. Kathy Williams. It is a pure delight to, I'm so excited to read Data Mines. Have I pre-ordered my copy? I sure have.

Cathy: 40:17

And thank you, Zac. It's great talking to you too. I mean, just anytime we can sit down as educators and just have a conversation, it's a good thing. I think we need to have this more, right? We have a lot of people out there that are saying, this is the way to do it and this is the way to do it. And we need to just sit down and talk. We're going to agree more than we're ever going to disagree. And then we need to work together. Thank you.

Stephanie: 40:47

Thank you so much for joining us today on this episode of Academic Distinctions. As always, we hope that you enjoyed today's episode and that you'll share it. Follow us on Instagram at academicdistinctionspod. Find us on Blue Sky at fixingschools. Or find us on Facebook. As always, this is your call to action to share the post, like us, and subscribe. You can find us online at academicdistinctions.com. Have a question for the pod or a topic you'd like us to dig into? Email us at mail at academicdistinctions.com. Until next week, friends. This podcast is underwritten by the Federation of American Scientists. Find out more at FAS.org.

Zac: 41:24

so