A new book suggests developing a growth mindset in college

In his new book It’s all about attitude: The power of college to activate lifelong growth (Johns Hopkins University Press) Daniel Porterfield, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute and former president of Franklin & Marshall College, argues that colleges should pursue a new goal: getting students to develop a growth mindset.

The term, popularized by psychologist Carol Dweck in a 2006 book, Mindset: The new psychology of success, refers to a person’s belief in their own ability to grow and improve their skills and intelligence. In contrast, people with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence and skills are static and cannot be changed. Porterfield, who has also served as a faculty member and senior vice president for strategic development at Georgetown University, argues that instilling a growth mindset in students—the ability to see themselves as lifelong learners capable of adapting to new circumstances and environments—is especially important in the 21st century as new technologies create an ever-changing career landscape for graduates.

The book draws on interviews with Franklin & Marshall University students to learn about the elements of their college careers that led them to success, highlighting stories of flexibility and perseverance in the face of challenges to explore key questions: How do universities foster these skills? When, where, and how do students learn during their college lives?

In an interview with Inside Higher EdPorterfield spoke about the book and how his ideas about student mindsets reflect current questions about the purpose of college. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Why did you notice the concept of developing a growth mindset as an underrated goal of higher education?

A: Two factors led me to realize that developing a growth mindset is a key benefit of a good college education. One was that I was a very hands-on professor who also lived on campus in faculty housing at Georgetown University, and the other was that I was a very student-focused president at Franklin & Marshall College. And from the testimonies of my students and mentees over the years, I learned that time and time again, students or recent graduates described key learning moments that gave them new confidence in their ability to drive their own future development. That was one of the great takeaways from a valuable college education—that they learned how to learn, that they were good at learning, that they learned to love learning.

Second, like many others, I read all the articles and observed first-hand how quickly our society is changing through technology, demographics, new means of communication and connections that allow people to engage in dialogue with people they would never have been able to talk to in earlier times. And I realized that the changing nature of the economy in particular requires agility and trust to continue to learn and grow.

Q: This seems to contradict the idea that college is about developing either critical thinking skills or career skills. What do you think about this dichotomy?

A: To me, the kind of education that focuses on critical thinking and the kind of education that focuses on job preparation are actually complementary: two sides of the same coin for fostering a growth mindset. Because to develop a growth mindset, the student must have actually learned or grown; second, he must know that he has learned or grown; third, he must know how he can learn or grow in the future; and fourth, he must ideally see himself as a learner and a grower. These four steps to acquiring a growth mindset can be facilitated by vocational education, by liberal arts education, by work experience at two- and four-year colleges and graduate schools, and by volunteerism.

Q: Why is college a particularly good place to develop a growth mindset?

A: Growth mindsets can be nurtured in many different contexts. What makes the residence so special is the learning environment, which is open 24 hours a day, day and night. Second, there are a variety of faculty mentors who work directly with students. Third, there is a constant team atmosphere where students are in different teams all day: at work, in class, in their activities, in the shared apartment. Fourth, the residence is a young people’s environment full of 18-23 year olds who are excited about new ideas. They create their own inventions, they network with each other, they learn and develop. So it’s a very dynamic, diverse environment with students from all walks of life.

The crucial factor, however, is that each individual student must take responsibility for his or her learning.

Q: In recent years, it has become increasingly common to hear claims that students are not caring, arguing with their professors, cheating with AI, or whatever – behaviors that do not necessarily align with a willingness to learn and a desire to challenge themselves. Do you think this narrative holds true, and how does it fit with the goal of encouraging the development of a growth mindset?

A: In the book, I interview about 30 to 35 students about what made their college experience so transformative and how they came to believe that they could own their learning throughout their lives. In each case, there was a dedicated professor or other college educator who took the time to get to know a student and hear their hope and their yearning for why they were in college. They nurtured that hope and fed it by challenging them and introducing them to methods they could use to develop their own learning, whether it was research methods, playwriting methods, or critical reading and thinking methods.

This commitment of dedicated and caring adults to ambitious students is the magic that makes great learning possible.

Most instructors I know are so committed to their students that as they get to know them better, they use every tool at their disposal to help them learn and grow. I write about some instructors at Franklin & Marshall who taught students research techniques. Others helped them research the background for a historical drama they were writing. Still others helped students think about the dynamics of sameness and difference in the classroom and made them feel that, even though they were numerically underrepresented in terms of their background, they really belonged in the class and in the school. Time and time again, I experienced the presence of caring and involved adults as the X-factor that allowed students to discover the greatness within them, to make college special.

Q: In your interviews, students focused more on their “learning journeys” than on the end results of their college education. What does this tell you about student success and what conclusions should colleges draw from this?

A: The value of reflecting on the learning journeys is that we can then improve the journeys. We can then say: “Where were not Student learning? What not run properly? How do we make it easier more Learning?” There was a time when educators said, “A great school recruits great students and then gets out of their way.” I think that’s empty pedagogy. I think we should get in the way of students by helping them shape their educational and learning journey and then continue it.

One thing that colleges could do differently, or even better, is to think about an alternative transcript to the one they have now that only describes the courses taken and the grades achieved. Instead, they could create another transcript, perhaps a supplementary one, where students are constantly checking in: “What am I learning right now? And what do I want to learn next?” The transcript becomes a portfolio of learning goals, efforts to achieve that knowledge, and insights into what came out as a result of learning.

A second way I think colleges can encourage a growth mindset is to spend more time with students early in their studies to show them that they are responsible for their education, that they can take the wheel and make the decisions they want to make. And if they don’t pursue their education with confidence, that’s on them. Part of their responsibility is to do their best.

Q: Right now, colleges are trying to figure out what it means to give someone an education without knowing whether that job will still exist in the world they’re going to in five years. How can a growth mindset help solve that problem?

A: We need to prepare students for a dynamic world where the nature of work and citizenship will change rapidly, because that is a fact. It is happening. AI is one manifestation of that, but citizens are constantly confronted with an abundance of information, both good and bad. We also need to prepare young people to distinguish good information from bad, the wheat from the chaff, so that they can actually trust the sources of information available to them.

So I think the role of higher education today is not weaker, but stronger, because of technological change. College life gives us the chance to help students become independent, self-directed learners, confident consumers of information, and more effective employees in four years. These are all key attributes for all jobs of the future. Can you learn? Can you collaborate with others? Can you distinguish good information from bad? College can play a big role in that.

I also think we want to encourage innovation and creativity, whether it’s in starting new companies, in finding new uses for the information we get from the big data sets we have access to today, or in finding new ways to do research with a lot more information. I think the information revolution, which is now leading to the artificial intelligence revolution, makes higher education all the more important to prepare people who are going to do advanced research, run companies, serve as diplomats, or take on leadership roles in society. And we want them not to fear change, but to be able to manage change.