As an accounting professor in higher education, I’ve found that helping students foster a growth mindset is essential to helping them develop their creativity in the business world. A growth mindset is the belief that a person’s abilities and skills can grow over time through dedication and hard work. A stagnant mindset, on the other hand, is the belief that a person’s abilities are fixed and can’t be improved. A stagnant mindset can block a student’s ability to be visionary and to think outside the four walls of the classroom. As technology grows, the way one thinks must grow as well. In this article, I’ll discuss five things accounting and finance professors can implement in the classroom to help foster a growth mindset in their students.
- Encourage a passion for learning
Encouraging a passion for learning can enhance a student's ability to develop a growth mindset. The goal is to promote a positive environment that gets students to focus on the process of learning instead of the grades they get. You can foster a growth mindset in the classroom by creating an environment that encourages students to embrace complex challenges and teaching them how to thrive through the process of learning.
This means implementing a culture that stimulates students' minds and gets them to explore ways to learn from their mistakes. Encourage students to ask questions and share their thoughts, which is a way to create a non-judgmental environment. When students feel comfortable asking questions, they’ll feel more prepared to face challenging topics. The key factor is to be approachable to students so they feel comfortable coming to you with questions. Question-and-answer dialogue helps students think from a growth mindset, which provides a learning environment that nurtures creativity.
As professors, we need to cultivate an environment within the walls of our classrooms where students have the passion to learn. Everyone in the classroom should participate and be involved in the learning experience. By implementing growth-mindset principles and practices, you can encourage a passion for learning by enlightening the students on their ability to develop through the challenges of new ideas. By illustrating a passion for learning yourself, you can help students learn to face challenges.
- Integrate Real-World Connections
Professors often base their lectures on the textbook and what the textbook outlines instead of thinking of ways to make their courses engaging, exciting, enjoyable, and interesting. A rigid course setup might have some students just trying to get through the course without absorbing the material from a growth mindset. Avoid falling into this trap by integrating real-world applications of accounting and finance into your curriculum. This will help ignite an interest, desire, and passion for learning the concepts while thriving through the process.
Incorporating diverse perspectives in accounting and finance courses is also a way to foster a growth mindset. By connecting accounting and finance concepts to real-world scenarios or industry practices, students can better understand the course objectives and apply critical thinking to scenarios they’ll encounter in their future careers. Students need to see how the textbook correlates to the real world. Incorporating real-world connections also enables students to have a flexible mindset to learn more and reach their desired outcome in the course.
A stagnant mindset can block a student’s ability to be visionary and to think outside the four walls of the classroom.
- Foster Growth Through Constructive Feedback
Providing students with constructive feedback helps them understand that setbacks are common in learning. Someone with a fixed mindset will focusing on mistakes they’ve made, hindering their ability to grow. Learning how to deal with setbacks and accept constructive feedback is an essential part of the learning process, and to having a growth mindset. When you teach, provide specific feedback that highlights areas for improvement and reinforce progress over perfection. Fostering a growth mindset through constructive feedback is a way to encourage students to look at challenging concepts from a perspective that will develop over time.
All students can grow and learn, but you need to customize the concepts according to student's needs. As professors, we have the responsibility to create an atmosphere where all students feel they can excel and succeed in any subject. For this type of classroom to exist, we must be mindful of our approach to ensure that the challenges are partnered with the value of the student’s efforts. To manifest great results in the classroom, you must commit to working with students to overcome their challenges, which, in turn, helps them to thrive through the challenges and setbacks. As Winston Churchill said, “Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.”
- Incorporate Autonomy in Choosing Topics for Assignments
Having a growth mindset can help students develop their abilities and creativity. When designing your curriculum, identify topics that will ignite the creative thought process in your students. If the topics are too challenging or not interesting to students, they may feel demotivated and disengaged, and like they’re unable to perform to the best of their abilities. When developing challenging topics, be cognizant of using the difficulties to motivate students—not to discourage them. To apply the growth mindset concept, you need to use challenges to help students see the value of putting in the effort to overcome them.
Getting students involved in their learning and giving them a sense of autonomy will help foster a growth mindset and a sense of ownership. Allowing students to choose topics for case studies and assignments can help them take ownership of their learning. When students have input in their learning, they can better understand the course objectives and concepts. Giving students autonomy also helps them collaborate with their peers by working together to solve problems and share different perspectives.
- Model a Growth Mindset
It’s important to understand that each student learns differently. Ignacio Estrada stated that if a student can’t learn the way we teach, then we should instead teach the way that student learns. Although everyone learns differently, modeling a growth mindset as a professor is a way to connect with students at any level in their growth. Teach your students that learning is a lifelong task. Modeling lifelong learning with a flexible mindset will help you be successful in your own personal and professional growth.
When modeling a growth mindset, make the approach the focal point. Encourage students’ growth and get them to see what they can achieve, instead of focusing on proficiency in a particular area of study. Taking the approach of implementing a growth mindset environment in your classroom will encourage students to believe they can achieve at a high level. When you’re committed to modeling a growth mindset in your learning environment, you can help make students see themselves and their potential in a more positive light.
