Utvecklandet av Grit och Dynamiskt mindset inom matematikundervisning

Abstract

Background: Angela Duckworth, (2017), professor of psychology, claim that some people have so called Grit, while other people do not have it. Grit can be translated or interpreted as a form of perseverance or internal drive. Duckworth further believes that students who have Grit are fighting and not giving up while student without Grit do not even try to face challenges because they are afraid of failure. Grit is a personality trait that a person can develop. This means that you can have Grit but you can also get Grit if you change your mindset. According to Boaler (2017) students need to fail to learn, that is when the brain develops, and in the mathematical subject, students can encounter failure more often than in other subjects. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to find out how teachers experience that they treat failure in mathematics with students, and to find out how teachers consider themselves in their teaching in mathematics to develop Grit and Dynamic Mindset to students. Selection: 20 mathematic teachers who teach mathematics, in different grade courses in elementary school, participated in the interview study. The participants came from different elementary schools in a common municipality in southern Sweden. Method: Qualitative Interview study with a phenomenology approach. Results: The teachers in the study expressed that they teach to develop Grit and Dynamic Mindsets to students. In particular, the teachers expressed their general aptitude for formative assessment and feedback, giving clear goals to the student, to train and repeat, to have a good classroom climate and to adapt the teaching. The teachers in the study stated that they try to avoid failures in mathematics, which according to the teachers, was easier to avoid at low level schools, where there are no grades. In order to avoid failures, the teachers in the study expressed that they use repetition and training, they discuss with the students that they must fail to learn and they also have a good and permissive classroom climate where it is ok to ask and to answer wrong, without the student feeling ridiculous. Conclusion: To develop Grit, teachers can be better at rewarding hard work, getting students to understand the importance of hard work, have high expectations for students, and providing reasonable demands on students. In addition, teachers can also be better on inviting and talking about people who worked hard to achieve success, as well as having a good relationship with parents, where parents get insight into hard work paying off. In order to respond to failures, teachers can be better by establishing a good relationship with the students and by not trying to avoid failures. Instead, teachers should teach students that failure is important for developing the brain. In addition, the teacher can work more to give the students understanding that learning is the important and not the grade.