Growth Mindset | Expanding your comfort zone

Growth Mindset while expanding your comfort zone Lev Vygotsky

Growth Mindset and your comfort zone

Growth Mindset occurs when you expand your comfort zone, and get a birds-eye view of your limitations a moment ago. Zone of Proximal Development according to Lev Vygotsky, is “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers.” Parents and teachers can foster learning and growth mindset by providing educational opportunities that lie within a child’s zone of proximal development.
Vygotsky believed that peer interaction was an essential part of the learning process. In order for children to learn new skills, he suggested pairing more competent students with less skilled ones. When a student is in this zone of proximal development, providing them with the appropriate assistance and tools, which he referred to as scaffolding, gives the student what they need to accomplish the new task or skill. Eventually, the scaffolding can be removed and the student will be able to complete the task independently (growth mindset) – as opposed to the Carol Dweck Fixed Mindset.
It is important to realize that the zone of proximal development is a moving target. As a learner gains new skills and abilities, this zone moves progressively forward, thus nurturing Growth Mindset Activities.
For example, somebody Teaching Growth Mindsets in an experimental psychology course might initially provide scaffolding for students by coaching them step-by-step through their experiments. Then slowly remove the scaffolding by only providing outlines or brief descriptions of how to proceed. Finally, students would be expected to develop and carry out their experiments independently when they had developed the Growth Mindset for Students.

Growth Mindset and spontaneous conviction

Piaget described intelligence of the individual as having two closely interrelated parts: assimilation and accommodation. He believed this process of thinking could be regarded as an extension of the biological process of the evolutionary adaptation of the specie, which has also two on-going processes: assimilation and accommodation.
He argued infants were engaging in an act of assimilation when they sucked on everything in their reach. He claimed infants transform all objects into an object to be sucked. The children were assimilating the objects to conform to their own mental structures. Piaget then made the assumption that whenever one transforms the world to meet individual needs or conceptions, one is, in a way, assimilating it. Piaget also observed his children not only assimilating objects to fit their needs, but also modifying some of their mental structures to meet the demands of the environment. This is the second division of adaptation known as accommodation. To start out, the infants only engaged in primarily reflex actions such as sucking, but not long after, they would pick up actual objects and put them in their mouths. When they do this, they modify their reflex response to accommodate the external objects into reflex actions. Because the two are often in conflict, they provide the impetus for intellectual development. The constant need to balance the two triggers the intellectual growth mindset.
Piaget was looking for what he called “spontaneous conviction”.

See article about Growth Mindset from HR Matters Magazine

Growth Mindset comfort zone versus spontaneous conviction

1: Vygotsky places more emphasis on culture affecting/shaping cognitive development – this contradicts Piaget’s view of universal stages and content of development. (Vygotsky does not refer to stages in the way that Piaget does).
2: Vygotsky places considerably more emphasis on social factors contributing to cognitive development (Piaget is criticised for underestimating this).
3: Vygotsky places more (and different) emphasis on the role of language in cognitive development (again Piaget is criticized for lack of emphasis on this).