Developing a narrative mindset

Exploring how you can see and change who you are as an educator with a narrative lens.

What is mindset?

As psychologist Carol Dweck wrote in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, “You have a choice. Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs, but they are something in your mind, and you can change your mind.”

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What happens when you adapt a narrative mindset?

As Dr. Carol Dweck wrote, “Small shifts in mindset can trigger a cascade of changes so profound that they test the limits of what seems possible.”

What is a narrative

To adopt a narrative mindsent

There is good reason to believe that a purpose for learning could promote the view that a task is personally meaningful (e.g., Grant, 2007, 2013; Olivola & Shafir, 2013; also see Duffy & Dik, 2009; Steger et al., 2008; Steger, 2012).

Developing a Narrative

People who had a positive view of aging in midlife lived an average of 7.6 years longer than those who had a negative view. (Robyn Castellani, Forbes.com)

People who had a positive view of aging in midlife lived an average of 7.6 years longer than those who had a negative view. (Robyn Castellani, Forbes.com)

Consider Searching for and building from stories as your direction for teaching.

How I Develop a Narrative Mindset

• I develop deep listening skills.
• When meetings others, I listen for their story.
• I respond in story.
• I rely on story as data. A means of setting direction for what I do.

I recently heard a curriculum director explain the changes in assessment this way. "In the past we relied on observation and anecdotes. Now we look to data."

Is this person missing anything?

"We simply cannot translate bare numbers into recognizable human reality; our eyes glaze over. They don't activate what Robert Coles calls "the moral imagination..."

Put another way, we may piously claim that "all human life is sacred," but we rarely act that way. We care more, feel more, about those in our group...

According to Wilson, (2011) author of Redirect, stories are more powerful than data because they allow individuals to identify emotionally with people they might otherwise see as outsiders." (Newkirk, p. 110).

Do you agree or not?

Keys to Remember

You need to re-define and RE-SEE and RE-USE

Remember: finding a narrative is often about

if you adopt a narrative mindset

• How would it affect the way you see yourself as a teacher
• the way you re-see your students
• the school, colleagues and more.

Why would you adopt or not adopt

After all, "Story is the fundamental instrument of predicting, of planning, and explaining." (The Literary Mind Mark Turner, 1996)

Stories are easier to remember--because in many ways, stories are HOW we remember," Daniel Pinnk, A Whole New Mind, 2005.

Steps to Developing a "Narrative Mindset"

• Silence before sound.
• Actively Listen to Everyone.
• What stories do you allow/not allow...why?
• Listen to how you respond, is it in story or declaration?
• Experiment with Responding with Story.
• Play to Learn

Reflect, Remember, Re-SEE--Redo

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