Within a recent study published this year, it was discovered that an educator’s belief about the growth or fixed mindset greatly impacts the students within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics classes and concluded that “the racial achievement gaps in courses taught by fixed mindset faculty were twice as large as the achievement gaps in courses taught by growth mindset faculty”. The achievement gap refers to the disparity of academic performance between Caucasians and Asians on one end and underrepresented minorities such as Blacks, Latinxs, and Native American students on the other. As a future mathematics educator, I want to minimize the achievement gap between Caucasian and Asians and minority students by influencing my students to build their confidence, motivation, and performance by having a growth mindset and demonstrating this mindset within STEM classes.

A fixed mindset is when individuals believe their intelligence cannot be developed or improved while a growth mindset is when individuals believe their intelligence can grow with time and experience. There will be many challenges in the STEM field and it’s important to embrace failure and see it as a learning opportunity, which can improve our attitude and the environment of a classroom, which is important to set a positive standard in the classroom. The research wants me to focus on implementing a growth mindset within my mathematics classrooms to allow underrepresented minorities to better excel in their future STEM courses, which will help reduce the achievement gap.

During this past summer, I was able to implement a growth mindset in my UTeach Outreach PREP 4 Electrical Engineering class in which the students had to build a useless box, the device's sole function is to switch itself off by operating its own "off" switch. The students believed this would be an easy project but soon understood all the small details that went into their creation such as laser cutting a box big enough to fit all the wires and code the box with different behaviors. It was easy for the students to become frustrated, but it was important to counter “I can’t do it” or “it’s too hard” with “you’re almost there” and “you’ll be so proud of yourself at the end.'' All students saw, in the beginning, were many failed attempts, but after countless times of pushing each student to finish their project, they were near the end of the project. I remember one specific student who seemed to have the hardest time and would give up if things went wrong. I needed to explain to him that failure happens all the time in the world of Engineering and that it’s important to keep moving forward. At the end of the program, he was able to have a completed box and thanked me for never allowing him to give up.

It was moments such as the ones I experienced with UTeach Outreach that make me excited to have my own classroom. I didn’t see, at the end of the summer, if the achievement gap was reduced, but I did see how having a growth mindset impacted the students, and allowed them to be proud of their creation.